intro to humanities
The subject of this colloquium is "Ancient texts... Modern Relevance?" Question mark. I want to begin the colloquium by saying something strange. Speaking seriously now, the question of the relevance of ancient texts to our modern lives can be pretty much blown off. Of course ancient texts are relevant. Do we care about justice? Then Plato's Republic is relevant. Do we care about anger, and friendship, and love, and heroism? Then the Iliad is relevant. Do we care about living good lives? Of course we do. Then Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics is relevant. Really, anyone who reads these books with any sort of seriousness knows that they are relevant. Case closed. On the other hand, it is difficult to escape the sense that these works, though profoundly moving, are really parts of some other world. In Greek especially, reading these works is like breathing different air. Even the tortured Lattimore translation of the Iliad is only able to open the window for us a little. In reading Lattimore, you would never feel the way in which Homer's hexameter lines rise, linger, and fall. You would never feel ho
This is why, I think, NBC will never have an Iliad mini-series; why the Iliad will never sell out the Goodman Theater. What we want is both strange and relevant; but even that would be incomplete: "Seinfeld + sun god" wouldn't really touch us in a deep way. If my friends were totally different than I, we wouldn't have much to say to each other. It would be easy to get strange, but irrelevant. " Aristotle famously and beautifully said that a friend is an "other self. " What this means is that our relations to very good books should be based on the model of friendship. People loved it, but it was an American Odyssey. It would be easy to get relevant but not strange-just turn on the television. This is the problem with thinking that the Greeks are so, so relevant. I talk to and listen to and learn from my friends because they're very much like me and also very different from me, and they're also (I think) very good. What we want, I think, is something strange, relevant, and very good. But on the other hand, on the cover of a recent translation of the Iliad is a picture of American soldiers landing on Normandy Beach-and that seems right, too.
Common topics in this essay:
Beach-and Iliad,
Nicomachean Ethics,
American Odyssey,
Relevance Question,
Theater Iliad,
Plato's Republic,
Goodman Theater,
Jeremy Posadas,
Peter Northup,
Guidero Republic,
ancient texts,
strange relevant,
relevant care,
translation iliad,
goodman theater,
ancient texts modern,
sun god,
texts modern,
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Acceptance Essays
