johnny9fingers (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
johnny9fingers) wrote2006-11-11 05:43 pm
johnny9fingers) wrote2006-11-11 05:43 pm
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Constant stream of visitors. Will not allow them to stay by him talking for more than 5 minutes or so, as will exhaust him.
Fielding 'phone calls all day. Mike leaves leaves for his home late tonight. Pretty much everthing sorted out now apart from the brave face during the waiting.
Tried to get in touch with Glamorous Ex but both times I've called no-one's answered - ergo, she has things to complete before she flies out on Tuesday.
Might not get a chance to say toodle-pip, but that's the way the cookie crumbles, as the cliche has it.
Cancelled Birthday party as supremely inappropriate in circumstances. Steve K (an old, old chum) suggests rescheduling when things are better. Sweet lad he is - must remember books for P & J - Oxford companion to Classical Literature (Harvey).
With luck J will follow P to Christ's Hospital, but J still taking entrance exams to St Paul's and Westminster, etc. Will help the girls build their libraries by donating books as and when they need 'em, as long as S keeps me informed of requirements.
Same with Hazel's youngest, mind you E has Hazel's library to run through, which is not insignificant nor deficient in any major respect - and let's face it, neither of us owns a first folio, and only one person I know has a first of Ulysses (Shakespeare and Co, Paris, 1922).
Speaking of which, 'Posh' Stephen (not Steve K) has been an absolute brick of the solid foundational sort. Don't know what I'd've done without his good sense and good nature. Keep meaning to drive down to Sussex and buy him a pint or two, but somehow or other, I never seem to get the time. Pray his Mother is comfortable as well: 82, emphysema, which is why, I suppose, he understands better than most.
At an age now when chums' parents are going through it - difficult times for one and all, if not yet, then soon.
Dammit.
Am determined when my time comes I shall do like Petronius, and open veins in bathtub whilst drinking Margeaux or Latour, and conversing wittily with surviving chums. Blushful hippocrene indeed. Don't think I'm prepared to emulate any of the Satyrica, though.
Does anyone else out there think that Fagles' translations have been somewhat influenced by Logue? or is it just me? or is it merely the way late C20th Homer had to be, contextually speaking? Should read Harold Bloom on Homer, but haven't got around to it yet. Q. liked 'Genius' however, though his 'Shakespeare' I had some arguments with, as I see elements of the modern human in both Chaucer and especially Thom Wyatt, never mind various Greeks longer dead, or characters in Upanishads/Vedas. But Bloom is a greater man than me by orders of magnitude, so carping seems the yapping of a dog at the heels of a lion, or it could be I'm not a modern man, and am guilty of a category mistake.
Probably. But in all that what truth
will there be? He’ll know nothing. He’ll tell me about the
blows he received and I’ll give him a carrot.
Astride of a grave and a difficult birth. Down in the
hole, lingeringly, the grave-digger puts on the forceps.
We have time to grow old. The air is full of our cries.
But habit is a great deadener. At me too someone is looking,
of me too someone is saying, he is sleeping, he knows
nothing, let him sleep on.
Fielding 'phone calls all day. Mike leaves leaves for his home late tonight. Pretty much everthing sorted out now apart from the brave face during the waiting.
Tried to get in touch with Glamorous Ex but both times I've called no-one's answered - ergo, she has things to complete before she flies out on Tuesday.
Might not get a chance to say toodle-pip, but that's the way the cookie crumbles, as the cliche has it.
Cancelled Birthday party as supremely inappropriate in circumstances. Steve K (an old, old chum) suggests rescheduling when things are better. Sweet lad he is - must remember books for P & J - Oxford companion to Classical Literature (Harvey).
With luck J will follow P to Christ's Hospital, but J still taking entrance exams to St Paul's and Westminster, etc. Will help the girls build their libraries by donating books as and when they need 'em, as long as S keeps me informed of requirements.
Same with Hazel's youngest, mind you E has Hazel's library to run through, which is not insignificant nor deficient in any major respect - and let's face it, neither of us owns a first folio, and only one person I know has a first of Ulysses (Shakespeare and Co, Paris, 1922).
Speaking of which, 'Posh' Stephen (not Steve K) has been an absolute brick of the solid foundational sort. Don't know what I'd've done without his good sense and good nature. Keep meaning to drive down to Sussex and buy him a pint or two, but somehow or other, I never seem to get the time. Pray his Mother is comfortable as well: 82, emphysema, which is why, I suppose, he understands better than most.
At an age now when chums' parents are going through it - difficult times for one and all, if not yet, then soon.
Dammit.
Am determined when my time comes I shall do like Petronius, and open veins in bathtub whilst drinking Margeaux or Latour, and conversing wittily with surviving chums. Blushful hippocrene indeed. Don't think I'm prepared to emulate any of the Satyrica, though.
Does anyone else out there think that Fagles' translations have been somewhat influenced by Logue? or is it just me? or is it merely the way late C20th Homer had to be, contextually speaking? Should read Harold Bloom on Homer, but haven't got around to it yet. Q. liked 'Genius' however, though his 'Shakespeare' I had some arguments with, as I see elements of the modern human in both Chaucer and especially Thom Wyatt, never mind various Greeks longer dead, or characters in Upanishads/Vedas. But Bloom is a greater man than me by orders of magnitude, so carping seems the yapping of a dog at the heels of a lion, or it could be I'm not a modern man, and am guilty of a category mistake.
Probably. But in all that what truth
will there be? He’ll know nothing. He’ll tell me about the
blows he received and I’ll give him a carrot.
Astride of a grave and a difficult birth. Down in the
hole, lingeringly, the grave-digger puts on the forceps.
We have time to grow old. The air is full of our cries.
But habit is a great deadener. At me too someone is looking,
of me too someone is saying, he is sleeping, he knows
nothing, let him sleep on.