Reading Lulls are No More

As of late, I have been thinking about how my patterns of reading have changed, and not changed, over the years. Reading is my lifelong hobby. I have almost always been consistent reader. Yet there have been times where I must admit that I have gone into lulls. Despite what I label as “lulls,” there have never really been very long stretches of time when I did not read.

However, there were times that, like most readers, I would go into shorter slumps. These have been stretches of a few months, during which I did not read much. Of course, during periods when my education preoccupied my time, my reading would slow to a crawl and sometimes stop altogether. I will admit, however, that at other times I neglected my studies in lieu of doing some reading for pleasure.

There have been reasons other than education for these short reading slumps.  I recall that when I first discovered the Internet, I did not read books for a couple of months. It was during this time when I wondered if I would ever begin heavy reading again. Ultimately, the allure of the digital world was, in the end, no match for my persistent desire to delve into the intricate details and ideas contained in real books. After a few months, I returned to my lifetime hobby.

These days, with reading time as a premium, these non-reading lulls have entirely disappeared from my life. Due to this scarcity of reading time I have not gone into a slump for years. Instead, I hunger for more hours to read.

The other thing that I do now that I never did in previous years is read two books simultaneously. I recall that when I attempted this years ago, I would invariably neglect one book for the other. The more interesting tome would get the most attention, and the less interesting one would be so neglected. Thus, it became impossible to maintain a coherent train of thought on the neglected book’s contents. Once again, that problem has disappeared, and I find that I can easily apportion my time between almost any pair of books. If I am going a little slower on one, as opposed to the other, I will usually just speed up on the one, after I complete the more interesting work. Though my ongoing plan is to read one fiction and one non-fiction book simultaneously, it does not always work out that way. I often find myself reading two fiction or two non-fiction books together.

My reading patterns have changed quite a lot over the years. Obviously, external factors have played a good part in this. I wonder how they will be changed when I look back again in twenty to thirty years. I think however, that it is likely that I will still be reading as much as time permits, which will not be enough.

Shakespeare Sonnet Number 9

From time to time, I am posting my thoughts on particular Shakespeare Sonnets. For now, I am proceeding in order.

Is it for fear to wet a widow's eye

That thou consumest thyself in single life?


Ah! if thou issueless shalt hap to die,

The world will wail thee, like a makeless wife;


The world will be thy widow and still weep

That thou no form of thee hast left behind,

When every private widow well may keep

By children's eyes her husband's shape in mind.

Look what an unthrift in the world doth spend

Shifts but his place, for still the world enjoys it;


But beauty's waste hath in the world an end,

And kept unused, the user so destroys it.

No love toward others in that bosom sits

That on himself such murderous shame commits.

As in the previous Sonnets, the voice of the narrative is imploring the Fair Youth to marry and have children. The subject of all this attention is initially questioned. Does he fear that he will leave someone a widow if he marries and then dies? The Fair Youth is next lectured that he will be depriving the world of the continuation of his own beauty should he die without progeny. We have heard similar arguments before in this sequence of poems.

The last two lines of this Sonnet catch my attention.

No love toward others in that bosom sits

That on himself such murderous shame commits.

I like these lines from an aesthetic perspective, but they seem to be introducing something new into the Sonnets. The words seem a little angry, and perhaps they are even a little desperate. By this time in the sequence of Sonnets, the voice of the poem has used all sorts of arguments and devices to try to convince his subject to marry and have children. These lines may indicate a certain level of frustration.

Shakespeare’s motivation for writing these Sonnets has puzzled people for generations. I myself have ruminated upon these motivations in my previous posts. Regardless of the question of whether Shakespeare was trying to speak for himself here or not, this turn into what appears to be slightly exasperated language seems to further illustrate that the poet has created a multifaceted character in the voice of the poem. There are indeed many sides to this speaker.

As I have explored in previous posts, this unseen narrator is capable of sublime language, humor and allegories that range from the common to the clever to the soaring. Now, if I am reading this accurately, a little bit of vexation has been infused.

My commentary on additional Sonnets:

Sonnet 1

Sonnet 2

Sonnet 3

Sonnet 4

Sonnets 5 and 6

Sonnet 7

Sonnet 8

Sonnet 66

Homer‘s The Odyssey: Polyphémus - More Then Meets the Eye

A recent reread of Homer‘s The Odyssey has me pondering the Cyclops Polyphémus. I believe that this is my fourth reading of this epic poem. This time around, I seem to have developed a mini-fascination with the one-eyed giant.

After Odysseus and members of his crew enter Polyphémus’s cave hoping for a warm welcome, the Cyclops imprisons the crew and begins to brutally murder and devour them one by one. Obviously, this monster is not a very sympathetic character. He embodies maliciousness. However, on closer examination, the depiction of his behavior raises some interesting questions. When we examine Polyphémus’s murderous actions, as opposed to the actions of the work’s hero, Odysseus, I think that some surprises are in store.

We are often told not to attempt to apply modern morality to these ancient works. Many of the tenets of our present day belief systems did not apply when they were written. This is fair enough, but I think that it will be helpful if we do a quick examination of the work based upon our modern values in order to determine what is not meant to be pernicious in terms of the Cyclops’s action.

Odysseus and his crew are the sackers of cities. When they overran Troy, as well as other places mentioned in the poem, they murdered defenseless citizens, raped and kidnapped the women, who along with the children were subjected to a life of slavery. Odysseus, based upon modern standards, is guilty of crimes against humanity and perhaps genocide.

When the crew encounters Polyphémus, he begins to bash them against the walls of the cave, and then he proceeds to gruesomely eat their lifeless, raw flesh. This is really ugly behavior, to say the least. However, in comparison to what the protagonists of the poem have done, it seems no worse, and perhaps not even as bad. In fact, again based our twenty-first century concepts of justice, one might say that Odysseus and his men received their just desserts.

So can we say that Polyphémus has done anything wrong based on the moral framework of the epic? The Cyclops is clearly meant to be a malevolent character, but perhaps not for the reasons that we think. Our first clue that there is something very wrong with the Cyclopes in general is presented at following juncture, when the society of the one eyed giants is described as,

"a violent race without any laws, who neither plant crops nor plow but leave their whole livelihood to the care of the gods. These creatures don’t come together in public assemblies and aren’t governed by statutes, but they all live in caves high up near the mountaintops, and each one is a law to himself and rules his children and wives and doesn’t care about any neighbor or kinsman."

I know only a moderate amount about Greek culture and ethics, but it seems that the Cyclopes are being criticized here for not living as a civilized community. Public assemblies and statutes were a big part of life in the Greek City states. The Cyclopes have none, and they do not care about each other or their community.

Before Odysseus encounters the giant, he wonders what the entire race might be like,

"are they savage  and violent, or are they good law-abiding people who fear the gods and show proper kindness to strangers?"

The kindness to strangers seems key to me. I think that within the morality of the play, hospitality to visitors and strangers is an essential part of moral behavior. Hospitality is a trait that the law abiding and the reverent exhibit. Odysseus and his men enter Polyphémus’s cave, begin to eat his food and wait around for him as if they expect to be welcomed as guests. When the Cyclops arrives, he shows his true colors by brutally murdering and eating them.

Throughout other parts of the work, virtuous people show kindness and generosity to strangers. In one of many examples, when Eumaeus the swineherd believes that Odysseus is just a forlorn and destitute traveler, he explains why he took the disguised hero in and exhibited kindness, he states,

“It wouldn’t be right for me to treat any stranger, even one worse-off than you are, with disrespect, since strangers and beggars come under Zeus’s protection”

So, in the odd and ancient moral framework, it is acceptable to sack a city and to murder and rape its inhabitants. However, it is essential that one treats visitors with respect and kindness. Only the lawless who live without strong community do not provide such hospitality. This, of course, seems bizarre to me. It illustrates how the concept of morality has changed so much down the millennia.

Despite Polyphémus’s actions, another question arises; is the Cyclops a complete monster with no redeeming qualities? He may indeed be a monster, but I suspect that there may be a little humanity in him.

At one point Odysseus and his remaining men escape the cave by tying themselves to the Cyclops’s sheep who are leaving the cave for their morning grazing. Odysseus is tied to the last ram in the line. The blinded Polyphemus is surprised that his strongest ram, unbeknownst to him, weighed down by Odysseus clinging to him, is lagging behind the pack. He remarks

"‘Dear ram, why is it that you are the last to go out of the cave? Never before today have I seen you lagging behind the others, but always you are the first one to stride out and graze on the lush grass of the meadows, the first one to reach the stream,

and the first one who wants to return to the fold at evening. But now you are last of all. You must be grieving for your master’s eye, which a coward attacked and blinded… If only you were endowed with reason as I am and were able to speak, you could tell me where he is hiding."

Is Polyphemus showing affection to this ram? I think so. He expresses his belief that the ram is feeling empathy towards him. This seems to be an indication of reciprocated feelings. The balance of the words, where something of an admiration for the ram’s usual boldness as well as the Cyclops’s wish that the creature were endowed with reason, seems to support this conclusion.

As I hoped to illustrate above, Polyphemus and his society are a little more complicated and little more meaningful than meets the eye. The Cyclops seems to be a key that unlocks a door into some of the ethics and morality contained in this epic.

A note on the Stephen Mitchell Translation that I read. I had previously read the Richard Laittimore and Robert Fagles translations. My first reading was in high school and I do not remember who the translator was. I found Mitchell’s translation to be excellent. It was accessible and lacked what seemed awkwardness that seemed to characterize other translations. This translation also flowed very well. While easier to comprehend it still retains the grandness inherent in the work.