Thursday, March 22, 2007
Der Grair Bär and I met this afternoon in a meeting which I found most constructive. He had edited my paper and offered only a few minor alterations as to form and content. I tend to overpack sentences and wrote several disjointed paragraphs in which these sentences did not causally relate to one another. But overall Dr. Grair seemed impressed that I could write well; he stressed that I just need to focus.
I began with copious background, but did not begin any poetic analysis until the third page. Dr. Grair pointed out that I introduced plenty of viable ideas before analyzing the poems, but needed to save them for later or elaborate further. Mainly, I must elucidate the main "argument" or topic of how Goethe uses the Elegies to establish a distance from modernity. I made no mention of this little item until the second page.
For our next meeting I am to restrict myself to one poem of the cycle for analysis, which ought to be relatively straightforward. The pertinent secondary material I incorporated earlier could be moved, in certain cases, to this section.
However, before beginning revisions and writing the next section for Dr. Grair, I must compose a five-page expository on public and private in Roman satire for Dr. Larmour. He graciously moved the assignment from being due tomorrow to being due at his office sometime Monday, for which I am eternally grateful, as tonight I must work until two in the morning and would, therefore, have no time to write anything. This afternoon I am checking out books of the satirists to take to the Lauree Lair for close reading.
Was für ein Spaß.
[Lauree Frances Keith concluded this diatribe at 1:03 PM]