Alok

Haha, and a lot of dubious material from an ethical point of view also. so much xenophobia, violence, intolerance, oneupmanship....

The historical books were a bit tedious to be honest, but I am really excited about what is coming next - Book of Job, the Psalms, Ecclesiastes, Lamentations, and all the major and minor Prophets. From what I know about them, these might be my favourite parts of the Hebrew Bible.

Bible reading update: After the Pentateuch, I have also now finished all the Historical books - Joshua, Judges, Ruth, Samuel, Kings, Chronicles, Ezra-Nehemiah, Esther - all done!

I haven't read a lot of fiction this year but the main highlight for me in the first five months was "The Antiquary" by Walter Scott. I also liked "East Lynne" by Ellen Wood.

I didn't particularly enjoy "The Good Soldier" (Ford Madox Ford) but could see why it is considered an important work.

I am going to read The Odyssey as well but not immediately. I want to first read some more secondary literature on Homer and the Trojan war and then read the Classical Greek plays which reference the War.

Next time I am going to read the Richmond Lattimore's translation. Richard Martin's introduction in this volume is really superb, much better than the one by Bernard Knox in Fagles's edition or Barbara Graziosi's volume in the Oxford VSI series. It helped me a great deal.

That said, the second reading will be much easier, now that I have spent so much time looking up the notes, all the different introductions, and other supplementary secondary reading material.

Cover of Robert Fagles translation of Homer's Iliad

This took a lot of time and effort but at the end it was all worth it. I mean the language (at least in translation) wasn't difficult at all but there were just too many characters, and keeping track of their interrelationships and their place in the wider mythology felt like a lot of work.

Nestor's Cup (Pithekoussai) - Wikipedia

a real cup from 9th century BCE containing the inscription "I am the Nestor's cup," - one of the earliest surviving Greek writing. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nestor%...

Nestor's cup

And next year there are new editions of his works coming out in the Oxford World's Classics series. I hope they are nicely annotated, especially Doctor Faustus, which requires a lot of scholarly guidance

Thomas Mann's cathedrals in prose One of the greatest European writers, Thomas Mann, born 150 years ago, dedicated his life to the pursuit of literary form. He left a monumental legacy.

On his birthday today a nice brief essay on Thomas Mann by
Morten Høi Jensen (his book on him is also getting out soon) engelsbergideas.com/notebook/tho...

unlike Anthony Verity

Robert Fagles doesn't say Lesbians, he says women of Lesbos

Enzo Staiola, who has died at 85, was just 9 when he played Bruno Ricci, son of Antonio (Lamberto Maggiorani), in BICYCLE THIEVES.

RIP, Enzo Staiola.

“The young boy doesn’t say much, but in his expressions you can see what’s going on in his mind, even on a subconscious level.”

Jia Zhangke on Vittorio De Sica’s BICYCLE THIEVES (1948) www.criterion.com/current/post...

this description of hip-joint in the Iliad will probably get past the approval of modern orthopaedic surgeons

(lot of really graphic descriptions of wounds)

L’historien Pierre Nora est mort Historien, maître d’œuvre des « Lieux de mémoire », publiés en sept volumes à partir de 1984, le créateur de la revue « Le Débat » est mort le 2 juin, à l’âge de 93 ans.

Nora was one of the great French intellectual impresarios of the postwar period and truly representative of his generation - in all its imagination and dogmatism. www.lemonde.fr/disparitions...

Perry Anderson · Dégringolade: The Fall of France

www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v2...

www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v2...

Perry Anderson · Dégringolade: The Fall of France

Nora (with François Furet, also his brother-in-law) was one of the most important figures in the "centrist" and anti-leftist intellectual revolution in France in the 70s and the 80s.

The duo take centrestage in this two-part classic demolition job by Perry Anderson

This is a review of an English edition of his monumental edited volume called "Realms of Memory," a sort of historical encyclopedia of French identity.

Can't find any English obituary yet, but I first came across the name of the French historian, publisher, editor, Pierre Nora, who has just died, in this review-essay by Tony Judt (also collected in his "Reappraisals")

archive.is/CNC96

This looks nothing unusual to someone who is familiar with epics in the Indian (Sanskrit or vernacular) tradition.

I am surprised why it took such a long time for Western scholars to identify this element of Homeric style and connect it to the oral tradition. It seems extremely obvious.

A very handy list of epithets or metrical formulas used in Homer en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epithet...

Pierre Nora

Now onwards to the Iliad! I don't think I am fully prepared yet but I am ready to jump in.

Graziosi's book is a solid introduction for those who are encountering Homer for the first time. Half of the book is an overview of the Homer question and the current state of scholarly consensus on the subject and the rest of the book is basically a critical summary of the Iliad and the Odyssey.

Read both of these. As I said earlier, Cline's book is mostly about archaeological evidence for the Trojan war, and indeed the city of Troy as depicted in Homer's work and and the Epic cycle. He is not a sceptic, there is evidence, but it is quite complicated, not so straightforward.

"the lies that Odysseus told all of us"

- Homer, A Very Short Introduction, Barbara Graziosi

My learning so far from reading the Hebrew Bible is that you don't mess with Yahweh and you don't mess with his prophets either. (this is prophet Elisha, from 2 Kings)

He neither makes big claims, nor is he overly sceptical. He discusses the 1177 and the event of the disappearance of the late Bronze age civilizations in Eastern Mediterranean in this book as well. So many tantalizing and unanswered (or partially answered) questions....