Friday, February 29, 2008
Senior moments
Still having touble with the Alpacas. On the way to Cheam yesterday, was unable to call the word to mind. Vicunas present and correct. Decided that the missing word started with an A and was the same sort of shape as the Vicuna word. Then decided that it ended with another A but that did help much. Then started going through the alphabet AB, AC, AD, AF and so on and Alpaca popped into view long before I had got to L. Maybe the relevant part of the brain could not stand any more of this nonsense. Today both the A and the V words are present and correct.
I was prompted by Ellmann to take a look at Shaw's translation of the Odyssey. The preface was interesting, Shaw having a background which qualifies him for the work in various ways. And right in the sense that the Odyssey is much more like a modern novel than I had remembered. Not like the Iliad at all. A bit thin in its charectarisation but plenty of story line and plenty to interest a modern. One rather off-centre example would be a line which shows that the ancient Greeks understood that one person could be looking at the sunset and another looking at the sunrise at the same moment in time. Impressive for people who could not travel very quickly - and most of whom, presumably, never travelled at all. What I have not yet been able to get a grip on is the connection between this Odyssey and the Ulysses of Joyce. Joyce clearly made much with it, but I have not yet arrived. The connection remains rather arid for me. A formal connection without life. Maybe there will be a Eureka moment at some point.
And interested to read in my Bedford book about Huxley about the merits of eye exercises for those of very short sight - a method devised by one Dr Bates in the 1920s which is still very much alive and well in Googleworld. It seems that if you are prepared to go to a lot of bother and effort, a very short sighted person can achieve much improvement in his or her eyesight by training the muscles surrounding the lenses. Sticking bits of curved glass in front of the lenses is just a lazy way of achieving the same end - a lazy way which the opticians industry entirely approve of. Huxley seemed to think that their blacking of Bates was entirely a matter of protecting their business. No money for them in self-help regimes. Not sure how right they were. The self-help regime in questions sounded - at a distance - fairly rigorous and I imagine that those of us with only moderate eyesight problems are content to stick with sticking glass. But Huxley - whoose eyes were very badly damaged by some infection when he was an adolescent - persevered, to the point of writing a short book about how wonderful it all was. I think Bedford said that he sold 10,000 copies of it in the first year or so. Must see if I can get hold of a copy.
I was prompted by Ellmann to take a look at Shaw's translation of the Odyssey. The preface was interesting, Shaw having a background which qualifies him for the work in various ways. And right in the sense that the Odyssey is much more like a modern novel than I had remembered. Not like the Iliad at all. A bit thin in its charectarisation but plenty of story line and plenty to interest a modern. One rather off-centre example would be a line which shows that the ancient Greeks understood that one person could be looking at the sunset and another looking at the sunrise at the same moment in time. Impressive for people who could not travel very quickly - and most of whom, presumably, never travelled at all. What I have not yet been able to get a grip on is the connection between this Odyssey and the Ulysses of Joyce. Joyce clearly made much with it, but I have not yet arrived. The connection remains rather arid for me. A formal connection without life. Maybe there will be a Eureka moment at some point.
And interested to read in my Bedford book about Huxley about the merits of eye exercises for those of very short sight - a method devised by one Dr Bates in the 1920s which is still very much alive and well in Googleworld. It seems that if you are prepared to go to a lot of bother and effort, a very short sighted person can achieve much improvement in his or her eyesight by training the muscles surrounding the lenses. Sticking bits of curved glass in front of the lenses is just a lazy way of achieving the same end - a lazy way which the opticians industry entirely approve of. Huxley seemed to think that their blacking of Bates was entirely a matter of protecting their business. No money for them in self-help regimes. Not sure how right they were. The self-help regime in questions sounded - at a distance - fairly rigorous and I imagine that those of us with only moderate eyesight problems are content to stick with sticking glass. But Huxley - whoose eyes were very badly damaged by some infection when he was an adolescent - persevered, to the point of writing a short book about how wonderful it all was. I think Bedford said that he sold 10,000 copies of it in the first year or so. Must see if I can get hold of a copy.
# posted by Jim @ 12:37 AM 
