Literature Bits

I read Goethe’s Faust in the original German. I don’t speak a word of German so that makes my accomplishment even more impressive.

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I told my English teacher that I was a fatalist. She recommended I read The Oresteian Trilogy. I shrugged and went home and read it because, what choice did I have?

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My favorite part of Anna Karenina was when she destroyed the Infinity Stones, although I might be confusing it with the last Avengers movie…

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Greek myths leave a lot of unanswered questions. For example: Is it harder to teach Cerberus an amusing trick because you need three times as many dog treats?

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Cicero, in De Legibus, wrote “Let the punishment fit the offense”. But, if the offense is breaking someone out of prison, what would the punishment be?

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A lot of postcolonial African scholars think that Conrad’s Heart of Darkness should not be considered a classic because it has a strong air of white supremacy. After all we’ve done for them…

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In Ovid’s Metamorphosis, a hunter spies on the bathing huntress goddess, Diana, and she turns him into a stag to be torn apart by his own hounds. A horrible death, to be sure; but, better than escaping the hounds, coming back home and having to admit that you are a voyeur who now needs a salt-lick.

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I read Moby Dick every few years and, each time I read it, I get something different from it. I think it’s because I’m getting older and my thinking is more mature; but, some of my friends think it’s because I’ve been accidentally reading the wrong book. That would explain those puzzling parts with Jack Reacher in them.

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The director explained that he wasn’t going to change his production of As You Like it to address my preferences. I thought that was pretty ironic.

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In Blake’s poem, The Tyger, he contrasts the strength and deadliness of the tiger with the lamb which was good because, up until that point, people kept getting those two animals confused.