I’ve been spending too much time online.
It’s sad, isn’t it?
I get up in the morning and check my email. And then I check it again. And then I check it again. I can’t even drink coffee anymore while I check my email because I had to buy a new laptop after a coffee spill a few years ago. I find 34 emails, maybe two from people I know. The Angela Thirkell group talks about the new audiobook version of Pomfret Towers; the Inimitable Boz is discussing Miss Mowcher, the dwarf in David Copperfield; and a department store sends a link to shop for TOMS slip-ons, which look very cute.
And somehow because of all the email, links, and newspaper articles, there’s never time to reread The Aeneid. And one of my goals for the year is to use some of my spare internet time for reading poetry.
Virgil’s Aeneid is one of the most stunning and confounding poems in any language. I read it as an anti-war epic; some less Latinate souls believe it is pro-war. In the first book, Aeneas, the son of Venus and the Trojan Anchises, and a refugee of Troy whose mission is to found Rome, says he would rather be dead. The gods are against him. Juno has cajoled Aeolus, the god of winds, to free the winds and wreck Aeneas’s ships–yet again. (It’s complicated; you’ll have to read it). Some readers think Aeneas is a coward, and that Achilles in Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, on which the Aeneid is based, is bolder and more inspiring.
That’s as may be, but who are we? We are Aeneas (or would be if we were men), not Achilles.
It is difficult to translate Latin into English, because Latin is highly inflected–word endings change to show meaning–and the structure of English depends on word order. Of the translations, I recommend Robert Fagles’ and Robert Fitzgerald’s. But I’ve never read a really BAD translation of The Aeneid.
I know the poem well; I have read it several times in Latin. I taught Virgil as a “Visiting Lecturer” (!!!) and then at a high school for a few years. I attempted to help my adult ed Latin students translate a few passages from Virgil, because they would never progress to the point of reading him on their own.
So, for the next 12 days, I will read one book a day of The Aeneid, or at least part of a book a day, instead of checking my email a dozen times a day.
Maybe I’ll even memorize a few more lines.
It’s better than investing in that program that keeps you off the internet for a few hours for money, don’t you think?
Fascinating!
Heheh. I’ve always felt a bit smug about those programs. But I should probably calculate just how much time I spend online myself in a given week before I settle into that smugness! * grin *
I don’t understand those programs, either. I just limit myself if I get carried away.
I too have to invent a new modus vivendi. I have limited my time online a lot, but still I’m here a lot. I can’t get myself to switch from listservs to blogs which might help.
Ellen
Your listservs are great. On some of my other listservs (not yours) there are very few messages now. I do love blogs, but it’s hard to get around to all of them.