Friday, May 26, 2006
My cell phone battery has yet to arrive. The payment posted the nineteenth, so I suppose I might give it ten days to be delivered before I become twitchy.
Sometime Wednesday I finally finished reading all of Franz Kafka's short stories (the book having been buried for some time) and the sourcebook April sent. Since I have been plowing through Ilios: The city and country of the Trojans, Heinrich Schliemann's publication of his doings at Troy up to 1879. I transversed the autobiographical narrative easily enough, but as he began to describe minute rivulets and the composition of clays and grains of sand, my attention admittedly waned.
Schliemann quotes extensively the ancient sources, particularly from the Iliad itself, but also from Strabo (mostly) and Pliny the Elder (less often). Sometimes the Greek text is more interesting, despite my comprehension of usually about five percent of it (select adverbs and prepositions). I need to develop a schedule for the summer about how I am to continue studying Greek and Latin in particular (German taken care of mostly through "Deutschercize"). In August it will have been eight months since I have even glanced at any Latin, so a thorough review is most assuredly in order. I will be a busy bee.
[Lauree Frances Keith concluded this diatribe at 2:44 AM]