Thursday, September 04, 2008
This morning I arose and walked to The Tower (the eighteen-story campus office building; the tenth floor houses the Classics Department) ashiver with indecision: to study the manuscript tradition of Das Nibelungenlied or Saturae Iuvenalis? The topic abstract being due at three, I conferred with a few people and settled with Saturae Iuvenalis, after its potential use as a subject for my exit examinations in two years was pointed out. Hundreds of copies exist, of which about seventy occur prior to the twelfth century. Over the next week I shall research more thoroughly where codexes exist and narrow down which would be best to examine.
My Greek professor schlepped everyone in the class into signing up for slots at an all-day campus marathon of reading The Iliad in English on the fifteenth of this month. I dibsed nine o'clock a.m., to begin the madness with what will likely be a terrible interpretation of the first part of Book I. I do not mind doing this so much as other people will mind hearing it.
Every morning the cell phone alarm rouses me from bed between five and six (depending on how long I lie there, waiting for Andreas to grind coffee). I find something or other to read and fix eggs or eat a bowl of cereal flakes as Andreas prepares himself for exit. I then shower, gather my books into a blue University of Kentucky Graduate School satchel and a recycled rice bag, and trot to The Tower through a neighborhood with houses dating from at least the twenties. It is splendid to have a routine again.
Labels: alarm, coffee, Homer, Juvenal, manuscripts, Nibelungenlied, office, optimism, professor, reading, research, routine, satire, The Iliad, The Tower, University of Kentucky
[Lauree Frances Keith concluded this diatribe at 3:58 PM]