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| I bought the Virgil quote button from Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers in Wauconda. |
Homer's Iliad and Odyssey are far greater works, but I still prefer Virgil's Aeneid. The first two, being Greek, are spare and powerful. The third, being Roman, brawny and ostentatious. To compare them is like comparing a pair of those flat, featureless neolithic figurines to a feathered Mardi Gras mask. One is timeless, one fun.
Maybe I prefer the Roman ruin because I can pluck more useful sentiments from Virgil. Thoughts that you can carry in your pocket like coins. Tu ne cede malis. "Yield not to evil." The line continues, "... but go forth all the more boldly to face it." That's a plan, right? Hard to argue "Give in to evil..." Oh wait. Maybe not so hard. Not in those words, perhaps.
Or consider the button above. Forsan et haec olim meminisse juvabit, the "j" pronounced like a "y," "youvabit." Odysseus and his men are stranded on a bleak, rocky shore, and the leader hides his own worries, trying to buck his men up.
"Call up your courage again," he says, in the Robert Fagles translation. "Dismiss your grief and fear." Then he delivers the line on the button: "A joy it will be one day, perhaps, to remember even this."
I first read that when I was still in elementary school, in a 1947 story called "To Remember These Things" by Milton White. It ran originally in Seventeen magazine, but I found it in a Scholastic paperback, "Best Short Shorts." God, how I loved getting those Scholastic books — you would order them in school, then they would arrive, and you got to keep them. I still have my yellowed copy of "Best Short Shorts."
Though oddly, in the story, a nostalgic slice of the end of high school, Luke Connors' Latin teacher translates it as "And in the future it will be pleasant to remember these things," banishing that all important "perhaps." That isn't right. "Forsan" means "perhaps."
More importantly: will it be pleasant to remember these things? To recall this particular moment, atop the hill before the steep plunge into whatever we've got coming? Could it possibly be pleasant? For people such as ourselves, I mean. I suppose that depends on what happens next. Maybe these will be the Good Old Days. Jesus, I hope not. Then again, as I always say, hope is not a success strategy.
Maybe I prefer the Roman ruin because I can pluck more useful sentiments from Virgil. Thoughts that you can carry in your pocket like coins. Tu ne cede malis. "Yield not to evil." The line continues, "... but go forth all the more boldly to face it." That's a plan, right? Hard to argue "Give in to evil..." Oh wait. Maybe not so hard. Not in those words, perhaps.
Or consider the button above. Forsan et haec olim meminisse juvabit, the "j" pronounced like a "y," "youvabit." Odysseus and his men are stranded on a bleak, rocky shore, and the leader hides his own worries, trying to buck his men up.
"Call up your courage again," he says, in the Robert Fagles translation. "Dismiss your grief and fear." Then he delivers the line on the button: "A joy it will be one day, perhaps, to remember even this."
I first read that when I was still in elementary school, in a 1947 story called "To Remember These Things" by Milton White. It ran originally in Seventeen magazine, but I found it in a Scholastic paperback, "Best Short Shorts." God, how I loved getting those Scholastic books — you would order them in school, then they would arrive, and you got to keep them. I still have my yellowed copy of "Best Short Shorts."
Though oddly, in the story, a nostalgic slice of the end of high school, Luke Connors' Latin teacher translates it as "And in the future it will be pleasant to remember these things," banishing that all important "perhaps." That isn't right. "Forsan" means "perhaps."
More importantly: will it be pleasant to remember these things? To recall this particular moment, atop the hill before the steep plunge into whatever we've got coming? Could it possibly be pleasant? For people such as ourselves, I mean. I suppose that depends on what happens next. Maybe these will be the Good Old Days. Jesus, I hope not. Then again, as I always say, hope is not a success strategy.
Scholastic Books? Hell, yeah! Were they connected to the Junior Scholastic Magazine that we got every week or two? Loved their crosswords, and stories about other countries, complete with wall maps that made me want to be a world traveler at an early age. Still have a couple of Scholastic's weather fundamentals books, from the mid-Fifties.
ReplyDeleteMy Scholastic choices tended toward humor...a book full of jokes and one-liners called "The Trumpet Book of Laughs"...and "A Chimp in the Family"...which was exactly what it sounds like. The story conveniently left out the tendency of young chimpanzees to hurl their feces at their tormentors. Was secretly hoping my father would buy my kid sister one, and then start yelling at the poor simian, with predictable results. Oh, how I'd have enjoyed seeing that.
Going down to New Orleans to celebrate our anniversary...but mostly to visit the WWII Museum, which has been on my bucket list for almost 25 years. And to enjoy the food and the music and riding on the 1922 streetcars. Might it be our last trip? You never can tell. Perhaps in the future it will be pleasant to remember these things...after the bottom falls out.
Allow yourself at least two days for the museum. It’s so well done, with so much to see. And the sculpture garden at City Park is well worth a visit—and free. You can take the streetcar there, and the park itself is quite beautiful.
DeleteThe years with our President Biden removed some of trump’s stink! But here we go again-into the fray! ‘I get weary, I’m sick of trying’—-! Heartsick over ‘American’ voters!
Deleteand frenchman street, just past the quarter. 2 city blocks with one music venue after another. and nearby is a great little hole in the wall grocery store with what. is now my go-to joint for muffalettas (i go to nola every december for 10 days-2 weeks)
DeleteWe are scheduled to be there for four days, if all goes well. Places only an hour from here are forecast to get three to four FEET of lake-effect snow. Thank you, Lake Erie! An unexpected wind shift means we aren't going anywhere. And there's also a layover and a connection to be made, on one of the busiest days of the year.
DeleteSo I'm very nervous. We could lose a full day. But I'm still allowing two days for the museum. Also plan to ride the streetcar as much as possible, because I've been nuts about streetcars since I was three. Lived in East Garfield Park while still very young, and they ran past our windows (along W. Madison) until I was six.
I was born at Garfield Park hospital after 60 years bouncing around different parts of Chicago. Not back in the old neighborhood at Warren and Sacramento. Pretty nice around here again. Don't remember the streetcars at least not the ones on tracks.
DeleteI do remember the trolley buses though and take one to go shopping with my mom at Madison and Crawford. Still not a place that you really want to go. Have fun in New Orleans. It's a great place
Yeah, I know. Not my first rodeo. But it's been 27 years since the last one. A lot of changes, some good, some...not so much. Just like Chicago and Cleveland and everywhere else. The one constant is change.
DeleteLived near Madison and Homan. Madison and Crawford (nobody ever called it Pulaski, even back then) was a BFD in the early Fifties. Brand new Goldblatt's opened up the same week my kid sister was born. First time I ever set foot, literally, on an escalator. We called it "the moving stairs."
These ARE the 51 final good old days of sanity. I plan to relish every one.
ReplyDeleteAs a teacher Scholastic books were great. I let my own two children order as many as they wanted. I also built a room library with books I ordered. A major goal for me was to get my seventh graders to be readers. It usually takes just one good book. I succeeded with my two, who are around your age, and I hope I hooked many more. BMP
ReplyDeleteHope is the fire we warm ourselves by before we go back out into the cold.
ReplyDeleteI understand - because I READ- that Trump supporters partly cast their votes to express disdain and distaste for Universities and the elitists who graduated from them. They claim academia looks down on them, instead of accepting their worldview as equal but different. I wonder if a lot of this discordance relates to whether a person reads or not. I saw a statistic about voting behaviors in the 2020 election that found
ReplyDeletethose who voted for Biden were 70% more likely to get their news from print media (like newspapers) vs 21% who voted for Trump.
One (of the many) things that frightens me about DJT is that he doesn't read. John Kelly once said Trump knows next to nothing about history. He refused to read Daily Briefings, so his staff had to verbally provide 'bullet-point' highlights, and even then, Trump's attention-span was short. There's a difference between being uneducated and ignorant. ( and if someone were dyslexic, there are accommodations that can be made to satisfy their curiosity and desire for knowledge). But Trump lacks curiosity or a desire for knowledge. He claims he decides things by "instinct" or "gut feelings". And yes, this makes me wary!
When I was in HS, my class gave an AP English teacher a hard time about all the Shakespeare he had in the curriculum. He told us that, regardless of our career trajectories, we would need to know how to relate to and understand people, and at minimum, knowing a few Shakespeare plays would provide us 'common ground' with our peers someday. He shared a story about working on his Master's thesis while anxiously waiting for his wife to deliver their first child. The OB/GYN came into the waiting area to provide an update, saw what he was working on, and took a moment to discuss his work intelligently. Our teacher told us that moment, more than anything else, helped calm him and instill respect.
I am grateful I was instilled with a joy of reading early on, from the Scholastic book fairs, on up to now. (I think it was Mr S who shared with us that we could buy Dante's inferno with Italian on one 1 page and English translation next to it). I certainly don't expect everyone to read the classics in their free time, but at least the religious right should be familiar with the phrase "Nothing new under the sun". History repeats itself, but if you read, you can appreciate where the trajectory is headed.
And when Evil wins? Then what?
ReplyDeleteSo far, there's never been a permanent victory for Evil. It may take years, but Plato was right, the longing for the Good is indeed eternal.
DeleteForsan (maybe) before Trump and his henchmen destroy the world's health care system and undermine the economies of our major trading partners, not to speak of our own economy, he can get the U.S. out of the commitments to Ukraine and Israel that were made by Joe Biden, perhaps foolishly, and are likely to end in nuclear war, if both Ukraine and Russia continue to insist on "winning" and Iran comes out of the shadows.
ReplyDeletejohn
Wow, Scholastic books were great. Making the order, paying for it, waiting until you just about forgot and then the books coming. The process made you really want to read your prizes.
ReplyDeleteI can't recall the name but I also remember a show with an artist drawing in charcoal a scene form a book that a narrator read from.
I remember scholastic books I read many. It wasn't until I was in high school that I realized how narrow a worldview they presented and it wasn't until my '50s that I made it conservative effort to look outside those types of stories in get a much better understanding of how things were for other people, not just people like me
ReplyDeleteThe sentimentality expressed by posters is nice but It makes me understand why there's such a homogenous theme in the point of view expressed here
Reading is important but reading a broad range of things that don't necessarily align with what you think is very important
Pivoting to the threat of nuclear war….Putin is once again threatening to hit Ukraine with a “nuclear-capable missile”.
ReplyDeleteAnnie Jacobsen, author of “Nuclear War: A Scenario” on “The Smerconish” TV show just now, claims using nuclear weapons would end the world “in a couple of hours”.