Poquette's Bibliomania II

Welcome everybody. Continuing here from Poquette's Bibliomania.

New thread . . . new reading focus. Here are the areas that interest me most just now:

• Ancient literature, history, philosophy
• Fiction — classics, historical, sci fi, post modern, other groundbreaking novels
• Literary criticism
• Paris, French classics and French language
• "Quirky/dreamy novellas"
• Renaissance — one or two stragglers
• Short stories
• Travel

We'll see where this takes us!

Ratings. This is roughly how I would like to think I "grade" the books I read. The reality is I rate books more on the basis of how well I like them. And I like books that are not only well written but that have something to say that speaks to me:

★★★★★ A+ — Sent me over the moon!
★★★★½ A — I really, really liked the book!
★★★★ A– — Kept my interest, well-done but didn't quite reach the A level.
★★★½ B+ — Mixed feelings; good book but is uneven or contains serious flaws IMHO
★★★ B — Not memorable.
★★ C — Why did I read this?
★ F — Why the **** did I read this????




Ticker added 7/14 — No, I am not planning to read 100 books! In fact, there is no plan. I just wanted an excuse to have one of these gadgets.

2014 Books Read

January
Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore: A Novel by Robin Sloan (2012) 1/23 ★★★★
Stamboul Train (aka Orient Express) by Graham Greene (1932) ★★★½

February
Night Train to Lisbon: A Novel by Pascal Mercier (2008) 2/2 ★★★★★ (Review)

March
Best American Essays 1998 edited by Robert Atwan and Cynthia Ozick 3/2 ★★★½
Best American Essays 1997 edited by Robert Atwan and Ian Frazier 3/7 ★★★½
Best American Essays 1999 edited by Robert Atwan and Edward Hoagland 3/10 ★★★½
The Witness by Nora Roberts (2012) ★★★★

April
Best American Essays 2000 edited by Robert Atwan and Alan Lightman 4/4 ★★★½
Best American Essays 2001 edited by Robert Atwan and Kathleen Norris 4/4 ★★★½
Best American Essays 2002 edited by Robert Atwan and Stephen Jay Gould 4/9 ★★★½
The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon (2005) 4/15 ★★★★½
(Review)
The Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durrell (1957-1960) 4/24 ★★★★ (Review)
― Justine 4/18 ★★★★
― Balthazar 4/19 ★★★★
― Mountolive 4/21 ★★★★
― Clea 4/24 ★★★★
Vintage Alexandria: Photographs of the City, 1860-1960 by Michael Haag (2008) 4/24 ★★★★

May
Alexandria: City of Memory by Michael Haag (2004) 5/4 ★★★★ (Review)
A House for Mr. Biswas by V.S. Naipaul (1961) 5/19 ½ (Review)
Best American Essays 2003 edited by Robert Atwan and Anne Fadiman 5/23 ★★★
Atlas of Remote Islands by Judith Schalansky (2009) 5/25 ★★★★ (Review)
The Uses of Literature by Italo Calvino (1982) 5/27 ★★★★½
Ferragus, Chief of the Devorants by Honoré Balzac (1833) 5/28 ★★★★ (Review)
The Brummstein by Peter Adolphsen (2003) 5/29 ★
Infinite City: A San Francisco Atlas by Rebecca Solnit (2010) 5/30 ★★★★ (Review)

June
The Kill (La Curée) by Émile Zola (1872) 6/6 ★★★½ (Review)
Mr. g: A Novel About the Creation by Alan Lightman (2012) 6/8 ★★★★½ (Review)
War in Heaven by Charles Williams (1930) 6/14 ★★★★ (Review)
Pendulum: Léon Foucault and the Triumph of Science by Amir D. Aczel (2003) 6/16 ★★★★½ (Review)
Archetypal Imagination: Glimpses of the Gods in Life and Art by Noel Cobb (1992) 6/21 ★★★★½ (Review)
Against Nature by Joris-Karl Huysmans (1884) 6/25 ★★★★½
(Review)
Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition by Frances Yates (1964) 6/29 ★★★★★ (Review)

July
Odyssey of Homer tr. by Robert Fitzgerald (9th C. BC) 7/6 ★★★★½
(Review)
The Glorious Adventure by Richard Halliburton (1927) 7/8 ★★★★½
(Review)
La reine Margot (en Français facile) by Alexandre Dumas (1845) 7/10 ★★★★
A Simple Soul by Gustave Flaubert (1877) 7/12 ★★★★ (Review)
Three Short Works by Gustave Flaubert (1877) 7/13 ★★★★ (Review)
The Art of Being Unmistakable by Srinivas Roy (2013) 7/14 ★★★½ (Review)
The Delighted States by Adam Thirlwell (2007) 7/18 ★★★★½
(Review)
Sentimental Education by Gustave Flaubert (1869) 7/25 ★★★★ (Review)
The Medusa Frequency by Russell Hoban (1987) 7/27 ★★★★½
(Review)
Death at La Fenice by Donna Leon (1992) 7/30 ★★★★ (Review)

August
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (1891) 8/3 ★★★★½ (Review)
Piano Stories by Felisberto Hernández (1993) 8/7 ★★★★½ (Review)
Travels with Herodotus by Ryszard Kapuscinski (2004) 8/9 ★★★★★ (Review)
Bartleby & Co. by Enrique Vila-Matas (2000) 8/25 ★★★★★ (Review)

September
Blue Latitudes: Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before by Tony Horwitz (2002) 9/8 ★★★★½ (Review)
Venice Incognito: Masks in the Serene Republic by James H. Johnson (2011) 9/17 ★★★★ (Review)
The Piazza Tales by Herman Melville (1856) 9/26 ★★★★½ (Review)
The Synthetic Man by Theodore Sturgeon (1950) 9/27 ★★★★ (Review)
Endymion, The Man in the Moon by John Lyly (1591) 9/29 ★★★★ (Review)

October
The Landmark Herodotus: The Histories (2007) 10/7 ★★★★★ (Review)
The Red and the Black by Stendhal (1830) 10/13 ★★★★½ (Review)
The Iliad by Homer (9th C. BC, 1990) 10/25 ★★★★ (Review)
Homer's Daughter by Robert Graves (1955) 10/27 ★★★★ (Review)
Preface to Plato by Eric A. Havelock (1963) 10/30 ★★★★½ (Review)

November
The Street of Crocodiles and Other Stories by Bruno Schulz (1934) 11/5 ★★★½ (Review)
Dreaming and Storytelling by Bert O. States (1993) 11/8 ★★★½ (Review)
Geoffrey Chaucer: Dream Visions and Other Poems, Kathryn L. Lynch, ed. (2007) 11/25 ★★★★★ (Review)
Death in Venice and Seven Other Stories by Thomas Mann (1930) 11/30 ★★★★

December
Commentary on the Dream of Scipio by Macrobius (1952) 12/3 ★★★★ (Review)
The Dream of Scipio by Iain Pears (2002) 12/8 ★★★★½ (Review)
Republic by Plato (1993) 12/15 ★★★★½ (Review)
The Landmark Thucydides (411 BC, 1996) 12/30 ★★★★★

Commenting to follow your thread!

A philosophy of ancient literature book you might like is Martha Nussbaum's The Therapy of Desire. It's one of my favorite books. George Steiner's Antigones is another favorite: lit crit/ancient literature/comp lit.

Since you are on a pomo and lit crit kick, I'll recommend Frederic Jameson's Postmodernism: Or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Even though I disagree with much of his theory, it's an interesting book.

Bibliotecha Alexandrina — interior. This should have been the caption for the picture at the top. Picked to correspond with my new focus on the ancients.

>3 mabith: — Welcome to the new thread, Meredith. Glad to have you along for the ride!

>4 LibraryPerilous: — Thanks for all those recommendations, Diana, of which I have made a note. I had forgotten about Martha Nussbaum's book. I'll have to get hold of that for sure. I am really trying to concentrate on getting through some of the books in the above-listed areas that I already own! Of course, that's almost a hopeless dream.

Re postmodernism, have you read What Ever Happened to Modernism? by Gabriel Josipovici? It provides quite an interesting excursion. And for a couple of years I have been meaning to read Patricia Waugh's Literary Theory and Criticism: An Oxford Guide, which has been sitting here buried on my Kindle. That one is nagging at me.

Travels with Herodotus by Ryszard Kapuscinski (2004, tr. 2007) Kindle edition

One of the magical things about reading is that it puts the reader directly in touch with the mind of the writer. Unfortunately, this is only a one-way street. But Ryszard Kapuscinski has seemingly performed the impossible: He somehow got Herodotus to answer questions about himself that he never directly addressed in his monumental The Histories. We know next to nothing of the facts of Herodotus' life: He came from Halicarnassus, an ancient seaport in western Asia Minor, now Bodrum, Turkey; he abided for a time in Athens where he was unable to obtain citizenship, so he eventually settled in an obscure Greek colony in the inner arch of the foot of Italy called Thurii.

To American readers, at least, Ryszard Kapuscinski (1932-2007) isn't exactly a household name. But it turns out that he was one of the most respected international journalists around. In addition to Travels with Herodotus, he wrote books on some very interesting subjects including, for example, The Emperor, about the decline of Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia; Shah of Shahs, about the last days of the Shah of Iran; and Imperium, about the fall of the Soviet Union.

Kapuscinski first heard of Herodotus while attending university in 1951 Poland. This was a time when books were not readily available as they are now, and even something as seemingly innocuous as a Polish translation of Herodotus' Histories was locked away in a closet before it even got printed. As Kapuscinski wrote:

. . . all of our thinking, our looking and reading, was governed during those years by an obsession with allusion. Each word brought another one to mind; each had a double meaning, a false bottom, a hidden significance; each contained something secretly encoded, cunningly concealed. Nothing was ever plain, literal, unambiguous — from behind every gesture and word peered some referential sign, gazed a meaningfully winking eye. The man who wrote had difficulty communicating with the man who read, not only because the censor could confiscate the text en route, but also because when the text finally reached him, the latter read something utterly different from what was clearly written, constantly asking himself: What did this author really want to tell me?

Herodotus — the Polish version — was finally published in 1955 when a "thaw" was beginning to take place. Kapuscinski got a job with a newspaper and eventually was sent to India as a foreign correspondent. He was given "a present, for the road." It was a copy of Herodotus, The Histories.

Kapuscinski not only carried the book with him, but he actually began to read it! And thus began a lifelong collaboration with the author of this ancient text. Judging from Kapuscinski's manner of storytelling, it would appear that his journalism mimics that of Herodotus in many subtle ways. Some critics who weren't all that enamored of his style of journalism probably didn't understand how it evolved from his study of Herodotus. One writer even dubbed his style "magic journalism," sort of a nonfiction variation on Gabriel Garcia Marquez's magic realism. This is amusing but it entirely misses the point. As Kapuscinski says: "Herodotus's book arose from travel; it is world literature's first great work of reportage. Its author has reportorial instincts, a journalistic eye and ear." Kapuscinski's career as a newspaper's foreign correspondent also arose from travel, and it probably didn't take him long to realize that in Herodotus he had serendipitously been handed access to the perfect prototype of his own budding craft. For him The Histories served as a reporter's handbook.

He began to ask questions: How does Herodotus work? As a diplomat, a spy, a tourist, a wanderer? No. Herodotus was "a reporter, an anthropologist, an ethnographer, a historian." What is the goal of Herodotus' journeys? How does he travel? By analyzing the book from a writer's standpoint, he began to gain insights into his own writing. And here was the key:

One must read Herodotus's book — and every great book — repeatedly; with each reading it will reveal another layer, previously overlooked themes, images and meanings. For within every great book there are several others.

While Kapuscinski had been given the book as a traveling companion, he found eventually that he had been on two journeys — first, as a foreign correspondent; and second, as a traveler with Herodotus on his various journeys of inquiry. In a similar way, through Travels with Herodotus, we are getting to know two fascinating writers and their work. Kapuscinski presents the broad outlines of The Histories in the contexts of his various foreign assignments — among others, in India and China, Congo in the midst of civil war and Algiers in the aftermath of a coup. The circumstances in each locale inform Kapuscinski's reading of Herodotus and conversely, Herodotus' enquiries inform Kapuscinski's reporting of unfolding events.

Through his travels — mostly in the third world — Kapuscinski often found himself in situations that were as primitive as those Herodotus encountered, and this is probably one reason why The Histories resonated for him. But traveling, whether as a reporter or as a mere tourist, has much in common with reading great literature and has profound effects:

A journey, after all, neither begins in the instant we set out, nor ends when we have reached our doorstep once again. It starts much earlier and is never really over, because the film of memory continues running on inside us long after we have come to a physical standstill. Indeed, there exists something like a contagion of travel, and the disease is essentially incurable.

If one finds the prospect of reading The Histories too daunting, one cannot go wrong by dipping a toe into the waters through Travels with Herodotus. This is one of those books . . .

>6 Poquette: This sounds like a fascinating book, and your review is excellent. I've only read parts of Imperium. On the subject of Herodotus, Justin Marozzi's The Way of Herodotus sounds fun.

>5 Poquette: Thanks for the recommendations. The Josipovici book, particularly, sounds intriguing. I like that the reviews on LT call it a polemic.

>5 Poquette: I've had What Ever Happened to Modernism? on the TBR for a couple of years, but it hasn't called out to me yet . . .

>6 Poquette: You make Travels with Herodotus more appealing than I felt it was when I read it! As I said on the What Are You Reading? thread, it made me want to read Herodotus instead of Kapuscinski! (However, I have several other books by him on my wishlist). I really should read Herodotus himself one of these days . . .

I didn't know about Travels with Herodotus but I do now thanks to your excellent review. I had heard of Kapuscinski as I have been meaning to read Shah of Shahs

>7 LibraryPerilous: I just took a look at that review of Josipovici which called it a polemic. I think that's a bit strong. It is obviously a strongly opinionated book, but that is what makes it interesting. I was also reading the following review and nodding and shaking my head figuratively, and then it turned out to be mine! LOL

>8 rebeccanyc: The fact that I have already started reading The Histories — my new Landmark Herodotus about which I am very enthusiastic — probably made Travels with Herodotus more personally appealing, although it should even have something to say to people who are not reading Herodotus! It does provide a perfect intro, however.

>9 baswood: Now that I have been formally introduced to Kapuscinski, I would be very interested in reading more of his work. Eventually. If you do get around to reading Shah of Shahs, Barry, I'll be interested in what you have to say about it.

>10 Poquette: You are certainly making me want to get the Landmark Herodotus, although I have no idea when I might read it.

You'll know if and when you are ready, Rebecca.

I have been dancing around with Herodotus since I was a teenager. The first time I saw a volume of The Histories, I opened it up at random and read the following:

There are men in Egypt whose profession it is to embalm corpses. Whenever a body is brought to them, they display painted wooden replicas of corpses to those who brought it, and they describe the most elaborate method of embalming. . . . Then they demonstrate a second method which is inferior to the first but cheaper, and also a third, the cheapest of all. Having explained all this to their clients, the embalmers ask them to select the method by which they wish to have the body prepared. After they have agreed on the price, the clients then depart, leaving the embalmers alone in their quarters to perform their craft. The most elaborate method is performed in the following way. First, they draw out part of the brain through the nostrils with a curved iron implement; then they extract the rest by pouring in drugs. After this, they extract the entire contents of the abdomen. Then, when they have cleaned and washed out the abdominal cavity with Phoenician date-palm wine, they clean it once more with crushed spices. Next, they fill the abdomen with pure ground myrrh, cassia and other fragrant substances, except for frankincense, and then they stitch it up again. When all this has been done, they embalm the body by covering it completely with natron, for seventy days, and when the seventy days are up, they bathe the body and wrap all of it up in bandages cut from fine linen and smeared with gum, which the Egyptians generally use in place of glue. Then the corpse is handed over to the relatives who enclose it in a hollow wooden coffin crafted to resemble a human which they have made for this purpose, and once the coffin is closed, they stow it away in a burial chamber, standing it upright against a wall.

I think I was about twelve years old at the time I read this. My eyes nearly popped out. I was just ghoulish enough to think it was really cool and I decided right then and there that I had to read this book. But as I mentioned above, I became discouraged quickly because the volume at hand contained no maps, no notes, no introduction. It was just the raw text and I simply did not have the background at that age to deal with all the strange names and places. I have always wanted to read this book, and I've been thinking about it more and more recently, so now is the time.

By the time I finish, I fear that you will be sick of hearing about it!

>12 Poquette: You'll know if and when you are ready

Well, considering I'm now reading a book I've had on the TBR for nearly 15 years, and that I sometimes I read books that have been on the TBR for 25 years or more, it could be a long long time!

>13 rebeccanyc: Not wanting to engage in oneupsmanship, and not wanting to reveal my age, I won't tell you how long Herodotus has been on my TBR! ;-)

>14 Poquette: Oh, I wouldn't want you to reveal your age, but I've probably already revealed mine here in Club Read by talking about what I read in college and high school (but of course nobody remembers )! :-)

>> Just yesterday, I finished Memoirs of a fox-hunting man, which had been on my TBR for 18 years (since 1996); another record holder is Wesker. The Playwright, which I bought in 1991, and finally finished reading in May of this year.

I think I still have (quite a few) books on my TBR exceeding 30 years. Real vintage has no expiry date, and literally unlimited shelf life.

Of course, my situation is a bit complicated, because, at least for some of my book collection, I have been separated from my books by living abroad almost half my life.

>9 baswood: Shah of Shahs was a real eye opener for me, especially with regard to American involvement in Iran. Here is PBS in 2009 calling it an ideal starting point for understanding things as they stood then: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/tehranbureau/2009/07/revolution-redux-th...
It's one of those books I keep around for reference when facts seem a bit hazy.

>16 edwinbcn: Real vintage has no expiry date Of course that applies to LT people as well as their books!

>10 Poquette: I don't think I've read anything by Kapuscinski that wasn't worthwhile, although oddly, Travels with Herodotus is still on my TBR. Anyone looking for an introduction to Kapuscinski might consider The Soccer War, a series of essays which covers everything from the 1969 Honduras - El Salvador soccer war to civil war in Nigeria.

>15 rebeccanyc: That would make a good "Question for Avid Readers": How old is your TBR? That is, what is the greatest number of years a book has been on your TBR? Name the book.

>16 edwinbcn: I love your comment: "Real vintage has no expiry date."

>17 SassyLassy: And, of course, Sassy's addendum: "Of course, that applies to LT people as well as their books!"

Thanks for your recommendation for The Soccer War. Sounds interesting.

>18 Poquette: The current question for avid readers is to suggest questions for avid readers, so that's a very timely suggestion, and if you go over to the Avid Reader thread and repeat it there, I may actually remember it when I get around to asking other questions! Of course, everyone should feel free to go over there and suggest questions.

>19 rebeccanyc: By now you will have seen that I did as you asked.

I was just getting deep into Book 1 (of 9) of my Landmark Herodotus when it occurred to me that I might have a Teaching Company course on The Histories. Sure enough, buried in my "Downloads" folder is a magnificent 24-lecture course which gives oodles of background and attempts to explain a great deal about Herodotus methods, sources and antecedents. Needless to say, I have been sidetracked and am still only about halfway through the first book. With all the storied names and places, it is actually helpful to keep everything straight by revisiting the story line here and there which helps to cement it in memory. As I have gotten older, I find my memory is not as sticky as it used to be. Because the book is so rich in anecdotes that sometimes remind one more of a folktale than history or biography, one cannot be expected to recall every detail, which is why, I suppose, people tend to read it or at least dip into it more than once.

With my move and brief hiatus out of town, I sort of lost touch with the Teaching Company, and I see that they have changed their name. They now call themselves The Great Courses and they have a full catalog on line, if anyone is interested. They continue to have generous sales, and when a course is on sale it is not unreasonably expensive. The audio downloads are cheapest of all, and many courses that deal with literature or history are very well suited to the audio. In other words, you don't need to sit there and watch a lecturer stand there and talk. I am well pleased with the audio of this Herodotus course, which has a detailed outline which you can refer back to when the need arises.

The book itself (i.e., the Landmark version) has more maps than I have ever seen in a book. Every time a place is mentioned, there is a footnote referring you to a nearby map. The book contains more than 20 appendices that explain one thing or another that is too complicated for a footnote. These appendices are referred to in footnotes at apt points in the text.

Because Herodotus was breaking new ground when he wrote his history, the reader is constantly reminded that what we think of as "history" today had not been conceived of in the 5th century B.C. The Greek word historie meant something akin to "inquiry," and this is why The Histories seem to be a jumble of ethnography, geography, fable and more. Between my audio course and the supplementary materials in the Landmark edition, the facts, near facts and downright folktales or fabrications are pointed out, the possible sources given, etc. Since Herodotus was writing at a time when the oral tradition of passing on information was still in full flower, it is not surprising that a few tall tales would creep into the narrative.

Somewhere I read that before The Histories were divided into nine books, there were 28 sections designed for oral delivery. The first "publication" of Herodotus' work was undoubtedly oral, and there is much in the book to capture a listener's attention.

So much for this. Now, back to the book . . .

>20 Poquette: Thanks, and >21 Poquette: I don't know if I'd ever have time for The Great Courses, but they sound so intriguing. And I love maps, so you're enticing me ever closer to Herodotus . . .

>21 Poquette: fascinating

>22 rebeccanyc: I realize we are on slightly different reading trips at the moment, so please don't think I am trying to talk you into Herodotus. At times it is difficult to contain my enthusiasm!

Just coming up for air after having finally finished Book One of The Landmark Herodotus: The Histories. I am assuming this is the most complicated section because Herodotus goes back into the mists of time — even for him — to trace the background leading up to the Greco Persian Wars, which are the main objective of his book, i.e., to present the history of that conflict.

Fortunately in the course guide book that accompanies the Teaching Company's course on Herodotus contains a timeline, which helps to keep track of who did what to whom and when. It is the when that causes a lot of consternation.

Herodotus identifies Croesus, King of Lydia, as the first of the "Asian" interlopers to attack the Greeks. The "Asia" referred to throughout is actually Asia Minor, which is now the Asian part of Turkey. There were three main groups who occupied Asia Minor at the time: the Lydians, the Medes and the Persians. The Lydians were closest to the western coast, which had been settled by various people mainly from the areas surrounding Athens and Sparta, if the traditions are correct. The coastal Asian Greeks — the Aeolians, the Ionians and the Dorians — had largely been left alone until Croesus came along and started to attempt to conquer them. Herodotus reports on these various attempts and also the various ways each responded. Some capitulated, some fought and some migrated into the Aegean or even as far as Italy and Spain. All very interesting and at the same time somewhat confusing because of the back and forth of the narrative.

Eventually Croesus was defeated by the Persian king Cyrus, who eventually decided to add Egypt to his empire before launching a direct attack on the mainland of Greece. The story of Croesus is fascinating because we all grew up hearing the phrase "rich as Croesus" — and he was really, really rich — but we never heard that he almost came to a fearful end by being burned at the stake. But at the last moment, Cyrus spared him and Croesus, although now a slave, became a trusted advisor.

Then there are the Medes, who were antecedents to Cyrus of the Persians. It was somewhere in the midst of learning about Diokes, King of the Medes, who was followed by Phraortes, Cyaxares and Astyages, that I realized a timeline was badly needed!

The story of Cyrus King of Persia, who was actually the son of Astyages King of the Medes, is fascinating and somewhat reminiscent of Moses and others who I cannot think of just now who were meant to be slain but somehow were saved by a lowly cowherd and then grew up to defeat their father king of another civilization. That's essentially what happened to Cyrus.

Anyway, I have just finished Book One, which concluded with Cyrus being defeated and killed by the Massagetai, a group that dwelt deep into Asia proper east of the Aral Sea. So it will be up to a descendent of Cyrus to actually make it to Egypt, which is the subject of Book Two, which is what I have been waiting for as it is where I came in half a century ago — and more. See >12 Poquette: above.

>25 Poquette: Thank you for the fascinating review! You made me want to read both Travels with Herodotus and Herodotus himself, but I'm having trouble locating good e-editions in French. Maybe I'll have to read the English translations, or a paper book version in French. I'll have a look at the library on Saturday to see if they have something. The Pléiade edition of Herodotus and Thucydides sounds interesting. This collection usually has plenty of notes, but I don't know if they will have timelines and maps.

Thanks for the review of Book One! Fascinating to go back to what was ancient history even for him.

>26 FlorenceArt: Please realize that this is just the first "book" of nine! 114 pages of densely packed text. The Landmark edition text runs 722 pages plus more than 100 pages of appendices. It is slow going — for me at least — because there is so much unfamiliar material. It weighs over three pounds and is rather unwieldy.

If you cannot find a French version with a time line, there are time lines on the internet. I just found one at Wikipedia:

Timeline of Ancient History

It contains more than Ancient Greece, but it puts everything in context, if you are really interested.

I do recommend Travels with Herodotus (Mes voyages avec Hérodote) to begin with.

>27 rebeccanyc: Just think of trying to construct a history of the Civil War with virtually no written materials to work from. Herodotus was dependent entirely upon oral traditions.

Landmark Herodotus: The Histories, Book Two:

Further notes on my progress: A footnote at the beginning of Book Two refers to an appendix entitled, "The Account of Egypt: Herodotus Right and Wrong." I immediately diverted my attention to said appendix and was extremely disappointed to learn so many ways in which Herodotus seems to have gotten his facts wrong in the account of Egypt. This is very sad, because it would have been nice to be reading a reliable 2500-year-old "you are there" account of what he experienced. Sadly, even some of his descriptions of then-existing monuments which he claims to have seen were not exactly accurate. The closer he got to his present the more reliable the reporting seems to be. He took a chronological approach eventually, recounting the reigns of a number of Pharaohs, but even here he confused names and events with rulers from dynasties past.

So, what to do? I am not happy to devote time to cluttering my brain with inaccuracies. It is hard enough to keep known facts straight. My decision was to continue, but I will be glad if there are fewer footnotes in future books notifying the reader that "Herodotus got this wrong."

Despite the inaccuracies, there are many fascinating things to be learned in Herodotus' account of Egypt. Since his is the first history book to come down to us, it is interesting to see what interested him and to compare his book to what we find in historical accounts today. Much of Book Two fits under the label of ethnography, wherein he discusses festivals and customs, and it is in this area that so much seems to be skewed. One wonders why this could happen, and of course there are many possible explanations. Interspersed among many amusing anecdotes about this Pharaoh or that king are descriptions of geography and many wondrous sites including temples and monuments, most of which only exist today in the dreams of archaeologists.

Interesting things I found worth noting in Herodotus' story of Egypt include:

• Egyptian embalming practices, already alluded to in >12 Poquette: above. That is what caught my attention in the first place way back when I was a teenager. I was pleased to learn that Herodotus got most of that description right!

• The Nile Delta had eight or nine mouths, compared to only three in modern times. Each had a name, for example, the Canobic Mouth to the west, the Bucolic Mouth and the Pelusian Mouth at the far eastern end. Foreign visitors were required to sail up the Canobic Mouth where a "trading post" at a city called Naucratis had been established by a variety of Greek cities, and the trading post there was financed and manned by Greeks. The delta contained many settlements, many of which had built temples to this god or that, and from Herodotus' description, some were monumental with pillars 20 or 30 feet high.

• Up the Nile — that is, toward the south — from Memphis, the large city closest to the delta, there was a monumental labyrinth which had been constructed near a manmade lake called Lake Moeris. This was perhaps 50-75 miles west of the Nile and slightly northwest of the City of Crocodiles. Both the labyrinth and the manmade lake sound like major wonders and archaeological remains have been found for the labyrinth. It was used for religious festivals and maybe for other reasons.

• Herodotus believed that the Greeks obtained many of their gods from the Egyptians, although this was apparently not true. But many correspondences between the Green pantheon and that of the Egyptians are acknowledged, for instance, Demeter and Dionysus were the equivalents of Isis and Osiris.

In Book Three I expect to learn about how Cyrus' son Cambyses conquered the Egyptians, again as prelude to his attempt to conquer mainland Greece in what have come to be known as the Persian Wars.

Bartleby & Co. by Enrique Vila-Matas, tr. by Jonathan Dunne (2000) Kindle Edition

If this were a musical composition, it would be a theme and variations. The theme is this: a published author stops writing and disappears from the literary scene. The variations have to do with the whys and wherefores of individual cases and mention is made of one or two who have the opposite problem: they write so prolifically they cannot stop and cannot finish.

The author announces in his opening paragraph what the reader has to look forward to:

I never had much luck with women. I have a pitiful hump, which I am resigned to. All my closest relatives are dead. I am a poor recluse working in a ghastly office. Apart from that, I am happy. Today most of all because, on this day 8 July 1999, I have begun this diary that is also going to be a book of footnotes commenting on an invisible text, which I hope will prove my reliability as a tracker of Bartlebys.

Who are these Bartlebys?

We all know the Bartlebys, they are beings inhabited by a profound denial of the world. They are named after the scrivener Bartleby, a clerk in a story by Herman Melville . . .

Why is it a work of fiction? Primarily because that is the way it is couched by the author. To be sure, it is unconventional, but that is the very nature of postmodernism. The point of departure is Melville's short story. Bartleby was merely a copyist, a scrivener in nineteenth century terms. He was not a writer per se. Enrique Vila-Matas has made a bit of a leap to conflate Bartleby's cessation of scrivening with published authors who have stopped writing. They are not really the same thing. But Vila-Matas has chosen to ignore this small discrepancy and has built his entire novella around a fictional Bartleby's syndrome.

Examples of Bartleby's syndrome in literature Vila-Matas calls alternatively "the literature of the No," which turns out to be a labyrinth with gradually enlarging dimensions and lacking a center, for he eventually realizes "there are as many writers as ways of abandoning literature." In his search for the writers of No, he

. . . sails very well among fragments, chance finds, the sudden recollection of books, lives, texts or simply individual sentences that gradually enlarge the dimensions of the labyrinth without a center.

This book is fun right from the beginning. The prospect of reading 86 footnotes to an "invisible text" produces an inner smile and prepares the reader to be amused. There are a couple of laugh-out-loud points where absurdity goes too far, in particular the reports of a fanciful correspondence with Derain, but mostly it reads like a fairly serious yet fascinating collection of critical essays.

Among the writers we meet are Arthur Rimbaud, J.D. Salinger, Herman Melville of course, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Franz Kafka, Thomas Pynchon and many, many others more or less connected to the literature of No, including recent acquaintances Felisberto Hernandez and Bruno Schulz.

Vila-Matas is as much a philosopher as a novelist and this book is full of quotable quotes and thought-provoking passages:

• The writer has nothing to expect from others. Believe me. He only writes for himself.

• . . . a text, if it wishes to be valid, must open up new paths and try to say what has not yet been said.

• We all of us wish to rescue, via memory, each fragment of life that suddenly comes back to us, however unworthy, however painful it may be. And the only way to do this is to set it down in writing.

Most of all we want to look up the works of many of the writers discussed. Taken altogether, I loved this book. It goes directly onto the stack of books to be reread.

>30 Poquette: Fascinating! Thank you for the review.

I needed a bit of a break from the unrelenting seriousness of Herodotus. This was the perfect antidote.

Japaul listed on her thread the books she had read over the years that have stayed with her most persistently. Several responded and I posted my list there, but I want to post it here as well. This list goes way back to my teenage years and includes one book that I read in the 1950s and then again in 2012 (Moby Dick). These are all books that I still think of in various contexts from time to time, and at the time I read them they boggled my mind for one reason or another, reflecting my level of maturity, or the lack thereof, at the time:

Night Train to Lisbon by Pascal Mercier (read 2014)
The Confidence-Man by Herman Melville (2012)
The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius (2010)
Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson (1995)
Son of the Morning by Joyce Carol Oates (1978)
Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen (1976)
The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell (1970)
In Quest of the Perfect Book by Willliam Dana Orcutt (1967)
My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell (1964)
Moby Dick by Herman Melville (1950s, again in 2012)

Excellent review of Bartleby and Co.. I love the story by Herman Melville of the man who would "prefer not to" and so I can see it as a jumping off point for Villa-Matas' book. I think I will enjoy this one.

>30 Poquette: You keep making me want to try postmodernist books against my better judgement!

>33 Poquette: Glad to see another fan of My Family and Other Animals!

Enjoyed all this on Herodotus and Bartleby (Vila-Matas). I may spend some time thinking about my own list like in >33 Poquette:. In one of many imaginary lives I would spend a lot of time with Herodotus.

>34 baswood: I truly hope you will enjoy Bartleby & Co.

>35 rebeccanyc: That goes both ways re My Family and Other Animals. That has always been one of my most treasured books and I wish everyone had read it just to share the pleasure of it.

>36 dchaikin: In one of many imaginary lives I would spend a lot of time with Herodotus.

In that imaginary life you would have to spend a lot of time with Herodotus! I am finding that I can only read 20 or 30 pages a day in order to absorb it — and then because it is so dense with detail and interesting stories, some of it simply gets lost in the shuffle. If this seems like a complaint, it is not. But I have bitten off more than was expected. I've decided to just to pace my reading and intersperse it with other reading. I think I started off wanting to plow through it as quickly as possible. For me, anyway, that was the wrong approach.

I look forward to your list of all-time faves!

Behistun Relief near Kermanshah, Iran

The Landmark Herodotus: The Histories, Book Three

Book Three concerns itself with the short brutish reign of Cambyses son of Cyrus and the accession and early reign of Darius.

Right away after the death of Cyrus, Cambyses went off to conquer Egypt. His cruelty was so great that the Egyptians believed him to be insane, or at least that is how he was portrayed to Herodotus. Commentators think that this was a face-saving ploy on the part of the Egyptians, but it is difficult to understand how a normal person could be as evil as Cambyses was.

At some point Cambyses arranged to have his own brother Smerdis killed because he had dreamed that Smerdis would seek to replace him. Also, an oracle had predicted it — or at least the oracle was interpreted that way. These oracles can be tricky!

Cambyses had left a Magus in Persia to manage his household during his absence in Egypt. The Magus had a brother who was also a Magus, and his name coincidentally was also Smerdis. Upon learning that the death of Cambyses' brother was being kept secret, he decided to usurp the throne and pretend that he was the royal Smerdis. Upon hearing about the revolt of the Magi, Cambyses intended to rush with his army back to the Persian capital to put down the revolt. But when mounting his horse, he stabbed himself accidentally with his sword, and died shortly thereafter from the wound which had become gangrenous. Before he died, he confessed to having had his brother Smerdis murdered and convinced the most eminent Persians that the "Smerdis" on the throne was a usurper.

A group of seven of these eminent Persians gathered together to determine what was to be done. One of the most charming and fascinating episodes in Book Three is a report of the discussion among these seven of what kind of government would be best: monarchy, oligarchy or democracy. This reads like it had been ripped straight out of the pages of Plato! Herodotus had this to say about the speeches concerning government:

Now there are some Hellenes who do not believe the following speeches took place at all, but they certainly did.

Darius was one of the seven and he argued on behalf of monarchy and managed to convince the majority that this was the best course since, among other reasons, the Persians were already accustomed to that form of rule. Then to select who among them would rule, they formulated what seems to a modern reader to be a ridiculous test: they would ride their horses out early in the morning and the first to neigh or whinny would determine the outcome. By a simple form of trickery, Darius assured that he would assume the throne. This whole episode is totally captivating. And so this is how Darius became King of Persia.

One of Darius' first acts was to organize the kingdom of Persia into twenty provinces which covered territory from Egypt and Libya to the South, all of Asia Minor and to the area around the Indus River to the east. All of these provinces are described by Herodotus. Under this organization, each province was required to pay a specified amount of "tribute."

There had been no fixed assessment of tribute in the reign of Cyrus, nor again in the reign of Cambyses; instead, these kings were paid in gifts. Because Darius imposed tribute and enforced other policies similar to this, the Persians say that Darius was a retailer, Cambyses a master of slaves, and Cyrus a father. Darius tended to conduct all his affairs like a shopkeeper, Cambyses was harsh and scornful, but Cyrus was gentle and saw to it that all good things would be theirs.

During the revolt of the Magi and the period of relative unrest when the seven were plotting the overthrow, the Babylonians made preparations to revolt against the Persians. Darius launched a siege against Babylon which lasted almost two years. The story of how Darius finally conquered the Babylonians is too long to recite here, but it makes for compelling reading. These events are corroborated by the Behistun inscriptions (pictured above).

The Behistun (or Bisotun) relief is located near Kermanshah in western Iran. It consists of monumental relief sculptures along with a long history inscribed in three different cuneiform script languages: Old Persian, Elamite and Babylonian. This was an essential tool used in ultimately deciphering cuneiform and is equivalent to the Rosetta Stone in its importance. Herodotus did not seem to know about it although it was created during the reign of Darius, who died approximately two years before Herodotus was born.

Onto book 4 now?

Absolutely! The going is getting a bit easier – hoping I've not spoken too soon!

I'm enjoying your book-by-book tour of Herodotus, especially since it may take me a long time to get to it!

Thanks, Rebecca! And thank you for giving me permission to slow down. After you said you had been reading The Sleepwalkers for a couple of months, I heaved a big sigh of relief! I am hereby giving myself permission to take my own sweet time! And perhaps I'll do some other reading in the meantime.

I just realized it is September 1st! I almost forgot about posting my wish list.

As an aside and before I do, a couple of weeks ago I went on line to my local public library's web site to see if I could check out some of the items on the August list. At the time there were only 8 or 10 titles on the list. And I am shocked . . . shocked . . . shocked out of my mind! The whole Las Vegas library system has none of them! (I didn't check Cortázar and Onetti.) NONE! Wow! It has been a while since I used a library for borrowing books. I usually go to the library to read magazines and journals which I don't subscribe to. The neighborhood branch has very little to offer in that regard, and I am disappointed there as well. I have said it before and I'll say it again. Las Vegas is not much of a reading town. It's not that they don't have books, but I seem to be several standard deviations away from what the librarians are aiming at in terms of book selection. I am really feeling quite let down. This would not be the case in San Francisco (where I lived for most of my life), which is about the same size populationwise. Sour grapes. Oh, well, it's back to Amazon.

August Wish List and Notable Books

The Planets by Dava Sobel (***dchaikin)

The Underdogs by Mariano Azuela (***StevenTX — inside the Mexican Revolution)

The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo by Tom Reiss (Recommended by local librarian — Pulitzer prize-winning bio about Alexandre Dumas' father) NOTE: The Library does have this one — in digital format to boot!

Stay, Illusion by Lucie Brock-Broido (***diana.n — interesting book of poetry! And the cover of the year, IMHO!)

Books by Juan Carlos Onetti (Uruguayan) and Julio Cortázar (Argentine) (***LolaWalser)

The Therapy of Desire by Martha Nussbaum (***diana.n — a philosophy of ancient literature — one of Diana's faves)

Antigones by George Steiner (***diana.n — lit crit/ancient lit/ comp lit)

Postmodernism: Or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism by Frederic Jameson (***diana.n)

A Place of Greater Safety by Hilary Mantel (***SassyLassy and ***Rebeccanyc — about the French Revolution) NOTE: The Library did have this but not an e-book version.

A Companion to Plato's Republic by Nicholas P. White (A passage-by-passage analysis of the complete Republic)

Doctor Copernicus by John Banville (***StevenTX — this and the next best read in order)

Kepler by John Banville (***StevenTX) NOTE: No Banville at all! Everything that follows was added to this list after I checked the library.

Platero and I by Juan Ramón Jiménez (***baswood — "a magical book")

The Explorers: A Story of Fearless Outcasts, Blundering Geniuses, and Impossible Success by Martin Dugard (***AuntMarge64 — this sounds really good)

Inventing the Enemy: Essays by Umberto Eco (***edwinbcn — I need to read this!)

The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 by Christopher Clark (***rebeccanyc)

Wow, what an awful library system that is! My county system has all but four of those books, our total population is 191,000 AND it's West Virginia! We do have great buyers (they must be since they almost always buy the things I request!).

Oh, I loved The Black Count too!

I just looked up The Black Count and I'm flabbergasted. I had no idea Alexandre Dumas had such an exotic ancestry. I think I may have to read that book...

It was so readable and fascinating that I was afraid it wasn't scholarly enough, but there were enough notes at the end to reassure me that it was impeccably researched.

I had a look at Amazon France to see if there were any French books on the General, but found only one that seemed of dubious objectivity. I'm really intrigued.

The Black Count was amazing. I got it as an ER. Not only lots of end notes, but he's constantly using items from French military records once Dumas joins the army. If there were much that were dubious about it, I think there'd have been a huge outcry by now (particularly in light of the general level of racism around).

>44 mabith: >45 rebeccanyc: >46 FlorenceArt: etc. — You guys have convinced me that The Black Count needs to be read sooner rather than later! Thanks for all your input.

>44 mabith: I am not sure what the problem is here. The Henderson library might be better. It is not too far away, but I no longer have borrowing privileges there. The Las Vegas area is full of VERY creative people, and this population is largely made up of people who work in the entertainment industry, which includes all the casinos, night clubs, restaurants, etc., and maybe it is as simple as people generally do what I have been doing — buying rather than borrowing. Still, it is a bit of a surprise now that I have bothered to look into it. Problem is, I need to cut down on buying because I am out of shelf space!

>50 Poquette: Have you talked to the librarians? And I do mean the librarians in charge of buying. Can you submit purchase recommendations? Are you involved in the Friends of the Library (if there is one)?

>51 lesmel: Actually, I just recently moved to Las Vegas proper and only got my library card a day or two before I did the infamous on line search. So I have not yet gone beyond that. The library seems to be focused on young people, hoping to get them into the library through videos and music and on line capabilities. You can download lots of music through the library. It also has access to many on line databases and so it is pretty good for research purposes. And those databases are accessible from home, so that is a definite plus.

I am hoping the above list is an anomaly. It seems that this CR crowd is very sophisticated in its tastes — after all, this is where I got those titles from! ;-)

>44 mabith: Maybe it's where the WV librarians go to school! I lived in a small town in Ontario for awhile where the head librarian was from West Virginia and the library always had great books which he purchased for it. I discovered Hilary Mantel there in 1992 when A Place of Greater Safety came out. Then there was Salvation on Sand Mountain: Snake Handling and Redemption in Southern Appalachia, which I then bought. The librarian had a weekly column in the local paper talking about what was new.
WV also had excellent bookstores when I visited there. I hope they still do; it's part of how I remember it.

My city (Charleston) hasn't been able to keep a used bookstore (incompetent owners who don't understand how to stock a wide variety of books), but my local new-books bookstore is still going strong, coming up on 20 years! I used to manage it with my sister. I'm so glad good bookstores and librarians are something you connect with WV!

By the way, I forgot to mention that the Las Vegas area was very hard hit by the recession, especially after the President came to town and told people not to come here for conventions. The convention business dried up for several years, and the economy is just now beginning to recover. The librarian told me they had experienced severe budget cuts, and I think they let the book budget slide so they could preserve all those expensive on line databases and other services including music downloads, etc., etc., that appeal especially to the younger generations. I don't want to completely trash the librarians when they were fighting obstacles that were not of their making. But that does not diminish my disappointment.

Hmm, unless they're able to make up the book buying with e-books though, that seems like a poor move. It seems like a better move to ditch the music downloads, but still buy the physical CDs and actually get the youth around the books. I'm not sure how my library system is coping, as they lost a huge amount of funding that used to come from our school board (it went to court as to whether the board could revoke the spending), and then the levy didn't pass last time. Maybe they fired their extra special children's librarians who decided alphabetical order wasn't important for picture books...

That bit about their purchasing priorities was speculation on my part based on what I observed when I was in the library to get my library card. They do have a lot of e-books but it's pretty run of the mill stuff. My fiction reading is unpredictable but you've seen what I've been reading. My tastes are fairly quirky and I cannot blame the library too much.

Probably your speculation is right. It still seems very odd to me that my library servicing far fewer people and half of them in more rural areas, did so much better with your list. My dad was a librarian for 30 years, and all librarians are certainly not good, sensible, book loving people, honestly, and can be very vulnerable to boards of directors who know nothing about running a successful library, so I wouldn't count out blaming them!

I have the sense they are catering to a lower common denominator here. Historically, much of the population has been blue collar. This is beginning to change with the influx of retirees but it is hard to say how sophisticated general reading tastes are. Barnes & Noble dominates the bookstore scene, and I have had more success there. But even in San Francisco with all its choices, I still had to resort to Amazon or ABEBooks from time to time.

LV is very different from where I came from, that's for sure. Despite this one tiny aspect, it is a very pleasant place to live.

Scythian Snake Goddess, woman's body, snake legs

Landmark Herodotus: The Histories, Book Four

The first part of Book Four concerns itself with the Persian expedition into Scythia by Darius.

Scythia consisted of territory north of today's Danube River, including at least Romania, Moldavia and Ukraine, and including the western part of Crimea. The Scythians in the dim dark past had purportedly invaded the territory occupied by the Medes in Asia Minor and put them under captivity for a couple of decades. Darius decided it was payback time, even though the Scythian offense had taken place several generations before the time of Darius, and he took it upon himself to invade their territory and exact tribute from them.

Darius gathered together an army of 700,000 and ordered that pontoon bridges be built across the Bosporus and then the Ister (i.e., the Danube) so that they could cross into Europe. The Scythians received advance warning that a massive army was marching in their direction, and since they were basically a nomadic people with no cities or permanent settlements to defend, they decided to lead the Persians around on a merry chase. They maintained a distance of a day's march between themselves and the advancing Persians as they headed northward.

The Scythians had destroyed foraging materials to make it more difficult for the Persian army to feed itself. Despite the difficulties, Darius followed the Scythians deeper and deeper into unknown territories for approximately two months, to the point that his vast army was in danger of being weakened.

Eventually a Scythian messenger was sent to Darius bearing gifts of a bird, a mouse, a frog and five arrows. The messenger was asked what these gifts meant. He did not know, but he believed the Persians would realize what they meant if they were wise.

Darius believed the gifts meant the Scythians were surrendering themselves to him. But Gobryas, one of his wise advisors — who incidentally was one of the original seven who deposed the Magi and elected Darius as the Persian king — saw a different significance:

Persians, unless you turn into birds and fly up into the sky, or mice and descend underground, or frogs and hop into the lakes, you will be shot by these arrows and never return home.

Darius realized that Gobryas was correct and eventually gave up the chase, recrossed the Ister River and the Bosporus and returned home.

After the Scythian campaign, Herodotus launches into a series of anecdotes about the Greek settlement of various of the Aegean islands, and the reasons for Greek colonies in Libya. This seems to be setting up more background behind the eventual Persian campaign into the Greek mainland.

On to Book Five . . .

So I've been charmed by the Scythian Suite innumerable times; you'd think I'd know where Scythia was. But I had thought it was in central Asia, in the Steppe.

I wonder whether I have this book.

Thanks for reporting on it.

Robert

That's a great story about the Scythians and Darius.

Enjoyed that.

>61 Mr.Durick: What a great movie score The Scythian Suite would make, Robert. I can see the great army assembling . . .

>62 baswood: Herodotus was a great storyteller, Barry, and this example was actually simple enough to condense for reporting purposes.

>63 dchaikin: I understand it gets even better!

I borrowed the first volume of Herodotus from the library, but may not need to read it thanks to your detailed reviews! I started reading the introduction and that sent me searching for more detail in Wikipedia, where I found a very useful map of the world according to Herodotus:

That's a pretty good depiction of Herodotus's world, Florence. Obviously, due to limited technical knowhow and fear of the unknown, exploration was carried out very incrementally. This was so long ago that they did not yet realize the world was a sphere.

I am enjoying your descriptions of Herodotus. I know that I will never get to them on my own.

Good to know you are enjoying Herodotus vicariously, Colleen. It has turned out to be quite an undertaking.

Although I had to translate parts of Herodotos for Greek classes back in highschool, I never found it half as interesting and exciting as your comments! You even made me add it to my wishlist. Thanks.

>69 Trifolia: Thank you so much! Be forwarned, it is a lot to take on, which is why it is taking me so long to plod through it.

Greek in high school! There is something to reckon with!

Greek in high school! There is something to reckon with!... Just part of the school-curriculum: Latin for 4 to 6 hours for 6 years every week and Greek for 4 hours for 5 years every week. But hey, you're the one who's reading Herodotos and I have yet to begin!

Funny enough, I have been teaching myself French over the past decade or so, and have also been in the throes of reviewing Latin which also goes back to my high school days. Greek was never a consideration! ;-)

Blue Latitudes: Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before by Tony Horwitz (2002) Kindle edition

Reading about the three voyages undertaken by Captain James Cook in the late 18th century leaves one with mixed emotions. On the one hand, as Horwitz points out, Cook "named more of the world than any navigator in history" and his "achievements contributed, in no small way, to London's becoming the headquarters of an empire that would ultimately span eleven thousand miles of the globe and rule over 400 million subjects." But on the other hand, in the wake of Cook, massive destruction of Polynesian cultures across the South Pacific was the far-reaching legacy. The western view was that Cook "discovered" storied places from Tahiti to Tonga, but from the Polynesian point of view, they had been there the whole time and the notion of discovery as applied to them is viewed with contempt.

This is the current state of affairs as explained by Tony Horwitz, who not only read about and thoroughly researched the subject of Cook's voyages, which were undertaken between 1768 and 1799, but made an attempt to visit many of the places that were significant in his travels. By interviewing local residents and dignitaries, Horwitz deepened his own understanding of how the Cook voyages could leave such widely divergent reactions. Cook remains a hero in Britain, but is reviled throughout Polynesia, and even 18th century Americans took a dim view of his legacy. Of course, this was at a time when America was trying to throw off the shackles of British rule and so their viewpoint was highly prejudiced. But then they turned around and added to the burdens suffered throughout the Pacific by the influx of well-meaning missionaries who did great damage to local culture in their efforts to introduce Christianity and stamp out any vestiges of indigenous religion.

So exploration and discovery have acquired a bad name, which is a shame because western civilization was greatly benefited by the people who had the courage to go into what was for them the unknown. There are no easy answers to the philosophical questions raised in this context. Unintended consequences are seldom anticipated and certainly it was not Cook's intention to inflict harm. He is blamed for much that he actually tried to prevent once it became apparent to him that the mingling of his crews with local populations was inflicting harm.

Be all this as it may, Horwitz has produced a tremendously interesting account, mingling the story of Cook, the man and leader, with his own present day investigations. From conversations with drugged-up hippies at one extreme to the King of Tonga at the other, and many colorful personalities in between, Horwitz manages to give us a feel for the situation on the ground throughout Polynesia, New Zealand, the east coast of Australia and the Aleutian Islands of Alaska — both now and at the time of Cook's visits.

The consensus of opinion is that Cook himself was a good man. His leadership was exemplary. His first two voyages were enough to put him in the record books. During his third voyage, however, something in him was deteriorating and his judgment seemed to suffer as time went by. By the time of their return to Hawaii from the Arctic, his irascibility caught up with him and he was murdered, by the very people who had initially treated him as a kind of god, with a dagger fashioned out of one of the iron spikes that Cook had brought along as gifts to the islanders for whom iron was highly prized. Not an auspicious finale to an otherwise illustrious career, but in the end, it is easy to see how people might feel about Cook on either side of the cultural divide.

So much more could be said about Blue Latitudes, and so much has been left out of this brief commentary. Readers will find much to enjoy and much to ponder in this fascinating book. Highly recommended.

Enjoyed your review and revisiting the irony in Cook's success. Regardless, it's hard not to admire him.

Excellent review of Blue Latitudes. That is one will go on my wish list.

You seem to be traveling vicariously a lot these days! Very interesting review though I don't think I will read the book.

# 72 - 73 - Teaching yourself French is impressive and reviewing Latin, well that's simply brave, to say the least! I envy people who remember and practice the Latin they learned in highschool. Last year I bought a Latin grammar-book but it's still on my shelves, untouched. Some day...
Do you have a reason for studying those languages?

Excellent and enticing review of Blue Latitudes, btw. You seem to jog yet another one of my school-memories: James Cook was the topic of my very first speech in English for English classes. I can still remember one sentence I learned by heart because I found it so difficult: "Navigation is the art of finding your way at sea by carefully observing the position of the sun and the stars". How about that! :-)
Anyway, you mention some interesting topics in your review, especially about how James Cook is looked at in different cultures.

>74 dchaikin: . . . it's hard not to admire him.

I agree. His accomplishments were tremendous. It's hard to reconcile the unintended consequences with such impressive personal qualities.

>75 baswood: Thanks, Barry. Hope you'll enjoy it. I forgot to mention the humor in Horwitz's personal experiences in searching for Cook which make for a bit of comic relief.

>76 FlorenceArt: My major traveling days seem to be behind me, and so I have come full circle: back to armchair travel which kindled my travel lust when I was eleven or twelve years old. Richard Halliburton started the whole thing.

It was unintentional, but Halliburton's Glorious Adventure which traces the journey of Odysseus, Travels with Herodotus for which The Histories form the framework, and Blue Latitudes which follow Cook's journals, all have two things in common: Travel following a literary source. This makes for a very rich reading experience. One could really get caught up in any one of these subjects.

>77 Trifolia: Do you have a reason for studying those languages?

My main reason for studying French and Latin is so that I can read fluently in both languages. So many books I have read in the past few years had Latin quotes, in some cases untranslated! I find it really frustrating not to be completely sure of what was said although I believe I got the gist after quite a bit of effort. Latin, of course, is a special case. I love its structure and its ability to express ideas so succinctly. And French has such beauty of expression. And now that I am getting older, they say that studying foreign languages is good brain food. That is always a benefit! ;-)

I take it English is not your first language. You express yourself like a native! I admire your ability to do that. Is Dutch your native language?

>78 Poquette: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Latin_phrases -- my favorite resource for latin phrases in most books I read.

>78 Poquette: Sigh! I keep telling myself I'm going to re-teach myself French (I could read literature in it when I graduated from high school, lo these many years ago). Maybe you will inspire me. And the book I'm reading now is full of Latin because it involves some priests and not being Catholic I never learned all that stuff.

>79 lesmel: Great list!

>79 lesmel: I have A Dictionary of Latin Phrases, but the Wiki lists have a lot more! Thanks much for that link. I am sure I will find it useful.

But the Latin quotes I was talking about were full paragraphs of narrative. Something quite beyond phrases. This is in part what got me back into reviving my high school Latin. The other thing was I got hold of a copy of Wheelock's Latin, which is a great self-teaching tool. I got about two-thirds of the way through when I had to drop everything and get ready to move. So now I am playing catch-up yet again!

>80 rebeccanyc: Languages are a whole other ball of wax! I am probably crazy to try to pursue these, but in a way they fulfill my craving for playing games. There is something intricate and wonderful about fitting wholly different languages into one's mental processes.

Blue Latitudes is going on my wishlist. Thanks for bringing it to my attention. I always grew up hearing that Cook was a good guy--my brothers even went to Captain Cook Elementary School (where as I went to some school named after a school board president, talk about zzzzzzzz). I think blaming Cook for the ills of colonialism is a little disingenuous. Or maybe simplistic. Maybe both. I always remember what my uni prof said when he taught me Colonialism in Latin America: "culture is not like a vase that you can place on a shelf." In other words, you can't freeze culture, or preserve it. Culture is always changing, everywhere. Anyway, sounds like my kind of book, so I'm glad you posted about it.

>82 Nickelini: The main takeaway for me — aside from Captain James Cook's really exemplary qualities — is how dramatic the impact of his three voyages was on the future of human history. I kept thinking about a book I read back in the late 1990s called The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell. This was a cautionary tale about an expedition to a nearby planet whose music had been heard by SETI scientists. There were unexpected and shocking repercussions resulting from first contact with alien species. Russell's fiction and innumerable Star Trek episodes are reminiscent of the true-to-life events that transpired as a result of European explorations and settlements in the New World. All kinds of lessons can be drawn, but there is a limit as you point out. Once we know the possibilities, we still cannot prevent the proverbial unintended consequences. Still, it is interesting to read about the tremendous adventures in the face of almost impossible odds.

Western Persian Empire and Aegean Sea

The Landmark Herodotus: The Histories, Book Five

We are getting closer to the main events that Herodotus promised to tell us about at the beginning, namely, the wars between Greece and Persia. So far, we have been edging slowly in that direction. After Darius' abortive drive into Scythia, he paused at Sardis, the capital of Lydia, before continuing east another 1,600 miles to Susa, his capital. Due to competition among his high level underlings, certain incidents were set in motion that led to what has come to be known as the Ionian Revolt. This is the main subject of Book Five.

There are so many amusing stories that Herodotus tells here. Certain patterns begin to emerge in these stories. Herodotus never passes judgment. He simply puts a story out there for you to draw your own conclusions.

All of these stories eventually can be seen as parts of the single whole story. The Histories are more than the story of a single ruler. They follow the development of the Persian Empire from the time of Croesus — the man who Herodotus says first committed injustice against the Greeks, through Cyrus and Darius and eventually Xerxes. The character of tyrants versus democratic leaders and the differences between tyrannies and democracies begin to emerge through the amusing stories Herodotus presents. For example, Herodotus says:

". . . while the Athenians were ruled by tyrants, they were no better at warfare than any of their neighbors, but once they had got rid of the tyrants they became vastly superior. This goes to show that while they were under an oppressive regime they fought below their best because they were working for a master, whereas as free men each individual wanted to achieve something for himself."

Herodotus is interested in causes, the sequence of events and the character that lies behind a man of action and great deeds.

It will be remembered that Aeolia, Ionia and Doris were long-standing Greek colonies — collections of city states — along the west coast of Asia Minor. The Ionian Revolt occurred because Histiaius, tyrant of Miletus (a city in Ionia), was called by Darius to be his advisor. This occurred because Megabates, one of Darius' commanders, thought Histiaius might become a threat to Darius. Histiaius had distinguished himself in Scythia by his advice to Darius regarding the bridge of boats over the Ister River (Danube), and Darius had rewarded him by giving him some territory in Thrace.

Aristagoras, Histiaius's son-in-law, was left in charge of Miletus. Soon after Histiaius departed, a group of wealthy exiles from the isle of Naxos, who had been allies of Histiaius, sought assistance from Aristagoras in regaining Naxos. Aristagoras received permission from Darius to assist the Naxians, and Darius appointed the same Megabates as commander of the fleet that would attempt to retake Naxos on behalf of the exiles. On the eve of departure, Aristagoras and Megabates quarreled, and out of spite, Megabates sent a messenger to warn those in charge of Naxos that the fleet was coming. As a result, the expedition failed.

In the wake of this failure, Aristagoras became nervous and based on a number of considerations and in consultation with other Ionian leaders, determined that the time had come to revolt against the oppression of Persia. Many others from Aeolia and Caria and Cyprus and elsewhere joined forces against Persia. Eventually, Aristagoras asked for help from the Spartans, who turned him down, and from the Athenians, who sent a fleet to aid the revolt.

The revolt failed, but Herodotus notes that the Greeks realize how easily the mainland could be overrun by the Persians, and this may eventually cause them to fight harder when the Persians finally did attack.

Darius was angry with the Athenians for participating in the Ionian Revolt. This became the direct pretext for his invasion of Greece, which will commence in Book Six . . .

#83 - I've heard so many good things about The Sparrow but it's never seemed like my type of book. Perhaps I should take another look at it.

I think you might enjoy The Sparrow, Joyce. It is science fiction for those who don't like science fiction!

#86 - Oh, that would be me!

# 84 - Yet again, an excellent review and summary. Herodotos is taking his time to get where he wants but it seems to be worth its while. I used to think those Greeks and Persians were just a bunch of fighting men, but there seems to be a lot more going on, both on the micro- and the macro-level.
Btw, I love the map you put on top of your review. It's simple, yet very clear.

# 78 - Yes, I'm a Flemish Belgian, so Dutch is my native language. English only comes third.

# 85-87 - Lisa (labfs39) is the expert and advocate on Mary Doria Russell's books. I'm sure she'll win you over. And I agree that The Sparrow is science fiction for those who don't like science fiction.

Another very interesting post about Herodotus. I'm getting an education here!

>88 Trifolia: Re #84, thank you again. Actually, I may have been misleading in my reportage. It is all about conflict and I sort of omitted the gory details. Actually, I forgot to mention that the fighting during the Ionian Revolt was terrible, many lives were lost in many theaters of war, and the main reason Darius was so angry was that the Ionians and their allies burned the capital city Sardis! True, this capital was secondary, but it had been the seat of Croesus, king of Lydia, and was second only to Susa, the main capital of Persia. Darius eventually took his anger out on the Athenians for supporting the revolt, and mainland Greece in general.

I tend to talk in generalities, and that's because there are so many specifics! It is hard to pick and choose, but this was a seriously negligent omission on my part.

Believe it or not, that map was the best one I could find for illustrative purposes. It shows the provinces but leaves out names of the many cities along the coast that made up Aeolia, Ionia, Doris, etc. These were all participants and part of the details that unfortunately don't fit into a brief summary.

Re #78, if English is your third language, I am doubly impressed!

Re #85-87, I am not the one who needs convincing regarding The Sparrow. That would be Nickelini. The Sparrow — which impressed me greatly at the time I read it and its sequel Children of God — almost made it onto my list of top ten books but was beaten handily by Red Mars.

>89 rebeccanyc: Thanks for hanging in there, Rebecca! Only four books to go . . .

# 90 - Well, I knew about all the fighting and the confict in Herodotos' work. What I didn't know was that H. also wrote so many other interesting things which you point out in your great reviews.
And I love the map exactly because it leaves out many details that otherwise blur the bigger picture. Sometimes simplicity is better than completeness.

Btw, re. The Sparrow... I'm a much bigger history-fan than a sci-fi-fan... to put it mildly.

I too am bigger on history than sci-fi, but there are some outstanding sci-fi books that I have really enjoyed. I read it selectively, however.

>81 Poquette: I learned college Latin with Wheelock, Pseudolus, and Zero Mostel. Sadly, I have no recall of 99.9% of my Latin.

>93 lesmel: One of the problems with Latin is that we don't speak it, especially when working at it alone. Without that secondary reinforcement it doesn't stick. I was working fairly steadily at it a couple of years ago, but once I stopped, it mostly went away. It's almost been like starting all over again! Not quite, for it comes back very quickly once you get into it, but it seems like twice the work I've put into French.

Just thought I'd pop by and say thanks again for visiting my thread. I'll be keeping an eye on what you think about the classics you read, and the French fiction, too. I'm trying to do a bit of light (and easy) reading in French but I'm too sporadic with it to be able to call it a success (though I do understand what I'm reading, so I guess that's a plus).

Thanks for visiting, Paws! I just scanned my reading so far this year, and there are fewer classics than I had thought. But there are more planned.

I just finished another nonclassic, but this is nonfiction about 17th and 18th century Venice mostly: Venice Incognito: Masks in the Serene Republic by James H. Johnson. This is something I acquired in connection with a former major interest which I have referred to as "pagan influences," although it encompassed much more. If I can work up the energy, a review will follow, perhaps tomorrow (i.e., later today after a good night's rest).

Tabàro and baùta

Venice Incognito: Masks in the Serene Republic by James H. Johnson (2011)

Giacomo Casanova (1725-1798) may be one of several cultural icons who gave Venetian carnival and masking a bad name. He claimed to hate deceit, but everyone knows that his life consisted of little else. Thanks to him and other chroniclers of the 18th and 19th centuries, wearing masks has been associated exclusively with secrecy, disguise, deception and an excuse for petty criminality. But in Venice Incognito, James H. Johnson attempts to set the record straight, and in the process presents a much broader understanding of how and why masking came to be much more than a device donned during the two months of carnival, and surprisingly became part of everyday attire for members of all levels of society, from doge to drifter. This is not to say there was no hanky-panky at all underneath the guise of the mask, but there was much else besides.

Generally speaking, masks have a long history. The first masks were associated with Dionysus. And Greek and Roman performers used masks in the belief that they amplified the voice. Early on, masks were linked with the devil and, by extension, with commonplace dishonesty, which in turn linked masking to disguise and deception.

Carnival — and with it the wearing of masks — traditionally began in Venice on December 26 and concluded at the beginning of Lent. During this two-month period, Piazza San Marco became a cross between a country fair, an elegant masked ball and, during the day, a bull hunt. "For visitors especially, carnival was a season outside of time when roles were suspended, taboos relaxed and life's practical concerns set aside."

The clamor of dozens of side shows dominated — acrobats, dancers, exotic animals, human deformities, impromptu performers, con men with petty scams, professional card sharks, prostitutes, pickpockets, beggars and fortunetellers were everywhere; vendors sold sweets and charlatans and mountebanks hawked elixirs and ointments. "In 1750 a lady led a lioness through the piazza, caressing it and periodically putting her hand into its mouth."

Maskers traveled in packs, sometimes with a common theme such as the seven deadly sins, or characters from commedia dell'arte. Women dressed as nymphs and shepherdesses, men as Scaramouches and Punchinellos, and both male and female cross-dressers were to be seen.

Venetians eventually began wearing masks six months out of the year, corresponding with the theater season, which began in October and ended with Lent. Venetian masking consisted of an entire covering, not merely a facial disguise. The tabàro and baùta eventually became the city's uniform. The baùta was a full-length cloak, often gray, and the tabàro was an elbow-length hooded cape that was worn on top, usually black. The hood was close fitting, and the three-quarter length mask allowed the wearer to eat or drink.

Such general masking was at first rejected by the aristocracy but was eventually embraced wholeheartedly to the extent that at state occasions masks were de rigueur. Nobles wore masks at receptions for foreign heads of state and ambassadors. The reasons for this were complex and evolved out of the rigidities of Venetian society.

However, in Venice at the peak of the Inquisition, masks were actually a defensive tool intended less for deception than for survival. In the 1600s when Venice adopted the mask as common attire, it did so under an accepted premise: "that masks were not always sinful or demonic, that their use extended beyond commedia and carnival and that they served purposes other than disguise." The notion of the mask as a defender of rank was and still is foreign to anyone outside Venice. But the principal purpose of masks for most Venetians was not disguise. They represented "ritualized reserve rather than concealment." And, as a character in a play by Carlo Goldoni remarked, "masks permit women to go everywhere honestly."

It was in fact during the theatrical boom in the mid 1600s that spectators took to wearing masks in public. Again, disguise was not the main purpose. It was to preserve "a measure of liberty by dispensing with ceremony." Masks also maintained the illusion of equality.

In a city as small as Venice (150,000 pop. in 1750) everyone knew everyone else, and recognition was based on more than facial features — i.e., stature, build, gait, voice, mannerisms and even clothes underneath the tabàro and baùta.

What was the point of wearing masks if others could figure out who you were? It allowed nobles to go to a casino or the theater or a café "anonymously" and off the record. Café society was developing at the time, and cafés permitted exchanges of opinion and conversation among people who would not otherwise have spoken to each other. Masks allowed for the preservation of distance and reserve.

Before everyday masking became widespread among the nobility, dress codes in Venice were as rigid as the social and political stratification they reflected. Gentlemen wore togas, and women were always veiled and wore black in public. Sumptuary laws prohibiting public flaunting of furs, jewelry and imported brocades played a small but contributing role in the prevalence of masks in an otherwise rigidly stratified society. The tabàro functioned as a cover-up allowing people to dress as they pleased. The Venetian mask became more of a convention than an embellishment.

Finally, Johnson tells us that after the fall of Venice under Napoleon in 1797, masking disappeared as completely as did the Republic. Napoleon's interpretation of masking in Venice was almost completely wrong and contributed much to the narrow impression that has come down to us in the present day — that roles were suspended, taboos relaxed, that masks engendered deceit and criminality or that they were symbols of almost anything dangerous, from tyranny to decadence or to licentiousness. Thus, the 17th and 18th century practices around masking were contradictory and meant different things to different levels of Venetian society, and particularly to tourists who had little understanding of anything beyond appearances and the lurid tales they had read or heard before arriving — some of which were true in their way, but by no means told the whole story.

Venice Incognito is a work of scholarship with over 500 endnotes and a huge bibliography of works written mostly in Italian. It presents perhaps more than the average person wants to know about masks, carnival and Venetian social, political and religious history, but it gives us a deeper understanding of Venice before Napoleon, and is a very interesting read.

That sounds really interesting, though probably more than I need, as you point out. I'm going to put it on my wishlist anyway. I was just at a special exhibit on masks this afternoon at the Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia, so masks are prominent on my mind right now. What we looked at was more like this:


Culture: Kwakwaka'wakw

>98 Nickelini: Now that is something really different. It is hard to picture how that would actually be worn. Perhaps like a beak?

Despite its scholarly bent, Venice Incognito is very readable and you will probably find it fascinating. It has a lot of period illustrations which help as well.

#99 - It is hard to picture how that would actually be worn

I'm not sure either. Some of the masks we saw rather confused us. Some looked far too heavy and unbalanced for a human neck to hold up, others looked like they were designed for two or three people. We wished there were pictures to illustrate.

I know some of the beaked ones are worn like this though:



I've added the Venice book to my wish list.

Thanks for the review of Venice Incognito. One of the highlights of wandering round Venice today is to look in at the many shops that sell masks. They are almost an art form and you really can't leave the city without buying one.

>97 Poquette: - had no idea masks were such a fundament and commonplace part if Venice society. Fascinating stuff.

>100 Nickelini: - cool picture.

>100 Nickelini: Very good picture, Joyce. That's sort of what I envisioned.

I've added the Venice book to my wish list. I'll look forward to your comments!

>101 baswood: I too was captivated by the modern Venetian masks when I was there, Barry.

>102 dchaikin: masks were such a fundament and commonplace part of Venice society. This was pre-Napoleon, Dan. After 1797, the societal part was gone forever.

Aegean Sea

The Landmark Herodotus: The Histories, Book Six

Book Five concluded with the flight of Aristagorus who, when he saw the destruction by the Persians of several Ionian cities, realized he was fighting a lost cause. So "he enlisted every man willing to accompany him" and sailed to Thrace where, in the process of waging war with a Thracian city, he was killed and his army perished.

Herodotus' account of the Ionian Revolt continues in the early part of Book Six. Due to poor leadership and after six years of brutal conflict, the Ionian Revolt crumbled, many cities between Miletus in the south and all the way up to and including the length of the Hellespont were laid waste, and the people enslaved and in some cases resettled.

Histiaios, who had left Aristagorus in charge of Miletus when he was called to be an advisor to Darius, eventually was killed by the Persians for his complicity in the Revolt.

Herodotus tells the story of how the Athenians grieved over the loss of Miletus. When Phrykonos, a writer of tragedies, wrote a play on the capture of Miletus and produced it on stage, the audience burst into tears. He was fined 1,000 drachmas for reminding them of their own woes, and it was ordered that no one should ever perform the play again.

Once things settled down, Darius' brother Artaphernes, who was governor of Sardis, summoned envoys from the Ionian cities and not only established amounts of tribute to be paid annually, but also forced them to settle any future differences among them by arbitration, this in order to stop petty pilfering and looting.

The following spring, Darius' general Mardonios was sailing with the fleet up the coast of Asia Minor, and when he reached Ionia, he did something that surprised Herodotus. Mardonios deposed all the tyrants of the Ionians and established democracies in their cities!

Mardonios was headed eventually for Athens and Eretria (on the west coast of Euboia), which were the Greek cities Darius most wanted to conquer. The Persian army was marching toward the Hellespont, while the fleet was hugging the coast and sailing northward as well. Mardonios' intent was to capture as many European cities along the way to Greece as possible. So when the fleet reached the Charsonese, which is known today as the Gallipoli Peninsula, they veered to the northwest and sailed past Samothrace toward the Island of Thasos, which was subjugated by the fleet and "whose inhabitants did not even lift a finger to oppose them." With the army the Persians added Macedon to their already existing "host of slaves."

From Thasos Mardonios crossed over to the mainland where the fleet, still hugging the coast, sailed until it reached Akanthos at the base of the Athos peninsula (the northeasternmost of three fingers extending into the Aegean). From Akanthos, they intended to round the headlands of Mount Athos , but they were caught in a northerly gale against which it proved impossible to make headway. As Herodotus tells us, the storm wrought havoc with the fleet, and approximately 300 ships were destroyed and 20,000 men were lost.

"And since the sea is full of savage creatures, some were snatched up and killed by them, while others were dashed against the sharp rocks; some men perished because they did not know how to swim, and still others died from the cold.

Needless to say, after this disaster at sea the entire expedition withdrew and returned to Asia. Mardonios was relieved of his command. Darius then had to drop everything and rebuild his fleet by requiring many of the seafaring cities under his control to build and contribute ships. He sent envoys to Athens and other Greek cities to find out whether they would be willing to capitulate without going to war. When the Aeginetans acceded to Darius' demands to avoid war, the Athenians were so angry that they launched an attack upon them. Herodotus does not report any direct response by Athens to the Persian envoys, but we can assume it was "No!"

Darius appointed new generals and this time, instead of circling the Aegean, they hop-scotched directly through the islands of Samos, Ikaros and picked off Naxos and Delos along the way to Eretria, which the Persians plundered and set fire to its sanctuaries in remembrance of Sardis.

After the conquest of Eretria, the Persians sailed across the strait for Attica, "fully expecting that they would do to the Athenians what they had done to the Eretrians." But things turned out rather differently.

The Persians anchored near the beach adjacent to the plain of Marathon, where the Athenians marched and prepared for battle. They had appealed to Sparta for help, but Sparta was unwilling to embark before the full moon.

In the event, the length of the Athenian front line equaled that of the Persians, but the Athenian strength was concentrated in the right and left flanks. The Athenians charged at a run, surprising the Persians who thought they were mad because this had never been done before. The fighting at Marathon went on for a long time. The Persians broke through the center, but were then surrounded by the flanks and chased to the sea where they lost several ships to the Athenians. The loss of men was famously lopsided: 6400 Persian dead versus 192 Athenian dead.

The Persians sailed around Cap Sounion at the southern reach of Attica and headed towards Athens, hoping to arrive there before the Athenians. They anchored at Phaleron, the harbor of Athens at the time, held their ships there for a while, and then suddenly departed and sailed back to Asia. So that was the anti-climactic end to the first skirmish between the mainland Greeks and the Persians.

This is a highly selective report of Book Six. Before Marathon, Herodotus gives a long digression about the background of internecine conflicts among prominent Greek states, most notably Athens and Sparta, and tells us a lot about several generations of Athenian and Spartan leadership up to the battle.

Book Six contains 140 "chapters," only ten percent of which are about the Battle of Marathon itself. So most of the book consists of background material and events leading up to it, and then a short section in the aftermath.

ETA—Increase the zoom on your screen view to enlarge the map, if you are interested.

Enjoyed your latest. That geography must have driven the Persians nuts.

Just catching up with both Venice Incognito and the latest Herodotus installment and found both fascinating. Thanks.

>105 dchaikin: They seemed to be fearful of the open sea yet their worst maritime disaster at Mt. Athos happened perhaps too close to the shore.

>106 rebeccanyc: Book Six may be my favorite so far. Glad you found it interesting. Herodotus gives so many fascinating vignettes it is difficult to choose which to share.

Piazza Tales by Herman Melville (1856) Kindle edition

Piazza Tales is a collection of six stories of varying length, which are the only collection of short pieces published during Melville's lifetime. These stories present a good cross-section of Melville's writing and the themes he addressed, particularly in his later work.

The title story "The Piazza" is a small masterpiece, which is about as direct a representation as one will find of Melville's unique combination of Romanticism, Stoicism and situational irony. To read this story and see these elements at work informs one's understanding of each of the stories that follow. The story opens with several pages of the "isn't nature sublime" type of writing which had been out of fashion for at least two generations before Melville's time. However, there is a point to this, because it sets the reader up for what eventually takes place.

The narrator's house is situated in a valley that is surrounded by mountains, but the house is lacking a porch or veranda — Melville's term is "piazza." As he says, "The house was wide — my fortune narrow; so that to build a panoramic piazza, one round and round, it could not be." He could only afford to build on one side.

After considering the vistas from each side, he settles upon the northern prospect, which provides a view of Greylock, a veritable "Charlemagne" among mountains. By and by, as he sits on his new porch gazing off into the distance, he gradually becomes aware of a construction high up the mountainside, which he finally decides must be a house rather than a barn because of the chance reflection in a glass window, which spoke of human habitation.

As he recovers from a long illness, the "golden mountain-window" puts him in mind of the fairy queen Titania in A Midsummer Night's Dream, which he had just been reading, and he fancies "the queen of fairies at her fairy window; at any rate, some glad mountain-girl." He decides it will do him good, "it will cure this weariness to look on her." So he prepares to "push away for fairy-land — for rainbow's end, in fairy-land."

After a long journey by horseback and by foot, he reaches the lone cottage, and there he finds — not a fairy queen or even a fairy princess, but a tired and lonely girl at her sewing who, come to find out, had been gazing longingly across the valley and wondering who lived in a house she had spotted.

The narrator neglects to tell her that it is his house, for he has seen the futility of idle dreams of idealized faraway places. He returns home a wiser man. "Enough. Launching my yawl \figuratively\ no more for fairy-land, I stick to the piazza. It is my box royal. . . . Yes, the scenery is magical — the illusion so complete."

"The Bell Tower," which concludes the book, also ties its philosophical lesson up in a neat little bow: "And so pride went before the fall." This story is also a haunting tale, not so much by the events related, but in the poetic language Melville employs:

"As all along where the pine tree falls, its dissolution leaves a mossy mount—last-flung shadow of the perished trunk; never lengthening, never lessening; unsubject to the fleet falsities of the sun; shade immutable, and true gauge which cometh by prostration — so westward from what seems the stump, one steadfast spear of lichened ruin veins the plain."

No speed-reading is possible here. The very language forces the reader to take it slow and drink in the deepest meaning.

The other stories include "Bartleby the Scrivener," a perennial favorite, "Benito Cereno," which draws on Melville's years at sea, "The Lightning-Rod Man," an amusing vignette, and "The Encantadas; or Enchanted Isles" — such an ironic title — which presents the Galapagos Islands in ten sketches. This latter has more in common with a long travel piece from The New Yorker than a short story. Melville's descriptions of the islands and various characters who dwelled there temporarily, seem more fact-based than imaginative. Two of the sketches have all the elements of good storytelling, but it is unclear whether the events portrayed actually occurred or were a seaman's tales. Regardless, "The Encantadas" is fascinating reading.

The whole collection, in fact, is very much worth reading, and "The Piazza" seems to set a tone which gives a kind of unity to these otherwise very individual stories.

Melville's short stories are exceptional I think. I have read Bartleby, Benito Cereno, the Encantadas and the Lightning-rod man and so I will catch up on the other two, which must be available in the public domain.

>109 baswood: Yes, it's available at Gutenberg and elsewhere, though as usual it might be difficult to find a decently proofread and formatted version.

I have to admit is still haven't managed (nor tried very hard) to read Moby Dick though...

I never could get through Moby-Dick, and I don't mean because it's so long, but because I couldn't get into it although I've tried several times, including bringing it as the ONLY book on a trip (now, how crazy was that???). So I'm intrigued that you share the inability to read it but liked the stories -- maybe I should try them.

>111 rebeccanyc: I haven't read the stories either, just looked for them on the web because Poquette's review was so good, that's all. :-)

>109 baswood: I think you will enjoy the other two stories, and probably for different reasons, as I did. I read Bartleby for the first time way back in school and then again as a reminder just before reading Bartleby & Co. But all the others were new to me and made for great reading.

>110 FlorenceArt: and >112 FlorenceArt: Thank you, Florence! Actually, I downloaded the copy on my Kindle from Gutenberg. The production seemed okay, although it is minimalist. It doesn't have a "hot" table of contents, for example. Otherwise, the text was fine.

Moby-Dick is a whole other kettle of fish! But by now I think everybody knows I loved it.

>111 rebeccanyc: I've tried several times, including bringing it as the ONLY book on a trip (now, how crazy was that???).

I admire your dedication, however! ;-)

The stories are almost microcosmic examples of Melville's approaches to writing. I actually think that if one reads them with some attention paid, it will actually lead to a better understanding of Moby Dick and some of his other books. Moby Dick is the most challenging, though, I have to admit.

The Synthetic Man by Theodore Sturgeon (1950)

Imagine that aliens have been coming to earth forever in the form of crystals ferried in by meteors. The crystals lie dormant in the soil until an impulse of some kind causes them to "clone" a nearby object, be it animal, vegetable or mineral. Sometimes they find themselves in close proximity to a like-"minded" crystal, and crystal nature being what it is, they procreate or invade a living creature and "enhance" it.

Such is the underlying idea behind The Synthetic Man, which was originally published under the title of The Dreaming Jewels. Having this bit of intelligence actually helps to shed light on these alien crystals. They don't think in the way humans do, but they seem to engage in a kind of dreaming that stimulates activity of one sort or another. The crystals and their creations have always been among us but no one has really noticed — until now!

When Horton, or Horty as he was called, was a tiny baby in an orphanage, a toy made its way into his crib, a jack-in-the-box with crystal eyes. The close proximity of these crystals caused baby Horton to be modified to the extent that he had extraordinary powers. For example, when he was eight years old, his menacing stepfather, who was about to lock him in a closet for— to the father at least — the criminally insane activity of eating ants, accidentally shut the hinge-side of the door on three fingers which were all but severed. Horty ran away and was rescued by a troop of little people who belonged to a traveling carnival, the owner of which happened to be a doctor who cut off the damaged tissue and bone, and over a period time the missing fingers regenerated.

When Horty grows up, the same doctor who patched him up and the wicked stepfather join forces to try to destroy him — one having realized his secret and the other having altogether different motives.

Theodore Sturgeon has a wonderful way of telling a preposterous story based on a slightly skewed set of scientific "principles" and making it seem in the end like a plausibly ordinary everyday train of occurrences. The science is more than a bit outdated, but the story's seemingly disparate parts are woven skillfully together so that The Synthetic Man is a fine example of storytelling. It is a page-turner which reminds us of why Sturgeon was among the stars of mid 20th century science fiction writing.

Suzanne, I think I've tried to read Moby Dick twice in my earlier adult life, and failed miserably. I know I'll never do it now, so I admire anyone who does.

As usual, enjoying your thread and the discussion it prompts.

Hi Colleen! Something just occurred to me regarding Moby-Dick. And I could be wrong, and some people may disagree with this, but I am going to throw it out there anyway. Moby Dick is a man's book, and I think that is why so many women cannot get into it. It doesn't contain the elements most of us are looking for in a work of fiction.

I don't know whether this has anything to do with it or not, but when I read it the first time at age 12 or 13, I was still in a tomboy stage and actually still fantasizing about "going to sea." It was very naïve of me to be sure, but consider my age at the time. What the heck did I know about the world, really?

I read it again a couple of years ago trying to put myself back into that childish mind to recapture what it was like reading it again so many decades later, and so there was a lot of nostalgia involved in that reread. But in addition to that, it is a great yarn.

Bottom line, not every book is going to appeal to everyone, for whatever reason. So don't feel bad that Moby Dick isn't really your cup of tea.

>116 Poquette: That could be it, Suzanne, but I do like Patrick O'Brian's Master and Commander series, so it isn't the entire reason. And, as you said, we all have very different tastes. I'm very happy reading the reviews of others, even when my views are different. It would be a boring world, if we were cookie cutter images of one another.

>116 Poquette: I think there might be some truth to that but book tastes vary so much, and it's not just connected to gender/sex. I am always more drawn to what people tend to classify as "men's books" (Hemingway et al.) and not the least bit interested in things that are labels "women's interest books" (chick lit, romance, family drama, very little crime, etc.)
I started reading Moby Dick last year but had to put it away because it was too much at a time when I couldn't handle heavy reading. I loved every part of it, though.

>116 Poquette: I'm not sure about the gender thing, because my sister loved it. But by and large we like different books. And I like other books about the sea, like the wonderful The Long Ships.

I certainly agree that "the gender thing" isn't the only thing. It may not be anything. Rebecca and Colleen's points about enjoying other male-oriented books about the sea kind of proves the point that there may be nothing to it.

Like Paws, I think I probably gravitate towards so-called men's books — certainly men writers — and don't care so much for so-called women's lit.

It is probably futile to try to explain it anyway. And as Colleen said, we're all different and that's what makes reading each other's threads and reviews so interesting.

Endymion, The Man in the Moon by John Lyly (1591)

First performed before Queen Elizabeth I in 1588, Endymion was a prototype of the comedies that Shakespeare would become famous for a decade later. The story is mythical but was undoubtedly allegorical, as the "cult of Elizabeth" was in high gear. Much has been written about that, but the allegorical associations may be entirely ignored if one chooses merely to enjoy the action at face value.

Endymion is bewitched by Cynthia, goddess of the Moon. But he is loved by Tellus, who becomes jealous and does what scorned women do in Elizabethan comedies: She resolves to punish him. She conspires with Dipsas, a sorceress, to have a spell put upon him so that he will neither live nor die but sleep eternally. The play revolves around finding a cure for Endymion's enduring sleep, but in the meantime there is high jinx among other lesser characters.

There is Sir Tophas and his servant Epiton, who remind one of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, but on a less elevated plane. Sir Tophas also puts one in mind of Shakespeare's Falstaff but he is more of a braggart, and he has a pretentious Latin proverb at the ready for every occasion.

There is Endymion's great friend Eumenides who goes off in search of a remedy at the behest of Cynthia. Eumenides loves Semele who cannot see him for dust.

So many years pass while Eumenides is away, that Cynthia and her court despair of Endymion's plight. At last, Eumenides returns with the cure, which prescribes that Cynthia has it in her power to waken Endymion. Cynthia in her wisdom attempts to resolve all disagreements in the wake of Endymion's ordeal.

The plot, such as it is, is pure fluff, but the writing is extraordinary, both in the comic byplay as well as in serious musings. For example, Endymion's apostrophe to Cynthia is almost inspiring. It begins this way:

"O fair Cynthia; oh unfortunate Endymion!
Why was not thy birth as high as thy thoughts, or
Her beauty less than heavenly? Or why are not
thine honors as rare as her beauty or thy fortunes
as great as thy deserts?"

Eumenides delivers a magnificent paean to friendship in which mere romantic love "only tickleth the head with hopes and wishes; friendship the image of eternity in which there is nothing movable, nothing mischievous."

People don't talk or write like this anymore, so it takes some getting used to, but for fans of Elizabethan comedy, the wonderful plays on words and extended metaphors are delightful to read.

September Wish List

Fewer books this month. Maybe this reflects my own renewed focus on my own interests. The following stood out, however, as having a particular fascination:

The Blazing World by Siri Hustvedt (***japaul22 — about an aging artist's relationship with the art world; see her review — a Booker nominee)

Three Brothers by Peter Ackroyd (***edwinbcn — about three mid 20th C. London brothers all born on May 6! — which happened to be my father's birthday.)

The Birth of Tragedy by Friedrich Nietzsche (***TonyH — "a page-turner of philosophy" — makes Nietzsche sound accessible)

Asklepios: Archetypal image of the physician's existence by C. Kerenyi ****TonyH (contains an argument for the place of the gods in ancient lives)

Oblomov by Ivan Goncharov (***TonyH — see his review)

Aretino's Dialogues or The Ragionamenti: The lives of Nuns; The Lives of married Women; The Lives of Courtesans by Pietro Aretino (***baswood — see his review)

The Prussian Officer and Other Stories by D.H. Lawrence (***baswood - again, see his review)

Science Fiction and early Elizabethan drama just where are your books taking you. Loved the revues of both The Synthetic man and Endymion, the man in the moon both of which are on my wish list.

There are no women in Moby-Dick

>123 baswood: just where are your books taking you?

Sturgeon's E Pluribus Unicorn was my intro to science fiction when I was a teenager and I have a few of his other books lying around here waiting to be read. Mostly I am trying to read some of these books that I've owned forever and want to get them off the TBR.

There are no women in Moby-Dick

That may be why I liked it! hahaha

The Synthetic Man sounds so interesting. I tried Moby Dick too, and didn't make it far at all. My son had to read it for his junior high (or lower level high school grade) and said it was filled with innuendos which the teacher ignored but the kids had a ball with. :)

The Synthetic Man is interesting. At this point it does require a suspension of disbelief but the story elements are very good.

Re Moby-Dick, one person's innuendos are another person's misunderstandings. I dare say the teacher ignored them because they weren't there. Most of Melville's innuendos were aimed at organized religion. If the kids picked up on those, they must have been extremely bright because most are easy to miss.

>126 Poquette: Agreed. I think those innuendoes probably had more to do with the age of the kids, than the book itself. Of course, how would I know? I couldn't get through the book! LOL!

I will try again at some point.

>127 avidmom: Try some of Melville's short stories. They give an opportunity to get accustomed to Melville's style. But let me hasten to affirm what others have said: he is not everyone's cup of tea.

>98 Nickelini: I love that museum and it has to have one of the most spectacular settings around! It sets off its collection beautifully.

>97 Poquette: Sounds fascinating. I always loved the idea of masks

>113 Poquette: Moby Dick is a whole other kettle of fish That's hilarious

>129 SassyLassy: Moby-Dick is a whole other kettle of fish

I wondered after I posted that whether anyone would notice. It was unconscious when I wrote it.

Pass at Thermopylae — the highway (upper right) approximates
the ancient coastline

The Landmark Herodotus: The Histories, Book Seven

After the Persians' ignominious defeat at Marathon, Darius began to organize another army against Greece, but Egypt picked this particular time to stage another revolt, which Darius was determined to quash. As he was preparing to send his armies into Egypt, Darius died. He was succeeded by his son Xerxes, who continued his father's program and put down the Egyptian revolt.

Xerxes' preparations continued for four years after the Egyptian expedition during which time he caused a canal to be dug across the isthmus of the Mt. Athos peninsula, so great was the anxiety of the Persians after the disaster that had befallen Mardonios and the fleet and which had delayed the first Persian invasion of Greece ten years before. (The site of this canal was only recently discovered by archaeologists.) The canal was wide enough for two triremes to row side by side.

Xerxes also ordered bridges to be built across the Hellespont thereby enabling his vast army to cross into Europe from Asia. Also, depots were established for advance storage of food and other supplies along the route.

Finally Xerxes and the army crossed the bridges and continued the long trek through Thrace, Macedonia, Thessaly and eventually to the head of the long peninsula of Magnesia. Here the fleet lay at anchor. A terrible storm, which lasted three days, destroyed a large portion of the Persian fleet, but they were undeterred.

The Greeks meanwhile had initially planned to set up their defensive line at the pass of Mt. Olympus, but when they received word of the number of troops and ships that were bearing down upon them, and because some of their northern allies had gone over to the Persians, they returned to their ships and sailed back to Greece. This expedition was led by Themistocles, the famous Athenian general who had gained prominence because he had advised the Athenians to use a windfall they had gotten from an exceedingly rich vein of silver to build a large fleet rather than distribute the proceeds among the citizens of Athens. Thus he was responsible for their advanced level of preparation to face the Persians.

Herodotus gives a detailed account of the size of fighting forces on both sides. He estimated the number of Persian fighting men to be 2,641,610. (Don't forget the 610!) But according to an appendix in The Landmark Herodotus entitled "The Size of Xerxes' Expeditionary Forces," this figure is surely wrong by at least a factor of ten.

"If Xerxes' army really was as large as Herodotus says, then the column of march would have been 2,000 miles long, with the head of the column reaching Thermopylae in Greece at the same time as the end of the column was marching out of Susa in Iran."

Scholars believe that Herodotus' error was caused by a misunderstanding or misinterpretation of Persian units: a chiliad equals 1,000 men while a myriad equals 10,000 men. Reducing the number accordingly, even a force of 200,000 was probably an overstatement simply because of the logistical nightmare such a multitude would create — not to mention all the extraneous personnel including servants, cooks, ships' crews, and hangers on including "women, eunuchs, beasts of burden and dogs." (Don't forget the dogs!) And to be sure, numbers on the order of hundreds of thousands probably were as difficult for Herodotus to comprehend as millions and billions are for us moderns. When he gets down to enumerating troops fighting in actual battles, his numbers make more sense.

Eventually the Greeks led by Sparta determined that the narrow pass of Thermopylae would give them the best chance of stopping the Persian army. This pass — a narrow plain, really — lay between supposedly impassable mountains and the sea (see photo).

The battle at Thermopylae (480 BC) has been made famous for younger generations through the film 300, which is a cartoonish recounting of the courageous stand taken by the Spartans under King Leonidas. The film is taken straight out of the pages of Herodotus and is a fair representation as far as it goes. The fighting at Thermopylae lasted three days until the Persian army received information about an inland pass on the other side of the coastal mountains through which they marched and attacked the Greek army from behind. The 300 were killed, including King Leonidas himself, and many more Persians. Eventually more Greeks were involved in the battle after the 300 were surrounded, but the initial 300 of the Spartan hoplite army did indeed hold off the Persian advance for three days.

Epitaphs that were later raised at Thermopylae are famous even today:

Three million foes were once fought right here
By four thousand men from the Peloponnese.

And for the Spartans (also known as Lacedaemonians):

Tell this, passerby, to the Lacedaemonians:
It is here that we lie, their commands we obey.

Fabulous stuff

Ditto what Barry said! And enjoyed your review of Endymion, The Man in the Moon too.

Thanks much, Barry and Rebecca! The ordeal is almost over . . .

Triremes

The Landmark Herodotus: The Histories, Book Eight

The sea battles at Artemesion and Salamis are the focal points of Book Eight.

Artemesion is located on the northeastern shore of the island of Euboea almost directly east of Thermopylae. After the storms that had decimated the Persian fleet, they sailed south and anchored around Amphetai, which is at the bottom of the peninsula of Magnesia and across the strait north of Artemesion. The battle was fought during the same three days as Thermopylae, and when the Greeks learned of the outcome, even though the fleet was not losing, they sailed back to Salamis thinking to conserve their resources and await the inevitable onslaught of the Persian land forces.''

Xerxes' army then mowed its way through Attica, and it sacked and burned everything in sight, including Athens. Most Athenians had already evacuated with all of their belongings to Troizen, across the gulf in the Peloponnese.

Eventually, after much argument and disagreement among the Greek commanders about whether to remain at Salamis or move the fleet over to the Isthmus of Corinth, the Greek ships were surrounded by the Persian fleet.

While the Greeks were frightened by the Persian fleet which had bottled them in between the island of Salamis and the Greek mainland, their commander Themistocles had anticipated this, and saw it as an advantage. He was correct in the end because the Greek ships were more maneuverable in tight quarters than their Persian adversaries, and after ramming a few of the Persian ships, the ones behind got in each others' way, and many were wrecked because they could not avoid crashing into each other. A large part of the Persian fleet was destroyed, and those that were left sailed away.

When Xerxes realized the extent of his losses at sea, he lost his nerve and began to make preparations to return to Asia without consulting his commanders.

Mardonios — the one who had lost the fleet many years before at Mt. Athos — had risen again to be among the supreme commanders of Xerxes' army and had actually been the one who had persuaded Xerxes to march on Greece. He now sensed that Xerxes wanted to flee, and he cunningly argued that Xerxes should return to Asia, leaving him with a select force to finish off the Greeks. This was music to Xerxes' ears, but he decided to consult with his other commanders.

One of these commanders was Artemisia, queen of Halicarnassus, Herodotus' home town. After her husband died she became tyrant, and then, though her son was of military age, "she went to war roused by her own determination and courage." Herodotus says that "the five ships she contributed to the Persian fleet were the most highly esteemed after those of the Sidonians \i.e., Phoenicians\, and of all the counsel offered to the king, hers was the best." During the battle of Salamis she actually rammed a friendly ship in the process of attempting to escape from an Attic ship that was pursuing her. Xerxes and her colleagues thought she had rammed an enemy ship, which elicited great praise from Xerxes, and the Greeks thought she had rammed a Persian ship and that she must be deserting, so they stopped pursuing her, thus allowing her to escape.

Now Xerxes summoned her for consultation regarding Mardonios' advice because her own advice earlier had been correct. She agreed with Mardonios' plan because he could then have either the praise or blame for whatever the eventual outcome was.

Xerxes then sent Artemisia to take his sons to Ephesus along with their guardian, a eunuch named Hermotimos, who had become the most highly honored of all the eunuchs in Xerxes' court. Herodotus interrupts the main story to give us the background of how Hermotimos became a eunuch. As a boy "endowed with great beauty," he had been captured and sold into slavery to one Panionios of Chios, who made his living by purchasing and castrating these attractive young slaves and reselling them for large sums of money, for among non Greek peoples eunuchs were highly valued for their trustworthiness. Hermotimos' luck was not all bad, however, because he ended up at the court of Xerxes.

And Hermotimos got the last laugh. He maneuvered a meeting with Panionios' entire family at which he forced Panionios to castrate his four sons, and then his sons were forced to castrate him. If this seems barbaric, consider the times of which we are speaking.

Meanwhile back to Xerxes. He commanded Mardonios to assemble an army as he had suggested. A few days later Xerxes and the remaining troops began the long march north towards the Hellespont. After ferrying the king across to Asia, the Persian fleet spent the winter at Samos and Mardonios wintered in Thessaly. He sent a messenger to Athens to persuade them to capitulate to the Persian side. Sparta got wind of this offer and rushed to persuade the Athenians to stay with the Greeks.

Book Eight ends with an impassioned speech by the Athenians to assuage Spartan fears:

"As long as even one Athenian still survives, we shall make no agreement with Xerxes."

The Landmark Herodotus: The Histories, Book Nine

Book Nine is the last part of The Histories. Here we read of the final expulsion of the Persians from the Greek mainland as a result of the battle of Plataea.

The Persian commander Mardonios

"was pervaded by a fierce desire to capture Athens again, both out of foolish pride and because he fancied the idea of notifying the King in Sardis by means of signal beacons located throughout the islands that he had Athens in his grasp."

After wintering for ten months in Thessaly, he marched with his army to Attica and was presented with a hollow victory because the place was deserted, the Greeks having evacuated to the island of Salamis. Mardonios tried again to convince both the Athenians and the Spartans to capitulate and thus avoid further bloodshed, but they remained determined to defend Greece and its freedom against the invaders.

After some delay the Spartans, having finished building and fortifying the wall at the Isthmus of Corinth, sent a large army out of the Peloponnese to confront the Persians. Mardonios then dismantled the walls, buildings and sanctuaries still standing in Athens and set fire to the city after which he hastened to move the Persian army back north of Mt. Cithaeron, which is part of an east-west mountainous ridgeline northwest of Athens and east of the Gulf of Corinth. Herodotus explains that the terrain here — a wide plain — was better suited to the Persian cavalry than the area around Athens. This plain is where the final battle between the Greeks and Persians was fought on the mainland.

Herodotus' description of the battle of Plataea is very interesting because of the amount of detail he gives. In true Homeric fashion he describes the order of battle for both sides, listing the various armies provided by many localities including the numbers of troops. He also describes the bickering for position among the Greeks and the hesitation on both sides to attack.

The two armies sat facing each other for more than ten days because oracles on both sides were positive if the army did not attack. Thus neither side wanted to make the first move.

But Mardonios got impatient and did in fact attack with the cavalry, and there were great losses among the Greeks. Eventually, however, the tide turned and the battle of Plataea was a complete rout in which Mardonios was killed. After that a large number of Persian troops headed for the Hellespont, basically deserting.

By coincidence the Athenian fleet, which had sailed across the Aegean to Samos after the battle of Salamis, was approached by the Ionian Greeks to rescue them again from Persian control. When the remnants of the Persian fleet heard that the Greeks were coming, they beached their ships determined not to fight. This took place in Ionia on the Asian mainland directly across from the island of Samos and is remembered as the battle of Mycale. Again, the Greeks prevailed, and what was left of the Persian armies retreated. Thus, the second Ionian revolt, as Herodotus called it, was a success.

Finally, Herodotus reminds the reader of Cyrus, the Persian king who had started the train of events in which, in attempting to rule the whole world, three generations later the Persians ended up in worse shape than they had begun.

And so end The Histories of Herodotus, in which he tried to preserve for posterity a record of "the great deeds of both the Greeks and the Persians and the causes that led them to make war on each other."

The Landmark Herodotus: The Histories, ed. By Robert B. Strassler (2007)

To read Herodotus or not to read him: That is the question. The answer for most people will be a resounding no! And I am certainly not going to sit here and say that everybody should. In the immortal words of Hilary Clinton, "What difference does it make?" Frankly, after the passage of 2500 years, who even cares? Admittedly, not many.

However, I am one of the happy few who decided to take the plunge. I ended up making a project out of it. My curiosity about The Histories was stirred when, as a young teenager, I happened to open a copy of The Histories to a description of Egyptian embalming methods! This was a wholly new concept and I was ghoulish enough to want to keep reading. But I soon gave up because there were too many strange names and places and I had no background to really understand the whole of Herodotus' massive work which was primarily concerned with the history of the conflict between the Greeks and Persians during the 5th century BC.

Herodotus was the first historian. No one before him had attempted a prose account of important events, and certainly not anything close to the scale of The Histories. In the course of reading I learned many reasons why a nonspecialist might want to undertake the project of plowing through the nine books of The Histories, some from Herodotus himself and some from various commentators'. It was those commentators that made all the difference. More about them later.

First of all, it is interesting to see an ancient mind at work, attempting to assemble enough facts and stories and geographical descriptions — all based on oral tradition and first, second and even third-hand accounts —to paint a complete picture of the whys and wherefores of the wars between Persia and Greece. This indeed is the focus of The Histories, even though it is easy to get lost in the minutiae and forget that this is Herodotus' purpose. After all, what could Egyptian embalming practices have to do with the Persian wars?

We see the seeds of the great man theory of history being sown by Herodotus, the theory that dominated historical discourse right down to the beginnings of the 20th century. Herodotus always tells us that individuals are the causes of events. We see how much Herodotus' approach to rhetoric and style and the structural considerations of The Histories influenced later writers of not only history, but travel writing, ethnographical studies, philosophy and even fiction. Indeed, some detractors — not the least of which was Plutarch — have called The Histories a tissue of lies.

To get a proper perspective, think of someone in the year 2000 attempting to write a history of World War II — sixty years previous — based on nothing but interviews and personal observations and no documentary evidence! Herodotus was a boy at the time of the final battles between the Greeks and Persians, and his later reportage was more dependable than when he was reporting about three, four and five generations before his time. Yes, the work is filled with inaccuracies, as what oral history wouldn't be, yet even if it were entirely a work of fiction it would still be worth reading because a certain amount of "truth" is to be gleaned from even the most prosaic novel. And there is a lot of truth in The Histories.

As mentioned above, I chose to make a project out of reading Herodotus. First of all, the edition one chooses is very important. Preferably, pick one with at least a good introduction and copious notes. The edition I chose was The Landmark Herodotus, which constitutes the equivalent of a college course. Not only does it have an introduction, but possibly — as the Austrian Emperor declared in Amadeus — it contains too many notes! It assumes that the reader has opened the book at random to any page and if a location is mentioned as recently as the previous page, a footnote cites a relevant map.

The Landmark Herodotus contains 125 pages of maps. One can be found at the turn of every two to three leaves on average. And each map contains only what you need to see for the related discussion. There is a set of reference maps at the end, complete with gazetteer, which contain nearly everything.

In addition to the introduction, notes and maps, The Landmark edition provides twenty-plus appendices which flesh out subjects too complex for footnotes. These appendices are short essays on subjects like Herodotus' geography; Athenian and Spartan government; the truth or fiction of Herodotus' account of Egypt; hoplite warfare and trireme warfare; converting Greek measurements into modern feet, miles, etc.; and many more. These appendices are written by scholars other than the general editor Robert B. Strassler. A chapter by chapter time line precedes the text.

Taken altogether, The Landmark Herodotus is a treasure house. But like I said, I made a project out of this. Before I was finished, I had listened to a Teaching Company course (24 half-hour lectures) on Herodotus, and I had consulted the Oxford World Classics edition of Herodotus, which contains a wholly different approach than that contained in the Landmark edition both in the introduction and the notes. Both editions are extremely interesting, helpful and all-consuming.

This project took up about two months of my life. I did read other books along the way as a respite from all this, and taken altogether, it was a very rewarding journey, one that I am almost certain to enjoy even more in retrospect. For many reasons, I have to give this whole effort five stars.

I hope that I have given enough fair warning. But for readers who enjoy this sort of thing, you are in for a memorable experience.

Thank you for your very comprehensive notes and comments! I returned Herodotus to my library without making much of an effort at reading it. I will keep an eye out to see if a good electronic edition with quality notes ever appears, and maybe I'll buy it then and attempt to read it.

Outstanding review of Herodotus. I read the Oxford edition earlier this year. I'm not sure I would have wanted or needed all the notes in the Landmark edition, but I would love to have had those 125 pages of maps.

Excellent wrap up! Your journey through Herodotus has been educational, and very interesting.

Fabulous journey through The Landmark Herodotus

Thanks to all of you — Florence, Steve, Colleen and Barry — for sticking with me throughout. I am so glad I did my book-by-book commentary because of the record of this journey that I now have.

I've just caught up with your Herodotus reviews, wonderful, reminded me of my A levels. I have a large volume of Herodotus, not as wonderful as your Landmark though, but I've never dared really try it. I should. Feines quoting him in the film of The English Patient was so tempting, it's that colourful detail of way of life I'm most interested in I think, their ways of seeing the world.

What next? Thucydides?

Thanks, Tony, for stopping by. Herodotus plays an even bigger role in the book The English Patient, which is full of literary allusions. I really enjoyed it — even more than the movie, if possible! If you ever do get around to reading Herodotus, you will be amazed at how dependent the ancients were on consulting oracles before they did anything!

Thucydides is definitely in the offing. I also have the Landmark edition of that, so I'll be tackling it soon, but I need a bit of a respite first.

I've enjoyed all your book by book reviews of Herodotus, but your thoughts on why one might want to undertake reading The Landmark Herodotus were compelling. I know I would love to read this edition, especially when you said there were maps every few pages and they just showed what you needed to know for the discussion! But sadly, I can't envision when I'll have enough time to devote to it. Maybe I could make it a project for next summer, but I think it will have to wait until sometime when I'm just less busy. Thanks to your wonderful reviews, I've had an appetizer that makes me want to continue "eating"!

Thanks so much, Rebecca! I appreciate your hanging in there with me throughout. There are so many great books out there, and indeed we have to perform some kind of triage in selecting what to read. This becomes much more pronounced the older one gets. Alas!

I really enjoyed your reviews on Herodotus. Thanks for sharing them with us. I'd love to read the books one day, H. being one of the first historians or at least one of the first who survived the centuries.

I have been reading Stendhal's The Red and the Black over the past few days. It is long — much longer than it appears. This edition is a download from Project Gutenberg and is without introduction or notes, other than those few cryptic notes provided by the author himself.

What shocks me is this. I read this book as a teenager more than fifty years ago, and there are only two things I really remember about it. One is that I was absolutely smitten with the name of the protagonist Julien Sorel. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever heard. The other was one of Stendhal's themes, namely hypocrisy. Otherwise, I recall nothing of the plot nor the fate of the beautifully named Julien Sorel.

I would be asking myself why read anything as a teenager if one forgets everything in one's dotage? But it is not merely my dotage that I am blaming because I have not given this book one moment's thought over the intervening years. The fate of Julien Sorel must have been either too disturbing or there must not have been enough of the book that I related to or even understood in order for me to linger over the memory of it, and thus I put it out of my mind. I know that dementia is not the problem here. I read The Count of Monte Cristo during the same era and my memory of that is vivid. So there was something about this particular book that did not stick.

Now, I have a confession to make. There are many questions that have been raised as I have been reading along — so many in fact that I went on line in search of answers. I availed myself of the rich online resources provided by my local library and found an absolute treasure chest of learned articles about Stendhal in general and The Red and the Black in particular. I read one which I am sorry to say revealed the ending. I wish I could have had the patience to wait so that I could have experienced the denouement of the novel myself.

My questions had nothing at all to do with the end. They were more concerned with the social and political setting. Stendhal assumes the reader is familiar with the politics of the day. He wrote the novel in 1830 and the action takes place in the few years leading up to and including 1830, a pivotal year in early 19th century France. It is helpful to review at least a time line of that period from the Revolution, through the years of Napoleon, the Restoration, etc.

What were my questions? Well, for instance: Who were the Ultras and the Liberals? How did Bonapartism square with Liberalism? I learned that the Ultras were the Ultra royalists; Liberals were republicans.

And about hypocrisy, which Stendhal makes such a strong theme of his book. When we think of hypocrites, we usually think of people who are devout on Sunday but whose behavior the rest of the week puts their devoutness into question. Stendhal's theme is much broader than that. Hypocrisy is a matter of survival. It is a defense mechanism. One could not survive in the world if one's life were an open book. Prejudices — might I say political correctness? — were too ingrained. Julien's great hero was Napoleon, but it would have been worth his life to reveal this to the villagers he was surrounded by. But Stendhal tells us that "Hypocrisy, to be effective, must be concealed." But the strain it caused was great. At one point Julien says: "What an immense difficulty . . . is this incessant hypocrisy! It would put the labours of Hercules to shame."

What was "the Emigration"? I never got a direct answer, but reading between the lines I suspect this was related to the massive exodus of people from the countryside to the cities in search of employment because of the Industrial Revolution. This "Emigration" was so pronounced and perhaps confined to a short enough space of time that in Stendhal at least it is capitalized and spoken of as though it were an important episode that changed everything — sort of like 9/11 has become today in the US. It must have been more dramatic than I would have thought having only a cursory knowledge of French history. In The Red and the Black it is portrayed by both the upper crust of Julien's home village and the Parisian aristocracy as some sort of line of demarcation. It was often spoken of in terms of "before the Emigration" or "since the Emigration." In the absence of more information this is intriguing.

Another question arose around the issue of Jansenists versus Jesuits. This of course concerns factions of Catholicism of which I am totally ignorant. Here is a pregnant quote: "Being choleric and a Jansenist, and regarding Christian charity as a duty, his life in society was a perpetual conflict." Something to look into in future: choleric? a Jansenist? implications of the combination?

Also, secret societies apparently played a big role in the political intrigues leading up to the events of 1830. Something called "the Congregation" is mentioned often enough to raise questions.

These are all indications of the depth of Stendhal's novel. In Calvino's The Uses of Literature, he goes on and on about Stendhal's The Charterhouse of Parma, and he convinced me that I needed to read it. But something about me likes to do things in an orderly fashion, so I determined to "reread" The Red and the Black just to refresh my memory. In this instance, I am so glad I did. If Charterhouse is anything close to as good as The Red and the Black, I have something to look forward to!

So . . . a review will follow in a couple of days, once I finish the book. I am about two-thirds of the way through. Meanwhile, if any of you have contributions to make towards my enlightenment on any of the above questions, please, do tell!

>147 Trifolia: We seem to have cross-posted! Thanks so much for following along with me throughout my "travels with Herodotus". I turned it into a bigger deal than it needs to be, but it was a very enjoyable reading experience.

I read Le Rouge et le Noir last year and I'm looking forward to your review. You are so thorough in your reading and so adamant in trying to understand each and every thing. I admire and enjoy that!
Jansenism is quite difficult to explain because it encompasses so much, but in (very, very, very) short, you might say that the jansenists believed you could not change fate because God has made his plans while the jesuits (their biggest enemies) thought as a catholic you had a personal responsibility. Jansenists were generally pessimists. They believed themselves to be instruments of God. Charity was not one of their main concerns, since it was not in sync with God's plans. They also clashed with mainstream catholicism, among other things because of their negative opinion of priesthood as being a superior class in society, while they didn't believe in this sort of hierarchy.
It's more complex than that (there's also a political aspect), but this is the main issue, which I hope is enough to make you understand Stendhal a bit better.

Your post about The Red and the Black is fascinating. I'll have more to add later, but for now just an explanation. The "Emigration" was when the French hereditary nobility fled the country during the early 1790s to avoid being guillotined by revolutionaries. After the fall of Napoleon in 1815 with the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy the surviving emigres returned to France with their estates and privileges restored.

No insight to add, but I did love your comments about The Red and Black and what elements of it you remembered. I read The Brothers Karamazov as a fourteen-year-old, which had me remember it as a "which brother is cuter?" type of story which, upon rereading as an adult, it actually isn't.

Having read The Charterhouse of Parma earlier this year and loved it, I am eager to read The Red and the Black, which I couldn't get through as a teenager. I look forward to your review. Fortunately, my edition has pages of notes.

>150 Trifolia: Your explanation of Jansenists gave me just what I needed to position them in the scheme of things. I appreciate your clarity. Thanks!

>151 StevenTX: Wow! Did I ever get "the Emigration" wrong! I appreciate your setting me straight. I had not realized there were that many aristocrats who escaped the guillotine! All those references to "the Emigration" now make perfect sense. Thanks so much!

>152 RidgewayGirl: Ah, to be fourteen again when we still had an excuse to be shallow! Love your story!

>153 rebeccanyc: I can relate to your teenage experience with The Red and the Black. It is not a book for teenagers — or even ignorant adults, as I am finding out! :-\

>152 RidgewayGirl:, 153 Just to add to the "shallow teenager" stories, when I read Anna Karenina as a teenager I felt sorry for Anna (as opposed to thinking of her as spoiled and selfish when I reread AK in my 40s) and I skipped the war parts in War & Peace, which I ended up liking almost better than the peace parts again when I reread it in my 40s.

The Red and the Black by Stendhal (1830) Kindle edition

A well-known music critic once called Puccini's opera Tosca a "shabby little shocker," and that epithet also applies to The Red and the Black (Le Rouge et le Noir). It is surely shocking in its denouement, but it is also a Bildungsroman with picaresque, farcical and melodramatic overtones. It is also in its way a psychological study, something new for 1830. And the title itself signals that it is a novel of contrasts.

The novel reflects Romanticism at its heart, but it is firmly — and at the time daringly —grounded in the Realism of the years leading up to the Revolution of 1830 in France. Life there since the 1789 Revolution had been unstable economically, socially and politically and fraught with concerns, especially among the nobility, that the tables could once more turn against them at any moment. Anxiety among the aristocracy is reflected in their constant reference in this novel to "the Emigration," which refers to the mass exodus of the upper class from France beginning in 1789, but is also by extension an oblique reference to the horrors of ten thousand of their kind having been guillotined in 1793.

Self-censorship was the order of the day even in the salon as political correctness had almost stifled discourse. Consequently, a new level of boredom had set in among the nobility and the table was laid for exactly the kinds of events that unfold in The Red and the Black. Understanding the historical milieu in which the novel takes place is essential to fully appreciating the plot elements and the behavior of some if not all of its characters. So much more needs to be said about this, but I will leave it here and say that the reader must discover for him or herself how much the novel reveals about these rather tumultuous years.

The protagonist of the novel is Julien Sorel a very young man of the lower classes whose mother is dead and whose brutish father and older brothers have consistently abused him. The father is clever enough to have sent him for tutoring, but then he resents his son's interest in books in the face of his own illiteracy.

Somewhere in his tutoring Julian discovers his own eidetic memory and perhaps the kindly abbé Chélan encouraged his memorizing the entire New Testament — in Latin! His Latin skills lead to employment as a live-in tutor in the household of the town mayor Monsieur de Rênal. He is more than a servant in that he is allowed to take meals with the family.

Julien is a blank slate when he leaves home for the mayor's house, so blank that while he knows the text of the New Testament by rote, much of the meaning seems to have escaped him.

The town is Royalist in its politics, but Julian idolizes Napoleon about whom he dare not speak because any form of liberalism is frowned upon, but especially Bonapartism. There is also a division between two factions of Catholicism — Jesuits versus Jansenists — which contributes to tensions among not only the local clergy but also residents of the town. The paternal, political and religious intolerance that Julien has witnessed during his formative years causes him to adopt the posture of a conscious hypocrite. He cannot read in his father's presence without risking a beating, he cannot openly idolize Napoleon, and he cannot reveal his lack of true religious feeling. At age nineteen, his purposeful dissembling, lack of an ethical core and profound ignorance combine to reveal what seems to be a hopelessly feckless youth who has acquired only a few parlor tricks along the way featuring his prodigious memory. Beneath this unschooled exterior, however, lies a better than average intelligence. But resentful of his poverty and hampered by his ignorance of how the world works, he has only the vaguest notions of how to better himself, although occasionally Julien witnesses an event that provides a glimmer of possible future advancement through the Church. His real education begins when he enters the household of M. de Rênal.

Meanwhile, Julien has been accepted into the mayor's family, and when free of tutorial duties, he finds himself frequently in the company of Madame de Rênal. One day he decides to seduce her — a cold and bloodless calculation devoid of emotion. Once having made the decision, he becomes obsessed with Madame. She of course resists at first but eventually succumbs to the unrelenting onslaught. Madame de Rênal, too, is unschooled, but in every other respect she is the complete opposite of Julien: She is warm and kind and has good instincts with regard to raising her children.

We are then treated to a seemingly endless succession of he-loves-me-she-loves-me-not episodes that remind one of scenes from comic opera. Wild swings of emotion are evident on both sides. What began as a calculated move on Julien's part gradually evolves into his belief that he is in love. This becomes a template for Julien's relationships with women.

Eventually suspicions of this affair begin to seep into the channels of local gossip, and the elderly abbé Chélan convinces him to leave the mayor's household and enroll in a seminary at nearby Besançon. The director of the seminary, abbé Pirard, becomes Julien's clerical mentor; and eventually they both become beneficiaries of a prominent Parisian aristocrat, the Marquis de la Mole, who provides a living for the abbé and who employs Julien as his private secretary.

Once in Paris Julien's education shifts into high gear. The Marquis sees him as a boorish peasant but provides him with a new wardrobe, dancing and riding lessons and begins the process of molding Julien into a competent amanuensis. Julien's rough edges are gradually smoothed out, and he becomes a rival to the best dressed men in Paris. The Marquis also takes Julien into the family, requiring him to live and dine with them every evening and attend the salon and pay attention to the comportment of the aristocratic young men in attendance. Before our eyes we see Julien being transformed from a country peasant to at least the semblance of an aristocratic dandy.

The Marquis de la Mole has a young daughter Mathilde who, out of the aristocratic boredom symptomatic of the age, begins to importune Julien. His natural antipathy to the ruling classes creates in him a kind of reverse arrogance, and his initial attitude toward Mathilde is one of contempt.

But almost like clockwork, it enters his head to seduce her. Immediately, Julian enters into the same kind of emotional dance with Mathilde that he had led with Madame de Rênal. In both conquests Julian employs ladders in launching his mock-heroic midnight attacks on the ladies' boudoirs. The on-again-off-again farce plays itself out to a breaking point, but this time self-destructive behavior becomes the order of the day, and now the melodrama begins. Prepare to be shocked.

So we have a novel featuring passionate love affairs which are fueled largely by jealousy, real or imagined. Love triangles abound. Whether real love is a factor or mere high-strung adolescent emotionalism is for the reader to decide. In addition to emotional intrigues, there are also political intrigues which anticipate the imminent Revolution.

Stendhal's omniscient narrator was unique in its abundant use of interior monologue through which the reader gains insight into the psychology of the characters (I almost said patients!), especially Julien. The Red and the Black represents the very best of nineteenth century French fiction. Even though I had accidentally learned of at least part of the outcome in advance, I still wandered around here in a state of stupefaction for a good twenty-four hours after I finished. Highly recommended.

Outstanding review of The Red and the Black!

>156 Poquette: another great review, Suzanne. Quite tempting.

And another book I suddenly really want to read. Excellent review. Regarding the earlier discussion about teenage takes on great novels, I recently read someone somewhere whose only memory of The Red and the Black is how much she loved the name "Julien Sorel."

>157 OscarWilde87: and >158 NanaCC: Thanks much!

>159 RidgewayGirl: That would be moi -- see >148 Poquette: above. ;-)

Great review of The Red and the Black. I read it a couple of years ago and was pretty confused by the church politics involved, but I decided to take the easy road, understand as much as I could from the book itself (without outside research) and appreciate the novel as a psychological study of Julien. I wasn't sure immediately upon finishing it if I'd really enjoyed it (I think I only gave it 3.5 stars) but it's a book I've kept thinking about since reading it. I'd like to reread it someday, but first I'd like to read The Charterhouse of Parma which I've also heard good things about.

Anyway, thanks for helping me revisit a book that left me thinking!

>161 japaul22: The Red and the Black certainly stopped my clock so I can understand that you are still thinking about it. I am dying to read it again right now but there are so many other books staring me in the face!

After I finished, I went to my library's online resources and found a history of the period between 1789 and 1830. It was about 60 pages of reading, but it really filled in the blanks. I wish I had read it or had it at hand before and while I was reading the novel. It seems to me that so much of the behavior of various characters is influenced by recent and ongoing events. It helped to explain a lot, for me at least.

I too am looking forward to reading The Charterhouse of Parma, but I think I'll let The Red and the Black percolate through my system for a while before I tackle it.

Great review of The Red and the black which will leave many visitors to your thread wondering about that denouement..................

>162 Poquette: I was definitely struck, as I read the book, by how immediate the political and social commentary was. Even though I didn't understand all of it, I knew that he was being pretty harsh to all sides on issues that were hot button topics of the moment. It would have been such a different reading experience to read that when it was published in France. I think about how little I like to read novels now that include recent political events and I wonder if I would have liked the book at all!

>163 baswood: Thanks Barry! Someone said that anyone who robs a reader of the experience of learning the outcome firsthand is committing a crime! I myself felt robbed when I inadvertently learned even a sliver of information about the ending. So . . . I am being extra cautious.

>164 japaul22: Like you, I don't care for novels about recent political events. I am afraid Stendhal's novel would have really made people squirm, so it would indeed have been uncomfortable to live through those events and then read a daring novel about them! Interesting to think about.

Yesterday I was exploring some of the obscure places I have never ventured into here on LibraryThing, and bumped into a section concerning Legacy Libraries where it lists all the books you have in common with the great and near great. One thing I have never gotten over since reading Tarzan of the Apes as a kid is the light bulb that went off in my brain when it dawned on me that reading connected you with the mind of the writer, living or dead. This notion really got to me when I was exploring a brand new set of The Great Books of the Western World which my neighbors had just acquired. There were Plato and Herodotus and about sixty others right there at hand! As you can see, I was very impressionable.

Anyway, here is what I learned on the Legacy Libraries page about the representation of my books among some of the Legacy Libraries. These are just a few that interested me. You would probably have a similar experience.

Leonard and Virginia Woolf — 120 books shared!
Hemingway — 115
Carl Sandberg — 110
Isak Dinesen — 99
CS Lewis — 76
James Boswell — 70
Thomas Mann — 67
William Butler Yeats — 52
James Joyce — 49
Thomas Jefferson — 47

To find this comparison go to your Home page or Profile page, click on Stats/Memes up on the second tool bar, then in the far left column you'll see Compare and under that "Legacy Libraries." If you click on one of the other options you learn that the book most commonly shared by the Legacy Libraries is Don Quixote.

There's a lot of fun — if time-wasting — stuff to do on this site! It's especially fun if you are procrastinating instead of doing something really useful — like reading, for example!

Great stuff on Herodotus and Stendhal. You left me really wanting to know how The Red and the Black ends.

>166 Poquette: OH, I'm off to waste some time! XD

A few years ago, when I discovered the joys of free public domain e-books, I reread La chartreuse de Parme which I had loved as a young adult. I started re-reading Le rouge et le noir too but lost interest. Now you've made me want to try it again. I don't remember much about it except the beginning, which I studied in class and reread not too long ago, and the fact that my sister was highly annoyed with Julien's love obsessions.

>167 dchaikin: Thanks Dan! This is one of those books that you really don't want to know the ending in advance. For me, it doesn't matter in most cases, but this one is different.

>168 avidmom: Hope you had fun!

>169 FlorenceArt: I too was annoyed by Julien's emotionalism. For someone who started out so calculating in his approach to life, it was unexpected that he would let his emotions run away with him. I suppose that is a function of his youth at least in part, but also his humanity. He is not a machine after all, like the rest of us. Julien is not a hundred percent likable, but he is fascinating. It is difficult to say more than sweeping generalities about him for fear of ruining the ending for other readers.

I think that I personally got carried away by the shock value of this novel. Stendhal has pulled it off splendidly.

You may want to take a look at Love.

>166 Poquette: I am stealing your discovery for the next Question for the Avid Reader!

>171 March-Hare: Thanks for the suggestion. I have read a bit about it and do intend to give it a look.

>172 rebeccanyc: Steal away! Good to see you back BTW!

The Iliad by Homer, translated by Robert Fagles (9th C. BC, 1990)

The Iliad is a mixed bag. It is the very wellspring of Western culture, for good and for bad. The storied Olympian gods and heroic mortals who participated in the Trojan War are still alluded to in the written word three thousand years later. But the brutal behavior of those same gods and mortals in that war are also memorialized in the six hundred pages of Homer's epic.

The verse translation by Robert Fagles reads very well — like a novel, in fact. The rhythm, the beat is prominent, and presumably if you took the time to read it aloud, it would be powerful indeed. Despite this, The Iliad is not an easy read thanks to the almost one thousand names and epithets of characters and places about which the action takes place and through which that action is conducted. Many of these names are very familiar, some vaguely familiar, but most by far are new to us. The Fagles edition blesses us in this department by providing a pronouncing vocabulary which gives a brief identifying statement about each one. Without this or something like it, The Iliad would be a bewildering swirl of confusion to the modern reader. The Introduction, notes and maps are also helpful.

We all know the story of The Iliad — or at least we think we do. Surprisingly to me at least, after nine years of the siege of Troy by the Achaeans, it only covers a brief period of 45 days, and within that the bulk of the poem takes place over six days and nights of intense climactic fighting in which the greatest heroes on both sides are killed. A few of the most famous are left standing: Aeneas, will eventually be the lone survivor of Troy who will go on to found Rome; Odysseus famously takes another twenty years to reach his home in Ithaca; and Achilles, who has slain Troy's greatest hero Hector, is destined beyond the confines of The Iliad to be killed by Paris, the culprit who stole Helen from Menelaus and started the entire conflict to begin with.

There are no spoilers here. The destinies of the great and near great are announced early and often throughout the pages of The Iliad. The power of the poem lies not in suspense but in the drama of battle. That drama is conveyed through the driving verse which honors its heroes in the process of butchering them. Battles wax and wane with the rhythm of the poetry. The great Homeric similes, sometimes piled on top of each other, churn and froth with soaring images. Here is an example; italics highlight the "like … so" pattern:

Achilles now
like inhuman fire raging on through the mountain gorges
splinter-dry, setting ablaze big stands of timber,
the wind swirling the huge fireball left and right—
chaos of fire—Achilles storming on with brandished spear
like a frenzied god of battle trampling all he killed
and the earth ran black with blood. Thundering on,
on like oxen broad in the brow some field hand yokes
to crush white barley heaped on a well-laid threshing floor
and the grain is husked out fast by the bellowing oxen's hoofs—
so as the great Achilles rampaged on, his sharp-hoofed stallions
trampled shields and corpses, axle under his chariot splashed
with blood, blood on the handrails sweeping round the car,
sprays of blood shooting up from the stallions' hoofs
and churning, whirling rims—and the son of Peleus
charioteering on to seize his glory, bloody filth
splattering both strong arms, Achilles' invincible arms.

What sets off the episode of The Iliad is a microcosm of the whole arc of the Trojan War itself. The war occurred because Paris, a prince of Troy and a guest at the home of Menelaus, stole Menelaus's wife Helen and spirited her off to Troy together with a vast amount of spoils. Most of the battling within The Iliad occurs without the aid of Achilles who ironically has been humiliated by the brother of Menelaus, warlord Agamemnon, who insists on taking the beautiful Briseis from Achilles for daring to challenge Agamemnon who has behaved badly in capturing the daughter of a priest of Apollo and refusing to give her back, thereby causing the god Apollo to shower down a plague on the Achaeans. Thus The Iliad boils down to an epic tale about men fighting over women!

Agamemnon at the beginning of The Iliad is not an attractive figure. Toward the end, Achilles' great friend Patroclus is killed by Hector and that finally brings Achilles into action, particularly as the Achaeans seem to be losing and Agamemnon sees the error of his ways and agrees to return Briseis to Achilles.

When The Iliad is reminiscing about the great deeds of one hero or another, it is quite affecting. A great deal of mythology is encompassed here, and the jealousies and machinations of the Olympians behind the scenes are both amusing and annoying.

But the battle scenes sometimes amount to a catalog of killing and brutality that go beyond the pleasurable. And while the poem as a whole makes for compelling reading, the blood and gore take it over the top. Compared with The Odyssey, it seems much more primitive in its motivation and unrelenting gratuitous violence. I am glad I read it, and I acknowledge its importance in the literary canon, but it is not one of my favorite reads. Because I personally have a distaste for this level of bloody mindedness doesn't mean it isn't worth reading. Everybody really should read it, and all congratulations go to Robert Fagles for his excellent translation.

You might be interested in The War That Killed Achilles by Caroline Alexander. It's a really interesting examination, and a book I absolutely loved (despite having no particular special interest in the subject).

Great stuff. Love the quoted passage.

I re-read the Iliad and the Odissey several years ago, and was surprised to find that, contrary to my reaction as a teenager, I liked the Iliad better this time round. The Odyssey is a great adventure novel, but the Iliad is a powerful testament to the folly and violence of men. What struck me is that while dozens (hundreds? I didn't count) of men get killed, and most of them feature in the poem only for that short line, they all, every single one of them, have a story. For every one of them, we learn where he was born and who his father was, and in most cases a salient point of his history or personalty. A whole life in a few words, and then the guy dies. I found this very moving somehow.

Great review, and both The Iliad and The Odyssey are on my mental "have to read" list. I take it you recommend the Fagles translations?

>175 mabith: Thanks for the suggestion. I have looked at the book at Amazon and it definitely interests me. I love the pictures of Troy and its setting. It is now on my wish list.

>176 dchaikin: Love the quoted passage. Welcome to the Bronze Age!

>177 FlorenceArt: I can see how The Iliad could grow on one over repeated readings. After one gets over the initial shock of brutality and overwhelming loss, as you say all the fallen heroes are given their moment in the sun, and I agree that it is terribly affecting. And putting oneself back in time to that era of oral delivery, when people savored repeat performances like we today watch certain movies over and over, the vividness of the storytelling is quite amazing.

I was just reading about how ancient Greek was pronounced. Apparently the pronunciation of certain sounds resulted in a kind of sing-song effect, so when a poem opens with "Sing, o Muse," it is easy to imagine that an exaggerated emphasis on the musicality of the language would result in something like singing, especially when accompanied by a lute. It would be interesting to hear.

>178 rebeccanyc: I would certainly recommend Fagles' Iliad. It was much more to my taste than Robert Fitzgerald's The Odyssey. But I have not had a chance to look at Fagles' The Odyssey, so I don't know. The two epics could not be more different from each other. They say that The Iliad is a man's epic and The Odyssey a woman's.

I'll have more to say about this by and by. I have almost finished Homer's Daughter which will provide an opportunity to discuss the notion that The Iliad and The Odyssey were written by different people.

There was a series of short articles on Homer's world this summer in Le Monde. One of the articles mentioned the guslari, singers in the Balkans who perpetuate the memory of the battle of Kosovo (1389). They were studied closely by historians who wanted to understand Homer better. I think the music helps remembering the words. Besides being great entertainment.

Great review of The Iliad. I have not read it.

>180 FlorenceArt: The Balkan singers were discussed in the Introduction to Fagles' translation. Very interesting parallel.

>181 baswood: Thanks Barry! I don't know what your take would be on all the violence, but have you considered reading The Iliad at some point? So much of our literary heritage is to be found both in and between the lines.

Homer's Daughter by Robert Graves (1955)

What if The Odyssey had been written not by Homer but by an unknown woman? That is exactly the theory which inspired Robert Graves to write his charming novel Homer's Daughter.

The idea was not a new one. Samuel Butler, a noted translator of both epics, wrote The Authoress of The Odyssey in 1897 wherein he quoted others who had suggested The Odyssey was written from a woman's point of view. Not only that, Robert Graves points to an ancient Greek source suggesting that the version of "Odysseus' Return" upon which The Odyssey was based originated in Sicily. Without getting too much into the weeds here, let me just say that Graves saw the delight in this prospect and composed an entertaining story to show how this almost blasphemous concept — in the eyes of scholars at any rate — might have materialized.

The tale is told in the first person by a young Sicilian princess who is unusually literate and who tells of a family episode which will seem very familiar to readers of The Odyssey. She is Homer's daughter only in the literary sense as the bards of ancient times called themselves "Sons of Homer" to identify themselves as members of an exclusive brotherhood. Since women were barred from any such undertaking as singing the lays of Homer — much less writing them — a certain amount of subterfuge was required to get the local minstrel to sing her epic poem at the palace, around Sicily and then convey it to Delos, the home of Homeric bards.

If you haven't actually read Homer, the pleasures of this novel may not be fully appreciated. They pretty much went sailing right over my own head the first time I read it without benefit of having the two epics under my belt. In effect, Homer's Daughter purports to give an inside look at how the adventures of Odysseus might have been created out of a few rather dramatic palace intrigues that found their way into the new poem about the return of Odysseus.

The mists of time have clouded our real understanding of who, when and where Homer was, so the basis for this novel may be criticized but cannot be absolutely refuted. The differences between the two Homeric epics are so striking that one can easily believe they came from different sources. And it would not be surprising if The Odyssey had indeed been written by a woman.

Homer's Daughter is a very clever novel by one of the prominent Greek scholars of the mid twentieth century. Readers who have enjoyed the ancient classics will also enjoy Graves' novel.

You're really on a Greek streak! I'm still enjoying your reviews. The Iliad, that other book I should reread... if only I had more time.

>184 Trifolia: Yes, the Greek streak continues below.

Preface to Plato by Eric A. Havelock (1963)

Plato's Republic has been the source of great consternation, especially in literary circles, for its attack on the poets. Socrates in fact asserts that they should have no place in the ideal state. Eric Havelock suggests that there are several misunderstandings in this regard, and in his Preface to Plato he identifies the issues, explains the historical context and — voila! — all becomes clear.

Havelock opens his discussion by suggesting that the very title of the Republic is the source of much confusion. The book is commonly understood to be a treatise on the ideal political entity, but even a casual analysis will show that only one-third of the text is concerned with statecraft. The other two-thirds cover a variety of subjects, but the thrust of Plato's argument amounts to an attack on the traditional Greek approach to education.

The educational methods still in use in the 4th century BC had their origins in what has been called the Greek Dark Age beginning around 1200 BC when the Mycenaean era collapsed. Very little is known about the whys and wherefores of this collapse, but it wasn't until around 700 BC that the Phoenician alphabet began to be adapted and used in the Greek-speaking world. During the intervening centuries, all knowledge concerning Greek history, culture, mores and laws were orally transmitted down through the generations. There was no writing at all. The most effective device in aid of memorizing vast amounts of information was rhyme. The epic form we see in Homer's Iliad grew out of the need to preserve the Greek cultural memory. Havelock takes the reader through Book 1 of The Iliad and dissects it in detail to show how this cultural, historical and ethical heritage was conveyed. The Iliad takes on new and significant meaning to the reader of this minute examination.

The Iliad and presumably other poetic vehicles were taught to children from an early age. The whole of the Greek-speaking world was immersed in the project of memorizing, and out of the masses arose those individuals with superior memories and theatrical skills who became the next generation of minstrels and teachers. Education was thus comprised of memorization and rote learning, and the people enjoyed constant reminders through public readings and festivals.

Plato's focus in the Republic and elsewhere is on Homer and Hesiod and to some extent the dramatists which at the time were the centerpieces of the educational regime. Their works presented gods and heroes as fundamentally immoral and thus bad examples for youth.

The overall result is that the Greek adolescent is continually conditioned to an attitude which at bottom is cynical. It is more important to keep up appearances than to practice the reality. Decorum and decent behavior are not obviously violated, but the inner principle of morality is.

Once the Republic is viewed as a critique of the educational regime, Havelock says that "the logic of its total organization becomes clear."

What Plato was railing against was an "oral state of mind" which seems to have persisted even though the alphabet and written documentation had been in use for three centuries. Illiteracy was thus still a widespread problem in Plato's time, and the poetic state of mind was the main obstacle to scientific rationalism and analysis. This is why Plato regarded the poetic or oral state of mind as the arch-enemy. In his teachings he did the opposite. He asked his students to "think about what they were saying instead of just saying it."

The epic had become, in Plato's view, not "an act of creation but an act of reminder and recall" and contributed to what Havelock terms "the Homeric state of mind."

It was Socrates' project (and by extension Plato's) to reform Greek education to encourage thinking and analysis. Thus all the ranting and railing about the "poets" in Plato's Republic was limited basically to Homer and Hesiod because of what he viewed as a wholly inadequate approach to education of which these particular poets were an integral part.

Unfortunately, Western culture has misconstrued what Plato and Socrates meant by "the poets." And because we view poetry as a highly creative and elevated form of expression, our critics have failed to recognize that Plato's diatribe had a very specific and limited target which had nothing to do with high-minded creativity, of which there is plenty, by the way, in the proscribed poets. It wasn't really the poets who were the problem; it was the use of them that was deemed unacceptable.

Post-Havelock, we can now read the Republic with the scales lifted from our eyes and see it for what it really was: an indictment of an antiquated educational regime which had no place in a democratic society.

I love all the reading you are doing around Homer...and other Ancient Greek writing.

Ditto what Dan said.

Great review of excellent scholarship!

That's a very thoughtful review and one that has me rethinking my impressions of The Republic. The passage you quoted very succinctly describes the transition from what anthropologists now call a "shame society" to a "guilt society."

Preface to Plato sounds great! Reading any works over a certain age always require texts like that to accompany them. Otherwise we just miss SO much you have to be a scholar of the period to know.

Thanks for the review! I have tried to read Plato several times, but so far have failed to see what's so great about him. Maybe some day I'll give it another try...

>187 dchaikin: >188 rebeccanyc: >189 edwinbcn: >190 StevenTX: Thanks Dan, Rebecca, Edwin and Steve! I should point out that Eric Havelock's interpretation of Plato's intent in the Republic has not gained wide acceptance among scholars. I am certainly not a scholar and am not familiar with the literature, and so I really am not qualified to comment. But now I am more than ever determined to sit down and read the Republic from beginning to end and see where I come down. I must admit to feeling some relief in reading Havelock's book. I loved the bits and pieces of Plato I read as a teenager, and when I encountered the anti-poet problem at university, I seriously could not believe it because it did not square with my earlier impression. Like Steve, I am planning to concentrate on Plato over the next while but I was going to get some of the other dialogues under my belt first. I would therefore like to think that Havelock is correct, and I now feel quite enthusiastic about proceeding to read the Republic sooner rather than later.

>191 mabith: You are so right, Meredith. Such books always point to things to look for that one might have otherwise missed.

>192 FlorenceArt: I am sorry your introduction to Plato was not more satisfying. My early impressions were based on reading the four short dialogues that are concerned with the trial and last days of Socrates' life. They were and still are quite moving for me. Euthyphro, Apology, Crito and Phaedo are the dialogues in question. Did you happen to read any of them?

October Wish List and Notable Books

The Idea of the Numinous, ed. by Ann Casement et al. (***zenomax — actually, this is already on my wishlist based on zeno's earlier comments)

The Dinner by Herman Koch (***Torontoc — an unusual thriller)

In Translation: Translators on Their Work and What It Means edited by Esther Allen and Susan Bernofsky (***rebeccanyc)

The Islanders by Christopher Priest (***gendeg in hot reviews — Priest is author of The Prestige. Sounds like it is right up my street in the weirdness department)

Vermeer's Camera: Uncovering the Truth Behind the Masterpieces by Philip Steadman (***NielsonGW)

Flirting with French: How a language charmed me, seduced me and nearly broke my heart by William Alexander (***VivienneR)

The Works of Aretino by Pietro Aretino (***baswood)

The Exiles Return by Elisabeth de Waal (***oandthegang)

The Robber Bridegroom by Eudora Welty (***edwinbcn — intriguing style)

The War That Killed Achilles by Caroline Alexander (***mabith)

The Complete Short Novels of Chekhov (***rebeccanyc)

Fascinating reading your review of Preface to Plato

Thanks Barry!

I really enjoyed your summary and review of Preface to Plato. I read a version of Sappho this year and was intrigued to learn how much poetry was really the start of western education. I've not read much Plato - and as I have tended to follow Heidegger's argument that since him and until Heidegger being (or was that Being) was misinterpreted I am cautious, as I think it may be the way of a thinking I reject in some ways for where it takes us, but really I should learn a lot more before I do that. I like reading of the pre-Socratics and I think this book sounds like a good place for me to start on Plato. In fact your Greek feast also makes me hungry to read more on such lines. I wonder where it fits that Socrates I think did not want his ideas written down? (as I understand it?)

>197 tonikat: Thanks Tony! I think you would enjoy Preface to Plato. There is a lot in there indirectly related to the psychology of learning.

Regarding Socrates' attitude toward writing, that is a very complicated subject. I have not yet read the Phaedrus, which is the dialogue that contains his arguments against writing. For us. Socrates' view is very primitive, but he was coming at it from the point of view that writing diminishes the human mind because it converts living thoughts dwelling in the human mind into mere objects in the physical world. By causing people to rely on what is written rather than what they are able to think, it weakens the powers of the mind and of memory.

According to Havelock, memory is almost entirely dependent on poetry. Socrates attitude toward writing seems contradictory since in the Republic and elsewhere he wants to keep the poets out of his ideal city because their role in education keeps people from thinking and rationalizing. It is possible that 20/20 hindsight gives us a perspective on writing vis-à-vis memory that Socrates did not have. But I am hardly qualified at this point to say anything more than simply point out the obvious difficulties.

If you are planning to read some Plato, a nice place to start is with the relatively short dialogues concerning the end of Socrates' life — namely, Euthyphro, Apology, Crito and Phaedo. I "discovered" Plato through these dialogues when I was about twelve years old, and I was deeply touched by them then and continue to be. I seem to be recommending these a lot recently, so please pardon my redundancy.

Yes, I had some thoughts about Socrates being against writing a few years ago. I have read a bit of Plato and of course it's he that wrote these versions of Socrates. The ideas I had were about pointing out something about an interpersonal learning through face to face communication that cannot be reproduced in writing... I'm a person centred counsellor at heart so maybe I would see this... It's an idea that separating the knowledge from the full experience of the person may even be dangerous on a way, may lead to misunderstanding and misuse and in that way may be most unsocratic, this chimes with some of what you say... And to me relates to a human wisdom and sensitivity that mostly gets overlooked. Just my line of thought, I need to explor it with more reading. It just occurred to me that this might then make Socrates not just a composer of thought but a performer in a way and constant interpreter. I'm adding Havelock to my TBR.

Edit- if course he was a midwife to thought... And I think there may be something healing in relating thought to the person in this way? It does have drawbacks, it may slow us, it may make us vulnerable to other misuse, but I like it and the world so often seems to overlook this. Sorry hope that's not too much.

Hi Tony! Socrates/Plato's objection to writing seems more related to the fear of diminished memory capacity than the interpersonal aspect. That's an interesting take on it, however.

Thinking of Socrates as a performer is brilliant. That's certainly part of his charm as I see him.

It is difficult for me to connect a provocateur like Socrates with healing, but this may reflect my own ignorance.

Never too much! Do let us know eventually what you think of the Havelock.

The Street of Crocodiles and Other Stories by Bruno Schulz (1934)

If Bruno Schulz were a painter he would be an impressionist. His ability to create evocative imagery should take a back seat to no one. And in this sense, he is a writer's writer. Anyone who enjoys digging deep into the writer's style, the way he frames his sentences and paragraphs, how he structures his stories, will find a fertile field for exploration in his work.

Schulz is a one-of-a-kind writer, or at least he was when his work was first published in the 1930s. The writer he most resembles, according to Italo Calvino — and I would agree — is Felisberto Hernandez, the rather obscure Uruguayan author of Piano Stories and much more that is not available in English translation. I actually prefer Hernandez because his stories — although not devoid of flights of fancy — have more of a foundation in reality and certainly more variety. Francine Prose has characterized them best:

To read writers like Bruno Schulz and Felisberto Hernandez is less like hearing about a dream than like actually having one: familiar notions of causality no longer apply, yet the sequence of events seems correct, as it does in dreams even when people and objects behave in unlikely ways.

Schulz seems to revel in people "behaving in unlikely ways." Almost all of his stories begin by setting a scene and skillfully drawing the reader in. But at the same time almost all of these same stories in the end have characters acting so strangely, the writing becomes so ambiguous, that one is never quite sure what has happened. The ambiguity actually becomes burdensome after a while when story after story has the same pattern: evocative scene, quirky characters, bizarre denouements. It is not the ambiguity per se that becomes irritating, it is that it almost becomes a shtick — or even a tic!

The volume at hand contains all of Schulz's writings: The Street of Crocodiles, Sanatorium under the Sign of the Hourglass, and three other stories. The first two contain thirteen stories each, all related, but when all of the twenty-nine stories are read in succession they all relate to the same familiar milieu, and the reader comes away with impressions and nothing more. I can really tell you nothing meaningful about what transpires here other than repeated descents into madness.

Bottom line, I admire very much the poetic quality of Schulz's style, but the predictable sameness of these stories that start out promisingly enough but devolve into a fog at best or madness at worst is in the end rather disappointing. There isn't much of a takeaway here.

Sounds like Bruno Schulz stories should be taken in small doses. Excellent review.

>201 Poquette: Thank you for the review. I was interested in Bruno Schultz when you first mentioned him, but now you got me searching for Felisberto Hernandez. And it turns out that his complete works were published in French translation in 1996. And my library has that volume. My respect for this library is growing every day. I'll drop by tomorrow and have a look.

I found some of the stories in Sanatorium under the Sign of the Hourglass, which I read several years ago, remarkable, but I can see how a little Schultz would go a long way. The edition I read was enhanced by some of Schultz's own drawings.

>202 baswood: Thanks Barry! Maybe you're right. I thought I was taking my time with the book, but perhaps not enough.

>203 FlorenceArt: I hope you will enjoy Felisberto Hernandez. I wish more of his stories were available in English. Better still, I should work harder on my French!

>204 rebeccanyc: All of Shulz's stories start out beautifully. I love the poetic language. He is a master at scene setting. But they all end up in such a screwball way, it is hard to fathom the predictable sameness of it all, not to mention trying to figure out what his point is. In one of his stories he gives a clue, that everything is a metaphor. I guess you can make of each story what you will. I simply lost patience.

Dreaming and Storytelling by Bert O. States (1993)

This is going to sound strange, but I have been genuinely upset with myself for not fully enjoying The Street of Crocodiles by Bruno Schulz. Perhaps some of the strangeness of that book has rubbed off on me! I was searching through my library because I thought I had something that somehow relates to this situation, and I ran across Dreaming and Storytelling. This looked to be just the thing. I was merely going to dip into it but ended up reading it from cover to cover.

It provides a fair to middling overview of the characteristics of dreams and how they fit in with the nature of fiction. Bert States discusses the contributions of many who have written in the field of dream analysis and he tries to meld this with aspects of fiction writing, and the synthesis is okay as far as it goes. This book was published in 1993 and thus it predates many of the "quirky dreamy novellas" that I have enjoyed in the past few years, but there is a fairly vast body of fictional literature that centers on dreams or purports to be the record of dreams, and with the exception of Kafka's Metamorphosis and the Biblical dream of Joseph, the author neither acknowledges any of this nor does he compare specific literary dreams with those reported as actual dreams. So much of the discussion compares actual dreams as reported by Freud and others with various theoretical approaches to literary interpretation, and specific examples of dream fiction are ignored.

Still, this brief summary does help to identify some of the properties of dreams and how they relate to storytelling in general.

Of course, many psychologists beginning with Freud set great store by the meaning of dreams. Others view dreams as "simply odd things that happen to us at night, sometimes pleasant, sometimes terrifying, not to be taken too seriously." Similar things can be said about our reading of fiction. We read for plot, suspense, significance of this or that aspect, or for what we can learn about human nature, science, history, etc.

Interestingly, States points out that the Biblical Joseph "used the dream to foretell the future; Freud used it to retell the past." Thankfully, most fiction is not in the foretelling business at all.

The most prominent characteristic of dreams is their bizarreness, while only a limited segment of fiction fits into that category and not all of it is dreamlike. Surrealist fiction comes to mind, and magic realism, although most of that is not so much bizarre as merely a gentle challenge to one's willingness to suspend disbelief.

Another point about dreams is that they don't have a beginning, middle and ending except in the telling. They are typically fragmentary and seem to be centered in the middle. There is no lead-up to what transpires and no graceful denouement. Here is where actual dreams are quite different from fictional depictions. As Francine Prose said, reading Bruno Schulz is less like reading about a dream than being in one. But Schulz's dream scenarios all have beginnings, middles and endings. It is the endings that most feature the bizarreness of a dream state.

Schulz's stories demonstrate elements of Chaos Theory, which according to Dreams and Storytelling, has much to say about the bizarreness of dreams: "the dream, like the weather, is a chaotic and complex system: it is unpredictable in the sense that one cannot tell where it is going."

Another idea put forth concerns the role of "characters" in dreams. He cites the study done by Vladimir Propp on the Morphology of the Folktale, which analyzes the common components of a hundred fairytales and then goes into the analytical literature concerning figures in dreams. He acknowledges that applying a study of folktales to dream work is not conventional, but it is interesting nonetheless.

Somewhat related to this, he spends a whole chapter discussing archetypes and how they function both in stories and in dreams. Somewhat related are the "scripts" that are followed in everyday living that are sometimes violated in dreams, thus causing conflict. The discussion shows how conventional scripts are at the basis of conflict in a great deal of literature, particularly when two or more scripts clash, thereby putting a character in an untenable situation. For example, Hamlet is trapped between at least two behavioral scripts. "Dreams and fictions tend to be about the wages of getting out of step with the scripted world, of differing interpretations of the same script, or of a collision of personal goals with established scripts."

In a chapter on "Meaning in Dreams and Fictions," the author quotes Milton Kramer: "Meaning does not exist in dreams but is brought to them from some external system of meanings."

One of the interesting points dividing dreams from fiction is that in dreams no creativity is involved. Dreams seem to be a function of environment, while fiction uses that environment to create stories. Dreams are not created, they just are.

In the Conclusion, the notion of "intentional, encoded or symbolic messages" in dreams is discounted. I am somewhat surprised at this. Since dreams are completely visual experiences, in my own dreams I have noticed that certain types of images seem to stand for certain other types, sort of like rebuses. For example, you have seen puzzles where a picture of an eye plus a heart plus a ewe sheep are translated to mean "I love you." To just dismiss that aspect of dreams does not ring true for this reader at least.

Of course, fiction is full of "intentional, encoded or symbolic messages."

One notion that is not discussed at all in this book is the idea of "great dreams" as opposed to the everyday static that makes up one's dreaming. Many people have had the experience of an extraordinary dream that may carry with it an almost archetypal importance. And by the same token, certainly there are many examples of great and extraordinary novels and stories that can have a similar impact. The author seems rather dismissive of the whole notion of archetypes as anything special or out of the ordinary, so that may account for this omission.

On the whole, this was an interesting book, one I did not expect to read just now, and it did help to clarify my thinking about dream fiction. At some point, I shall return to Bruno Schulz and try to figure out why I was not in tune with his particular dream effects.

I revised the above review for posting on the book page to omit the personal stuff, and I edited the following to add representative examples of dream fiction that were not considered in Dreaming and Storytelling. The author can be forgiven for books not yet published, but his book would have been more interesting if he had considered some actual examples of material that was already out there. Just so you know what I am talking about:

"This book was published in 1993 and thus it predates many of the "quirky dreamy novellas" that have appeared in the past few years, like Alan Lightman's Einstein's Dreams, James Cowan's The Mapmaker's Dream, Calvino's Invisible Cities, not to mention older fiction like George DuMaurier's Peter Ibbetson and Bruno Schulz's The Street of Crocodiles, plus the whole body of medieval dream visions."

Dreaming and Storytelling doesn't sound like what you wanted to read, but I enjoyed your review.

Enticing review of Dreaming and Storytelling. Too bad "with the exception of Kafka's Metamorphosis and the Biblical dream of Joseph, the author neither acknowledges any of this nor does he compare specific literary dreams with those reported as actual dreams."

There is a pretty extensive body of medieval literature that actually fits into a dream vision genre. Part of the appeal for the medieval audience was that the dream vision aspect gave the story authority because the dream was sent by God. In English, the selections include "Caedmon't Hymn," "The Dream of the Rood," "Pearl," Chaucer's "The Book of the Duchess," and "Sir Orfeo." And then, of course, is all of the mystical visionary literature.

Interesting review and discussion.

>208 baswood: >209 janeajones: Part of the problem may be that I was reading a book that he didn't write! By that I mean that I have various preconceived notions about dreams, and the author had his own set of preconceptions, and in some ways they did not coincide, particularly in the literary context. That's fine, and his book did give me a lot to think about particularly in my own context of Bruno Schulz's writing, which I had in mind as I was reading, along with various "important" dreams I have had. I was measuring his text against that backdrop.

>209 janeajones: It was quite surprising that he did not even acknowledge the medieval dream vision literature, not only because there is so much of it, but it isn't all completely obscure. The Divine Comedy and the prototype of them all, Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy come to mind in addition to the ones you mentioned.

Of course, since he seemed to dismiss the allegorical value of dreams per se, and since the medieval literature is all about allegory, this may explain the omission.

>210 rebeccanyc: Thanks, Rebecca!

By the way, I just did something I NEVER do! I have acquired a book because I liked the cover. There is also something evocative about the title. This is a major departure for me since it is a book of poetry. The book came to my attention on diana.n's thread. I hope the poems are as good as the cover, which I am enjoying looking at. For all you cover aficionados out there, this is the cover of the year, IMHO!



Stay, Illusion by Lucie Brock-Broido

An image from the Wilton Diptych in the national Gallery London

Lovely.

Frustrated -i cannot write a long post on my i-pad without safari crashing and the post getting eaten.

Anyway, i was saying that i really enjoyed your posts on Schulz, States and dreams, and how i'm having the same problem right now with Einstein's Dreams that you are had with Schulz. I'm just not enjoying as much as i think i should be.

Also, on dreams, in Being Wrong, Kathryn Schulz comments that when we dream the part of our brain that does the fact checking, and therefore filters out our nonsense thoughts from our seemingly more sensible thoughts, is turned off. That is to say, we have no filter when we dream.

>213 baswood: Yes, the back of one wing of the Wilton Dyptich. I am learning that there are a lot of beautiful things hidden on the backs of things. Oh — and the title is from Hamlet. I should have said so to begin with.

>215 dchaikin: I was thinking about Einstein's Dreams as I was reading Schulz and wondering why I liked one but not the other. I cannot give a reasonable explanation. One difference is that there is a coherence to each of the Einstein vignettes, even though they describe an impossibility on planet earth as we know it. However, I assume that each one demonstrates some aspect of time as it would theoretically be experienced in a different environment. You are more scientifically oriented than I am and I assume you have more of a foundation in physics than I do. Maybe that is getting in your way. Just a thought.

With Schulz, his stories begin coherently, but the endings are so ambiguous and apparently metaphorical that I cannot grasp what the point is or even what happened.

Interesting that our logical filters are turned off during sleep. That makes sense.

Yes, i think you nailed it with the scientificly oriented outlook - or something along those lines. I'm too skeptical about the scenarios, which leaves me judging instead of letting it grab me.

That is a stunning cover. It might be worth owning the book even if the contents are disappointing.

>217 dchaikin: Think of them as occurring on various exoplanets out there. Otherwise, they are pure fantasy — imagination ticklers, if you will! ;-)

>218 RidgewayGirl: Yes, so far I am treating it as a work of art. It is currently displayed on a small table-top easel where I can admire it.

All this talk about dreams and visions has reminded me of a book I acquired some time ago when I was enthralled by the subject of medieval dream visions. The fires were stoked a few years ago when I listened to a lecture about Boethius and The Consolation of Philosophy, which has turned out to one of my favorite reads of all time. Boethius led to Somnium Scipionis (The Dream of Scipio) and Kathryn Lynch's The High Medieval Dream Vision which provides an excellent background on the characteristics of dream visions and the historical milieu of which they were a part, and also devotes lengthy discussion to a half-dozen of the most important pieces in this genre, including The Consolation of Philosophy, Alain de Lille's De planctu naturae (Plaint of Nature), the Roman de la Rose, Dante's Commedia and John Gower's Confessio Amantis, with brief mentions of others including the several works of Chaucer that qualify as dream visions. All these are poetic and secular as separate and distinct from the many mystical and religious dream visions that are out there.

At around the same time I acquired Dream Visions and Other Poems: Geoffrey Chaucer, also edited by Kathryn Lynch in the Norton Critical Editions series. This is the book that I am now reading. I had forgotten how charming Middle English is, and the first two of Chaucer's dream visions — The Book of the Duchess and The House of Fame — are written in a meter of four beats to the line. This creates a kind of sing-song effect which sounds almost like doggerel to the modern ear, but Chaucer's way of expressing things is simply delightful. I find myself smiling at the way he puts things even more than at the actual content. The Parliament of Fowls and The Legend of Good Women are also included.

Way back in my university days I took a semester-long course in Chaucer which involved reading The Canterbury Tales in the original Middle English. This was a real challenge back then, but it seems easier now.

This Norton edition greases the skids by giving a quick tutorial in ME pronunciation, and the glosses are right on each individual line with footnotes at the bottom of the page for lengthier clarification. And as typical with Norton, translations of Chaucer's mostly Latin sources are included in an appendix, along with appropriate criticism.

This is just too delightful for words. It's one of those things that you want to share with the world. I don't mean for this to be a review as I have not finished it, but I am supposed to be reading Death in Venice and Seven Other Stories. As happens when you try to read more than one book at a time, sometimes one or the other has to take a back seat

Enticing...this is the way i would like to read Chaucer - original English with good notes. I've put Lynch's edition on my wishlist.

Can you really read Middle English? I tried to read Villon and Rabelais in the original text, and in both cases it started as an exhilarating experience, but after a while the effort of trying to figure it out became too much and I gave up. I looked up the dates. Chaucer died in 1400, Villon in 1463 (500 years before my birth!) and Rabelais in 1553. I think English must have changed at least as much, and probably more, than French in that time frame.

So, I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'm jealous!

I can't much read French, but I remember that in one of the French courses in college they assigned us some Rabelais and just expected us to cope with it. I may have; I can't remember it anymore, but I had his way of saying 'do as you will' on the tip of my tongue for many years.

I have also read that one has to be cautious reading Middle English because you can believe that you understand more than you actually do. Words that still look the same may mean something entirely else while the difference is not obvious.

Robert

>223 Mr.Durick: I think that warning about "false friends"* also goes for old French.

* That's how we call modern English words that are similar to a French word but have a different meaning.

I did not wish to imply that reading Middle English is easy. It is not, for the reasons you both cited as well as others. I am simply saying that it is easier to read in this particular edition because the glosses are at the ends of each line of verse. Sometimes there is further clarification in footnotes at the bottom of the page. Here is a picture of a partial page to give an idea. This is bad photography but — whatever:



Compared to the Riverside Chaucer the Norton is much easier because Riverside provides fewer glosses and most words are only treated in a detailed glossary at the end of the volume. The book weighs five pounds! And flipping back and forth for every other word is both awkward and discouraging to say the least. Norton is a light-weight paperback. My only complaint is the print is too fine for my aging eyes! I do believe that having gotten familiar with the cadence and some of the pitfalls of Middle English back in college makes it easier to get back into it.

In no way is it easy. But it is fun if you like this sort of thing. This Norton edition of Dream Visions and Other Poems: Geoffrey Chaucer really caters to the reader who is totally unfamiliar with Middle English. I think it would be an excellent place to start with Chaucer.

You make me want to try and find a good edition of Rabelais and try it again...

I agree -- Middle English is delightful -- a bit of a challenge, but not insurmountable, especially with some good glosses. I remember when I was first taking a Med. Lit. course in college and I would fall asleep while reading (not an unusual occurence), I would dream in Middle English....

>226 FlorenceArt: I hope you can find the Rabelais. I have no idea how or if "Middle French" compares to Middle English, but I suspect there are charming elements there as well.

>227 janeajones: I have not yet dreamed in Middle English, but I have suddenly realized I was muttering to myself in fractured ME!

227> :-}

In a year already filled with wonderful reads, I have just lucked into another one. This time it is Chaucer in the form of Geoffrey Chaucer: Dream Visions and Other Poems, edited by Kathryn Lynch. At the risk of gushing all over the place, I have to say that this is one of the most rewarding books ever! What a pleasure and a delight. My review follows.

Geoffrey Chaucer: Dream Visions and Other Poems, Kathryn L. Lynch, Editor (2007)

Chaucer is mostly known for The Canterbury Tales, but they and his other poetic works and translations fill more than 750 of the 1300-page Riverside edition of his complete works. While the Tales provide a highly entertaining and wide-ranging selection of stories, it is a daunting task to read them in their entirety in the original Middle English, which is the best approach because so much of the charm and humor of Chaucer's writing is lost in translation to modern English. Middle English comes at that point where Anglo-Saxon and French are in the process of blending together into what will become the modern English language. Standard spellings are not yet established, the old inflections are inconsistent and the vocabulary is much more limited. Many words serve double and triple duty with widely varying definitions, and words that look familiar have frequently evolved over the ages to mean something quite different than they did in the 1300s.

When spoken aloud Middle English is much more comprehensible than just seeing it on the page. Reading aloud seems to turn one into a participant, and the delights of hearing the sounds of the language cannot be adequately described. One simply must experience it to appreciate it. To the modern ear Middle English sounds like a remote dialect, which gives the illusion that it is just on the edge of being understandable. Unfortunately, it is not quite that simple, but once into it and aware of the pitfalls, one can pick it up relatively quickly.

Until relatively recently Chaucer's shorter poetical works were accessible only to serious students and scholars, but these shorter works are in some ways much more approachable than the Tales, in addition to conveying the essence of both Chaucer and his dialect.

Norton Critical Editions has provided a perfect introduction in Geoffrey Chaucer: Dream Visions and Other Poems, beautifully selected, edited and introduced by Kathryn Lunch, who also wrote The High Medieval Dream Vision: Poetry, Philosophy, and Literary Form, a book I devoured and reported on a few years ago. This Norton edition provides line by line glosses which save the reader from the necessity of constantly referring to a separate vocabulary. Footnotes at the bottom of the page explain difficult passages and mythological, historical, biographical and literary references.

What exactly is a "dream vision"? It is a recounting of a dream that is so memorable or significant that it almost seems like a vision. It was one of the most popular literary genres of the Middle Ages, and many examples abound that are well known today. Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy was the prototype, and Dante's Divine Comedy is perhaps the culmination and the most famous. Of Chaucer's four stand-alone dream visions only two were finished, The Book of the Duchess and the Parliament of Fowls. The House of Fame and The Legend of Good Women both end abruptly mid-sentence, and no one knows why they were not completed. These works all pre-date The Canterbury Tales, so we don't know whether Chaucer simply lost interest or set them aside and simply never got back to them.

The Book of the Duchess was written for John of Gaunt to honor his wife Blanche who had recently died. It deals with the pain of loss without sinking into sentimentality. The Parliament of Fowls may be the first literary commemoration of Saint Valentine's Day and celebrates the advent of spring. The subject matter is difficult to pin down as it begins with a brief discussion of poetic art but shifts to how the poet is stymied by his attempts to deal with Love. It then turns to books before it evolves into a debate among the birds about which of three male eagles the lady eagle should choose as a mate. The House of Fame tells of the narrator's dream of being carried into the heavens to the realm of the goddess Fame, and in the course of the story demonstrates how Fame is nearly as capricious as Fortune. In The Legend of Good Women, a dream vision provides the frame for a series of lives of virtuous women and the men who betrayed them.

In addition to these four dream visions, Chaucer's narrative poem Anelida and Arcite and a selection of his very short poems are included.

True to Norton tradition, a selection of contextual materials are provided, in this case excerpts from Chaucer's sources including Virgil, Ovid, Cicero, Boethius, Alain de Lille, Jean de Meun, Dante, Guillaume de Machaut and Boccaccio. Finally, several critical essays from different periods and with widely varying perspectives are presented. This is perhaps the weakest element of an otherwise superb book. I would have chosen differently in some cases, but I am thinking in terms of introductory materials. The editor has a more academic perspective.

The total effect here is of a commonplace book which can form the basis for many hours of enjoyment and indeed a jumping off point for delving into some of the full works excerpted and into more treasures from Chaucer's pen. For the reader who is thinking of giving Chaucer and Middle English a try, there cannot be a more rewarding place to begin than with this volume.

Sounds like great stuff. And thanks for the picture in >225 Poquette:

I have never seen this Norton edition of Chaucer's Dream visions and other poems. I have several other editions, both THE Robinson edition and the Riverside, but I think I would still enjoy having this book (and read it, hihihi).

By the way, it took my last trip to Amsterdam in October to get a copy of The Picture of Dorian Gray in the Norton edition.

>232 dchaikin: That photo is an embarrassment. I keep thinking I should try again and switch it out, but don't seem to get to it.

>233 edwinbcn: I too have the Riverside Chaucer and I kept referring to it to see what the editors had to say about certain passages. You will indeed enjoy the Norton Dream Visions because of the many excerpts and it is so easy to use — and lightweight too!

Hope you'll also enjoy The Picture of Dorian Gray.

Death in Venice and Seven Other Stories by Thomas Mann (1930)

Well, I finally finished Death in Venice and Seven Other Stories by Thomas Mann. Just barely squeaked into November, so I can begin December with a clean slate. I enjoyed these stories very much — some even better after I had finished them. These stories all display wonderful characterizations, and in most of them there is an element of the abnormal where seeming normality takes a turn into something ironically twisted or even mildly grotesque.

Mann is an engaging storyteller, and though it took me a while to read through these stories it was not out of boredom. I actually read the title story Death in Venice a couple of years ago when I was getting ready to read The Magic Mountain. These were intended originally to be companion pieces. One other story called Tristan is reminiscent of The Magic Mountain as it is also set in a sanitarium.

Some of the stories explore elements of jealousy, two are steeped in romantic music, knowledge of which is helpful to full appreciation of the stories. Surprising in a story from the period, The Blood of the Walsungs (1905) brings Wagner to life and portrays in words the undertone of sexuality felt in "The Prelude and Liebestodt" from Tristan und Isolde.

Disorder and Early Sorrow, a gentle story of bourgeois family life comes to a conclusion that is rather unsettling. A totally different rambling first-person story written in a breezy style about A Man and His Dog is a wonderful portrait of a man and his relationship with his German pointer, but it ends in such a way as to put one in mind of Disorder and Early Sorrow.

There is much variety on display here. Each story is very different from the others, yet they all contain Mann's ruminations concerning the philosophical aspects of life decisions. This was a solid four-star read.

Earlier this year, I read a different collection of some of Mann's shorter works, although it had several of the same stories in it, and I wasn't as impressed by them as I have been by his novels. Although, in retrospect, I'm still thinking about some of the stories, so maybe it affected me more than I thought.

I didn't realize Death In Venice was meant to be a companion piece with The Magic Mountain...ok, if I ever read Magic Mountain again I'll be sure to add this. Enjoyed your comments on these stories.

Love your enthusiasm for Chaucer, one that I share. I started by battling through the Riverside Chaucer but after a while it got easier. There is no doubt that you have to read the original to appreciate the poetry and as the poetry is the main reason for reading Chaucer then modern translations are not an alternative. IMO modern translations do no more than give an idea of what the stories are about. I think that Chaucer's dream visions are more difficult to read because the medieval mind set is more difficult to grasp for the modern reader and I think this is particularly true of The House of Fame, however that poem contains some of Chaucer's most exquisite visions.

I have versions of both Rabelais and Villon in their original French and I think that Medieval French is probably easier to read than medieval English as the changes in language are not so great: assuming that is that you are comfortable with modern French (which counts me out).

I might be tempted to get a copy of the Norton Critical edition to discover what I may have missed.

I would recommend John Gardner's the Poetry of Chaucer

My favourite of all Chaucer's poems is Troilus and Criseyde - he got to finish that one

>236 rebeccanyc: I neglected to mention in my comments above three of the stories in this collection: Tonio Kruger, Mario and the Magician and Felix Krull. One could spend a lot of time on each of the eight stories. They are, after all, novellas, and each one could justify full treatment. I don't have the energy for that just now; thus my rather shoddy nonreview review.

>237 dchaikin: In Mann's own words, as he was writing what he thought would be a novella, he wrote in a letter that The Magic Mountain (1927) "seems to be becoming a kind of humorous counterpart to Death in Venice.” In Death in Venice (1912) we have an older man's homoerotic obsession with a younger man contrasted with a younger man's heterosexual obsession with an older woman in The Magic Mountain. In the first case it was tragic, in the second, comic.

Re my comments, I should have said more, but it was late and I didn't have the energy.

>238 baswood: I suspect you are correct that Medieval French is probably easier to read than Middle English primarily because English was going through the process of joining two languages together, French and Anglo-Saxon. I find it interesting to see this process at work in Chaucer's writings.

I think you would enjoy the Norton edition of the Dream Visions especially for the supplemental materials. Also, it is wonderful to have the glosses right on the page and line.

Norton also has an edition of Troilus and Criseyde, which tempts me. The "Look Inside" feature at amazon shows a different edition, so I am not sure whether it has the line-by-line glosses or not.

Here is the last Wish List for the year. Thanks to everyone for your contributions to my intellectual edification!

November Wish List

Soul Tourists by Bernardine Evaristo (***edwinbcn — "Highly recommended for readers interested in new voices, experimental styles and literary fiction off the beaten paths of mainstream literature")

Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day by Ben Loory (***edwinbcn — dissed by Edwin but other reviews make me think I might like it)

Six Drawing Lessons by William Kentridge (***rebeccanyc)

Confronting the Classics by Mary Beard (***oandthegang)

Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader by Anne Fadiman (**japaul)

The Manuscript Found in Saragossa by Jan Potocki (***StevenTX — 656 pp)

Goodbye To All That by Robert Graves (***edwinbcn)

Thanks fro reminding me that I want to read Confronting the Classics. And I succumbed to Steven's review of The Manuscript Found in Saragossa too.

>240 Poquette: But there's a whole other month left. Your wishlist could double!

Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day by Ben Loory (***edwinbcn — dissed by Edwin but other reviews make me think I might like it)

Looking for ward to your review....

>241 rebeccanyc: Always happy to help ;-)

>242 SassyLassy: What was I thinking? Thanks for straightening me out!

>243 edwinbcn: Please don't hold your breath. Your actual recommendations will probably rise to the top sooner — Soul Tourists and Goodbye To All That

Commentary on the Dream of Scipio by Macrobius, Translated with an Introduction and Notes by William Harris Stahl (1952)

Readers familiar with the early Middle Ages will know that many scholars were engaged in efforts to preserve the wisdom of the Classical world while at the same time others were destroying the ancient pagan sources at the behest of the Church. A number of people were compiling "encyclopedias" (in the sense of detailed accumulations of information and quoted material) which epitomized especially the philosophical writings of the ancients, and by the fifth century hardly any of the popular "encyclopedists of the day were still using primary sources. Instead they were dealing with copies of copies of the work of other epitomizers and after a while they were often quoting each other without attribution. This practice has made it very difficult for scholars to assign attribution to any one of the late Latin sources because much of it had entered what we would term the public domain. This effort toward epitomizing, summarizing and synthesizing while staying under the radar of the Church led to the permanent loss of many Classical works, notably those of Cicero and the Greek philosophers, and many others as well. Virgil, who was considered — along with Plato and Cicero — a giant among the wise, seems to have survived, not so much because of the beauty of his poetry but because of its susceptibility to writers taking flowery but ambiguous phrases from his works and turning them to their own uses.

One of the most influential early Medieval compilers was Macrobius, who had glommed onto an episode from the final book of Cicero's De re publica, which was reminiscent of the Vision of Er that concludes Plato's Republic. During the next thousand years, the selection from Cicero was almost the only part of De re publica that had survived, and thanks to Macrobius it has come down to us under the rubric of Somnium Scipionis, or The Dream of Scipio. Macrobius wrote a so-called Commentary on the Somnium which turned out to provide a pretext for performing a mind dump of encyclopedic proportions that expounded on every conceivable topic even remotely suggested by Scipio's dream as originally recorded by Cicero.

If The Dream of Scipio seems familiar, it was discussed by C.S. Lewis in The Discarded Image, which develops an extensive and detailed discussion of the Medieval world view of which the Somnium Scipionis provided a succinct summary. It is only 288 lines of Latin prose but it is packed and pithy — hardly a word is wasted. Lewis was attempting to construct a model of that world view through a review of the literature, and one could shorten the learning curve regarding Lewis's materials by absorbing the Somnium Scipionis and by at least perusing Macrobius's Commentary and William Harris Stahl's sixty-page introduction in particular. It presents a useful roadmap to the Commentary and the outlines of Medieval learning.

Readers of Chaucer's dream visions such as The House of Fame or The Parliament of Fowls, Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy or even Dante's Divine Comedy will have noted multiple references to Macrobius and the "dream of Scipioun" and will recognize the pattern established by Scipio's dream.

Additionally and as an aside, Iain Pears, author of An Instance of the Fingerpost (1997) also wrote a novel called The Dream of Scipio (2002) that I have been meaning to read, but I understand it has nothing to do with Cicero's work.

Cicero's De re publica — of which a large section was discovered in the Vatican library in 1820 as a palimpsest concealed under a fourth or fifth century manuscript commentary on the Psalms by St. Augustine — was modeled after Plato's Republic. Where Plato outlined an ideal state, Cicero was concerned with the ideal operation of the Roman Republic. Plato concluded his work with the Vision of Er which speaks of the afterlife and the heavenly spheres. Apparently the Epicureans ridiculed Plato's use of visionary materials, and Macrobius tells us that Cicero, in a desire to avoid such criticism, chose the form of a dream to speak of the rewards of an afterlife for virtuous statesmen (and others who were pure in heart) and to describe the path the soul takes going to and from the heavenly spheres.

So what exactly was this dream? Scipio the Younger dreamed that he had been carried away into the heavens to the sphere of the fixed stars by his grandfather Scipio the Elder where he also met his deceased father, and looking down saw the earth and Rome and how small they were in relation to all of creation. Scipio was advised by his elders to lead a virtuous life and was shown the path souls take going to and from heaven via the nine planetary spheres.

The point of Cicero's Somnium Scipionis is to promote principles of justice in the government of a state:

"Nothing that occurs on earth, indeed, is more gratifying to that supreme God who rules the whole universe than the establishment of associations and federations of men bound together by principles of justice, which are called commonwealths. The governors and protectors of these proceed from here \i.e., the heavens\ and return hither after death.

* * * * *

"Scipio, \said his father\ cherish justice and your obligations to duty, as your grandfather here, and I, your father, have done; this is important where parents and relatives are concerned, but is of utmost importance in matters concerning the commonwealth. This sort of life is your passport into the sky, to a union with those who have finished their lives on earth and who, upon being released from their bodies, inhabit lives on earth and who, upon being released from their bodies, inhabit that place at which you are now looking (it was a circle of surpassing brilliance gleaming out amidst the blazing stars), which takes its name, the Milky Way, from the Greek word."

Thus, this dream vision is undoubtedly the culmination of Cicero's excursus on leadership in Rome and concerns the welfare of the commonwealth as well as the individual.

The point of Macrobius's Commentary, which is surprisingly lucid and informative compared to other similar works from the early Middle Ages, is to present a thorough and critical explanation of the important elements in the Somnium Scipionis. It provides the beginnings of an understanding of the early epitomizers and how they operated.

Modern critics have praised Cicero's Somnium Scipionis for its poetry despite its being entirely in Latin prose — Ciceronian prose to be sure: "Hardly from the lips of Virgil himself does the noble Latin speech issue with a purer or more majestic flow." (J.W. Mackail) The fact that The Dream of Scipio formed a complete episode combined with the unusually suggestive content lent encouragement to its being excerpted and published as a stand-alone subject worthy of commentary.

Most people today are probably unaware of the extent of Macrobius's influence across at least a millennium in the West. One of the most popular and interesting chapters in the Commentary is concerned with the five categories of dreams. While this classification as well as many other parts of the work are apparently not original with Macrobius, he is credited with conveying this and other elements of Classical lore through the long Dark Ages.

Not only is this an almost sentence-by-sentence commentary on The Dream of Scipio and an encyclopedic compendium of medieval and classical "knowledge" regarding astronomy, astrology, physiology, Pythagorean number theory, the harmony of the spheres, the five geographic zones of Earth, a classification of the virtues and much, much more, but it is also a summary of Neoplatonic philosophy as interpreted by Macrobius based on Plotinus and Porphyry. Cicero, who was indeed a Platonist, would have been surprised to know that his Somnium Scipionis was a Neoplatonic tract!

Anyone who is interested in the underpinnings of Medieval and Renaissance thought, philosophy and literature will find this book to be surprisingly readable and even entertaining to some degree. Where Macrobius gets into the esoteric doctrines of Pythagorean numbers, harmony or geocentric descriptions of the planetary spheres, one can become lost in the weeds because so much is primitive when compared with modern understandings. But this is a small detraction from an otherwise excellent and eye-opening book. Despite Macrobius's obvious goal of clarity, some of his "scientific" explanations are difficult to follow because they are based on outdated science or esoteric theories that in some cases seem outlandish in the twenty-first century.

>245 Poquette: - ok, you have thoroughly captured my imagination.

>246 dchaikin: I tried to tell enough about the book so you won't have to actually read it! ;-)

Outstanding review of Commentary on the dream of Scipio. I understand exactly where you are coming from when you say that some of the explanations are difficult to follow, because to our way of thinking they are outlandish or preposterous. It is of course worth reading for the insight as to how the early medieval person thought about things and this did not change an awful lot until the late renaissance.

Following mutely here, feeling that in comparison my brain has sunk into froglike hibernation! ;)

>248 baswood: Thanks, Barry! Yes, trying to understand the convoluted movements of the planets from a geocentric point of view requires the assistance of an old astrolabe at least! And I am not sure even that would help.

>249 LolaWalser: I am shocked! But it is nice to know you are hovering here and about. ;-)

>247 Poquette: I tried to tell enough about the book so you won't have to actually read it! ;-)

Thank you!

Great review of Commentary on the Dream of Scipio, Poquette. I had to postpone reading it till the weekend to give it my proper attention.

>251 rebeccanyc: >252 edwinbcn: Thanks for reading my review! I got a bit carried away.

*****
I just finished The Dream of Scipio by Iain Pears just to round out this theme. It is only tangentially related to Cicero's original, but very interesting and I'm glad I read it now. It's only been on my shelf since 2002! Review coming later today.

BTW, has anyone read anything by Pears? I read The Instance of the Fingerpost back when it was making a splash. It is actually why I bought The Dream of Scipio when it first came out, and then I let it sit for a dozen years!

The Dream of Scipio by Iain Pears (2002)

It is one thing to read a contemporary novel about the past that transports the reader to a different time and place, recreating reality we can barely imagine but for the skill and knowledge of the writer, and it is quite another to find a single novel that weaves in and out of three historical periods, each separated by many hundreds of years and yet revealing patterns that tie all of them together. Civilization itself is laid bare exposing its pitfalls and its necessities.

The tone of this novel is almost that of a reverie even though it opens with the immolation of one of the novel's three main characters Julien Barneuve, a scholar of literary history, the most contemporary of the three, who was born around the beginning of the twentieth century and died in 1943 in the midst of World War II and the German occupation of France. In 1926 he was working in the papal archives in pursuit of a Provençal poet active during the mid 1300s named Olivier de Noyen. There amidst the papers of Olivier's patron, a cardinal of the Church at Avignon, he discovered a forgotten manuscript that had been written in the late 400s by one Manlius Hippomanes, an aristocratic landholder whose writings indicated he was a Neoplatonist, but whose historical significance had arisen out of his late conversion to Christianity and very rapid elevation to cardinal. Traditions around his name indicated that he was a saint.

What tied these three individuals together was that manuscript of Manlius. But more than that, each of them was a philosopher to one degree or another, and each flourished in the same place — Provençal — at a pivotal time in history when civilization itself appeared to be on the verge of crumbling.

In the 400s the Roman Empire in the west was being overrun by wave after wave of barbarian interlopers. The authority of the state had been greatly diminished, and the real power was accruing to the Church. The great landholders in southern Gaul faced shortages of labor because the slaves were deserting, plus the only protection available was that of paid soldiers, and even that was often insufficient. The great villas were crumbling from disuse, and security was a thing of the past. The sack of Rome in 410 by the Goths had sounded what seemed to many like a death knell of civilization.

In 1310 the political situation in Rome was so difficult the papacy moved to Avignon in the south of France. By this time the so-called barbarian invaders had been assimilated. The most pressing difficulty facing southern France was the outbreak of the Hundred Years' War with England in 1337. But that was before the Black Death arrived in 1348. Cities like Avignon turned into ghost towns due to the collapse of the population. Again, it looked like the end of civilization.

The fall of France in 1940 to the German invasion likewise created havoc between the horrors of war, decimation of the population and shortages of the necessities of living. The Germans had proclaimed a thousand-year Reich, but to the French it seemed like a death warrant, and once again there was a sense of gloom for the prospects of civilization.

On those happy notes, Julien's study of Manlius's manuscript and Olivier's poetry and the known elements of their lives caused him to arrive at some interesting and even somewhat shocking conclusions about said civilization.

The manuscript of Manlius was an extended meditation on The Dream of Scipio from Cicero's De re publica. It was the report of a dream about Scipio, not the famous dream itself, and the philosophy expounded was Neoplatonic as contrasted with Christian doctrine. As an introduction to Neoplatonism which by this time had become not merely a school of philosophy but almost a set of quasi-religious beliefs, this novel would not be a bad place to begin.

Julien, Olivier and Manlius have many things in common. They are all thirsty for knowledge, and each is graced by the companionship of an important female figure. Each is faced with reconciling their philosophical leanings with reality and with the prevailing authorities with whom each is at odds to some degree. We are witness to how they each cope with hardship, cruelty and despair. Not only is the survival of civilization a prevailing theme, but also questions surrounding individual and political loyalty and personal and public virtue arise in each man's life. The historical, philosophical and even romantic elements are played out and contrasted so as to make for a quite compelling novel which will either send the reader back to page one to read it again — for the effect is cumulative and begs for clarification — or to the history books to fill in the blanks about what really happened in those pivotal periods of impending collapse.

>253 Poquette: I loved An Instance of the Fingerpost, and the other books I read from Pears all felt slightly disappointing. That includes The Dream of Scipio, although I did like it. I also liked Stone's Fall. I bought The Portrait some time ago, but when I started reading it I didn't much like the style: the narrator is supposed to be talking to a visitor, so that we read one-half of a dialogue, sort of. And what's worse, I took an instant dislike to the narrator. So I put it down after a few pages (if you can say that of an e-book) and I don't know if I will take it up again.

I too found The Instance of the Fingerpost to be unputdownable although I have forgotten a lot about it. The Dream of Scipio is largely a novel of ideas -- my favorite kind -- and I realize not everyone shares my enthusiasm. Eventually I would like to read more by Pears.

Suzanne, enjoyed your review of The Dream of Scipio and it's good to have all the background information that you have supplied. I would assume that you would need passing knowledge of the three periods of history to enjoy the novel.

Actually, Barry, most of that background is part of the novel. And there is an abbreviated time line at the end for each period to make it easy to locate the fictional events within the real events. The parallels among the different time periods are perhaps more important, and the main character from the WWII era has a perspective on it all and ruminates about it. I would acknowledge that the audience for this may be limited, but I did enjoy the story and the writing which has an elegant feel to it.

Enjoyed your review. This went on the Wishlist...the neoplatonic apsect only encourages me.

That's great to hear, Dan. There is a lot to learn in this book both about history and how some relatively ordinary people related to Neoplatonic ideas that seemed to contradict their beliefs while at the same time being very appealing.

I never read anything by Pears but you make this book sound irresistible.

I don't know whether it's irresistible, but I did enjoy it. But you know my tastes by now! Read at your own risk! You might really like The Instance of the Fingerpost. It is a Medieval thriller and has been compared with The Name of the Rose.

Republic by Plato, translated by Robin Waterfield (1993)

Plato's Republic is one of the world's most famous thought experiments. It is usually described as a treatise on justice in an ideal State, and while that is not incorrect, it is not the whole story. While the work is certainly of interest to students of philosophy and political science, it might also appeal to anyone interested in psychology and literature in general.

The first thing one notices right off the bat is what a great writer Plato is. This great work of philosophy is presented as a conversation — seemingly without end! — which like other dialogues of Plato, engages the reader and draws him or her in with a surprising degree of wit and flare. We who are not philosophers per se might tend to think of philosophy as a dry and lifeless subject, but in Plato's hands, it can be quite fascinating and certainly never dull.

The Republic is not an easy place to begin with Plato because of its sheer length and the scope of ideas it covers, but with some patience it is not an entirely bad place to begin, either.

For whatever reason, reading ancient Greek literature in English translation seems to be fraught with difficulties. It may be because of the limited vocabulary available within the ancient language as compared to a polyglot language such as English with its agglomeration of words from literally everywhere. But word choice can make a huge difference in the tone and feel of the material.

For example, as mentioned above, most modern translations of the Republic are concerned with "justice" in an ideal "state," which sounds rather remote, abstract and high-minded, leaving a perception of difficulty. Robin Waterfield has tried to be more precise in his translation. The Greek word dikaiosunē is usually translated as "justice," but Waterfield says the word "refers to something which encompasses all the various virtues and is almost synonymous with 'virtue' in general." In his translation the Republic is about "morality — what it is and how it fulfils one's life as a human being." Also, instead of "state," Waterfield has substituted the word "community." In combination, the idea of morality in the community brings the whole discussion down to a more personal level. I appreciated the change and the more personal tone of the entire work.

At any rate, philosophy aside because I am singularly unqualified to utter even platitudes on the subject, I enjoyed reading Plato's Republic. It was a much different book than I was expecting. Of course, having recently read Eric Havelock's Preface to Plato, I was reading with an agenda — namely, to see whether his assessment of the Republic was correct, and while I appreciate his perspective, I feel his agenda got in the way of presenting a complete picture.

I also came away from this reading believing that many critics and commentators attribute more dogmatism to Plato than was really intended. The notion that he, through his mouthpiece Socrates, was setting up an ideal state, a sort of communist utopia, is an overstatement. While he did conclude that in his so-called ideal state the rulers would have no personal property and that they would be philosopher kings (and by implication queens), he also admitted many times throughout the discussion that "the community we've just been founding and describing can't be accommodated anywhere in the world, and therefore it rests at the level of ideas." Thus my initial suggestion that the Republic is a thought experiment, and the ideal state or community is a notion to be thought about and discussed but never to be realized. Something called "human nature" will prevent anything like it ever working in the real world. The ideal was created as a paradigm within which to explore the subject of whether a just or moral person is happier than an injust or immoral person, and incidentally, to try to define the nature of goodness. Socrates was only able to come up with various allegories to illustrate his points about what constitutes goodness, but he never delivered a definition as such.

But that is in the nature of Plato's dialogues, which consist of many questions and few definitive answers. The pleasure in reading comes from the plethora of ideas that arise out of the conversations between Socrates and his interlocutors.

In addition to the political level, Plato constantly reminds us that "We should bear in mind the equivalence of the community and the individual," and that a just society reflects the just or moral character of the individuals of whom it consists. What works at the community level he also tries to apply to the individual, not always successfully. The success of the community is dependent upon the education of its people and adherence to its customs. Education as discussed in the Republic applies to the rulers or "guardians," but in an open democratic society it must apply to everyone.

The Republic is not by any means a quick read, and the more time spent, the more one will get out of it. Robin Waterfield's translation in the Oxford World Classics series is excellent in addition for its introduction and extensive notes which help to guide one through the many digressions and to pinpoint the salient ideas.

Very much enjoyed your excellent review of Republic and I have noted that the worlds classics edition would be a good one to read. I can't see myself getting to it anytime soon, but hope to one day. I am encouraged by the fact that you enjoyed reading it.

The end of the year is here and I am happy to say that I did manage to finish The Landmark Thucydides: The Pelopponesian War in time to include it in this years statistics. However, the review will have to wait until 2015.

I am surprised at the emotional impact it had on me. As everyone knows, Athens was completely and utterly defeated by Sparta and her allies, and even though I knew this was coming, after 21 years of Thucydides' chronicle in which only one episode even came close to being decisive, I still felt an overwhelming sadness at the ultimate conclusion another six years later as reported in an epilogue. I need a day or two to let all this sort itself out in my mind. We in the West are heavily invested in Athenian democracy, and while Athens was indeed a democracy at home, she ran a rather authoritarian empire abroad, and therein lay the seeds of her undoing. But more on this later!

Looking back over this year it feels like one of my greatest years ever for reading: Fortune smiled on me with a plenitude of wonderful books. It will be a difficult year to follow up.

I am winding down my previous preoccupation with "pagan influences" although this topic is bound to pop up again from time to time. There were no less than five books with "dream" in the title this year. It is true that dream literature captures my imagination and there may be more in this vein in future. Many classics appear on my list, many of which were major tomes but in the end proved to be very rewarding. Also there were many examples of modern and postmodern fiction which turned out to be some of my favorite books of the year. Women authors got short shrift in 2014, and I am not sure whether that is even relevant. Difficult to analyze. English books dominated in the original language department, but I did manage 5 translations from Greek and 2 from Polish — a new trend perhaps.

Overall favorites in retrospect:

Fiction
Night Train to Lisbon: A Novel by Pascal Mercier (2008)
The Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durrell (1957-1960)
Odyssey of Homer tr. by Robert Fitzgerald (9th C. BC)
The Medusa Frequency by Russell Hoban (1987)
Piano Stories by Felisberto Hernández (1993)
The Red and the Black by Stendhal (1830)
Geoffrey Chaucer: Dream Visions and Other Poems (2007)
Bartleby & Co. by Enrique Vila-Matas (2000)
The Dream of Scipio by Iain Pears (2002)

Nonfiction
The Uses of Literature by Italo Calvino (1982)
Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition by Frances Yates (1964)
The Glorious Adventure by Richard Halliburton (1927)
Travels with Herodotus by Ryszard Kapuscinski (2004)
The Landmark Herodotus: The Histories (c. 430 BC, 2007)
Alexandria: City of Memory by Michael Haag (2004)
The Landmark Thucydides: The Peloponnesian War (411 BC, 1996)

Statistics
63 books read
36 (57%) novels and other literature (epics, drama, dream visions, short stories, etc.)
27 (43%) nonfiction

58 (92%) by men
5 (8%) by women

Stars:
7 ★★★★★
17 ★★★★½
25 ★★★★
11 ★★★½
1 ★★★
1 ★
1 ½

By original language: 21 American English, 18 British English, 1 Danish, 8 French, 3 German, 5 Greek, 1 Italian, 1 Latin, 2 Polish, 3 Spanish

By date of first publication
5 BC
1 5th C.
1 1500s
11 1800s
24 1900s
23 2000s

Favorite Book Cover

One final piece of business before moving on to Club Read 2015 — the last wish list and notable books for 2014, gleaned as usual mostly from Club Read threads. It is not too long, considering it was the Christmas season! ;-)

December Wish List

Cambridge Companion to Pride and Prejudice (***nickelini)

Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm: a New English Version by Philip Pullman (***nickelini)

Author, Author by David Lodge (***Nickelini — a fictionalized bio of Henry James)

Maus I and Maus II by Art Spiegleman (***dchaikin — see his excellent review: "Maus changed the graphic novel")

Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf (***detailmuse)

The Hours by Michael Cunningham (***detailmuse)

The Sherlockian by Graham Moore (***Mamzel-2015C)

The Classical World: An Epic History from Homer to Hadrian by Robin Lane Fox (***StevenTX)

Thanks to everyone who contributed now and throughout the past year! It has been a pleasure to interact with all of you who have visited and commented in this thread. Looking forward to 2015 in the new Club Read!

Happy New Year, Suzanne.

Happy New Year. See you over at Club Read 2015.