Spring will bring Byzantium

I got down on my knees this morning and examined a bit of ground near my house. Sure enough, the first tight tips of crocus buds have pushed up into the light and in a few weeks, these pioneers of the spring season will bloom.

Winter storms may still come, but they will go, too, and the seasons will change. My family members who have lost jobs in this ruined economy, will survive, with our arms of support wrapped around them. My grandmother, who fell and badly hurt herself this month, may yet have a few joyful years left with us.

I read through Gnosticism this winter and do not regret the time spent on it, though it was terribly hard to understand. Now I am reading the very last of the "pagans" before I enter the literature of the Byzantine Empire, prelude to the Middle Ages.

This weekend, I read Longus' "Daphnis and Chloe." After the Nag Hammadi library, this book seems almost unbearably simplistic.

More later.

At the halfway point in a Very Long Book

Reading Plutarch, a great Roman writer of the first century AD, for all these months, leaves me with a full storehouse of knowledge.

But just as dining only on Porterhouse steaks, as tasty as they are, would soon grow tiresome, I am tired of Plutarch. I am tired of Rome in general.

I want to explore the rise of Islam and the Middle Ages, and begin to pair my reading with the art and music of each era, immersing myself as deeply as is possible in the world of each writer. That has been rather difficult with Ancient Rome.

Last night, I reached the halfway point in Plutarch’s "Lives," page 460-something. It is not a good sign when one notices something like that, even worse when one is relieved to finally reach such a point.

Why not just do the sensible thing and stop reading the book? First of all, I never
made any claims to be a sensible person. Secondly, having taken notes on what I have read, I now have a wealth of information to which I can refer back, on what this man wrote. I can access these notes for the rest of my life. His wisdom belongs to me – I have earned it. Since I am a writer, too, that is important to me.

Thirdly, I am finally reaching a point in the book where Plutarch leaves off discussion of obscure and petty ancient dudes and starts talking about luminaries such as Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar.

New Book is here

I am a happy little boy. B&N has just notified me that my special-ordered Volume 1 of Plutarch's Moralia has arrived. At some point this week, I just need to drive the 15 miles to pick it up.

I have reached a difficult point in my reading project. Aristotle, whom I read a few years ago, was the first to make me realize I might have to someday modify my plan to read every book ever written, in chronological order. For Aristotle wrote a lot. And I spent a lot of time wading through his works -- though I am glad that I did. How could any thinking human being not want some acquaintance with the man who so profoundly and for so long influenced the mind of the Western World?

And Plutarch wrote a lot, too, I have discovered -- his Moralia is in about 15 volumes. My tiny house has not room for them all, nor my bank account the means to acquire them -- and our pathetic excuse for a public library doesn't have any of his writings at all.

What to do, what to do?

A literary milestone

Last night, I read the last words of Phaedrus, a Latin fable writer. Tonight, I have opened the pages of Babrius, a poster boy for ancient diversity if there ever was one. He is believed to have been born in Italy, but spent his life in Syria, writing his magnum opus in Greek, dedicated to a great grandson of King Herod, an Idumean Jew. Yes, that nasty Herod you read about in the Bible.

It's a milestone for me. After ten years of reading all the extant literature of ancient Egypt, Babylon and Israel, all the extant writings of classical Greece and all the authors of early Rome -- from Plautus through Seneca -- I have reached, in Babrius, the second century of the Common/Christian Era.

Why do this? Because each book in the library of humanity builds upon the books and the culture that has gone before. Shakespeare in literature and the US Founding Fathers, built upon the Rennaisance, which built upon the Greek and Roman world, which built upon earlier worlds in the East.

As I move further into history, eventually I shall reach a wonderful point where music and art is much better preserved, to add to the learning ambience. Why not read Shakespeare with music of his era playing in the background, art from his time period fresh on my mind or displayed (cheap computer printed copies, of course) on my study room walls; and a menu typical of his era on my kitchen table?