I recently read Virgil’s Aeniad and despite the super-glossy modernization by Fagles, it was a good read. Furthermore it fulfilled one of those major milestones of literature life forces on us.
Unfortunately, despite being judged the best book I had read in 2019 (to date), The Aeneid was just another violent epic full of cleaved breastbones, rolling heads, and buckets of blood and gore.
The first gory epic I read was Chanson de Roland. At a very young age I’m sure the carnage was great fun (and prepared me for Ben Vereen on Broadway years later).Since then I have read epics such as Beowulf (in Old English), the Iliad and the Odyssey, and The Lord of the Rings.
I recently was reminded that not everyone shared many of the experiences I mention on this weblog. Specifically visiting City Lights Bookstore and the entire San Francisco experience I enjoyed back in the 1960s. Just today I was pointed towards an excellent introduction to City Lights and San Francisco available on YouTube, This is part 3 and it really takes me back to my college days, Jack Hirshman, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and the City Lights Bookstore.
“Scientism” in politics still presupposes that human welfare is its object, a concept which is utterly alien to totalitarianism. It is precisely because the utilitarian core of ideologies was taken for granted that the anti-utilitarian behavior of totalitarian governments, their complete indifference to mass interest, has been such a shock.