Almost Two against Thebes. So Far.
It is the dead of night and I really ought to be soundly asleep, but I am restless because this evening I have made two exciting discoveries. One is that if you listen to Radio 3 in the middle of the night they play interesting music with minimal inane drivelling of the kind that pollutes the broadcasts in the daytime. Since British nighttime is evening here then it saves me trawling my iPod for something suitable, or, worse, taking pot luck with Composer of the Week vel sim. Earlier I downloaded what looked like a perfectly reasonable R3 programme, only to hear the presenter making quite unwarranted threats of Bizet in his introduction, which I consider unconscionable in a pre-watershed slot.
The other discovery is Aeschylus. Now I do not wish to rabbit ingenuously on in the manner of those ghastly thirty-something women who are all over the media at the moment with their wide-eyed stories about producing the world's first baby ("I had a baby and, my word, it was jolly sore!"; "I had a baby, and do you know, I didn't get a minute to myself!" etc.) I am fully aware that opining that Aeschylus is marvellous is not newsworthy, and that never having read any Aeschylus till now is a mark of my own ignorance and neglect. Also, there is nothing more embarrassingly personal than other people's tales of conversion, as anyone who has ever been stuck at a party with a gregarious evangelical will know. I will just say that I am smitten.
This effusion of enthusiasm is based purely on the first three hundred lines of the Septem, however, so I do hope that it doesn't turn out to be one of those works like Crime and Punishment that seem ever so convincing and dramatic at first and then taper off hopelessly and get found down the side of the bed six months later with a big crack in the spine about a third of the way in and the rest intact. On the other hand, a great many tales of laying seige to provincial cities by means of garrisons stationed at the ramparts and of navies defeated by structural adaptations made to the prows of enemy triremes stand between me and my new love, compared with which I will doubtless still adore even the roughest work Aeschylus might pull on me. And tragedies are short.
The other discovery is Aeschylus. Now I do not wish to rabbit ingenuously on in the manner of those ghastly thirty-something women who are all over the media at the moment with their wide-eyed stories about producing the world's first baby ("I had a baby and, my word, it was jolly sore!"; "I had a baby, and do you know, I didn't get a minute to myself!" etc.) I am fully aware that opining that Aeschylus is marvellous is not newsworthy, and that never having read any Aeschylus till now is a mark of my own ignorance and neglect. Also, there is nothing more embarrassingly personal than other people's tales of conversion, as anyone who has ever been stuck at a party with a gregarious evangelical will know. I will just say that I am smitten.
This effusion of enthusiasm is based purely on the first three hundred lines of the Septem, however, so I do hope that it doesn't turn out to be one of those works like Crime and Punishment that seem ever so convincing and dramatic at first and then taper off hopelessly and get found down the side of the bed six months later with a big crack in the spine about a third of the way in and the rest intact. On the other hand, a great many tales of laying seige to provincial cities by means of garrisons stationed at the ramparts and of navies defeated by structural adaptations made to the prows of enemy triremes stand between me and my new love, compared with which I will doubtless still adore even the roughest work Aeschylus might pull on me. And tragedies are short.
posted by Scarlet at 6:46 am
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