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From: jod@ccat.sas.upenn.edu (James J. O'Donnell)
Message-Id: <200003092335.SAA00788@ccat.sas.upenn.edu>
Subject: Re: Art and Literature we've *learned* to love
To: classics@u.washington.edu
Date: Thu, 9 Mar 2000 18:35:28 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: <38C8305C.C89E1BDA@mail.montclair.edu> from "Jean Alvares" at Mar 9, 2000 06:14:36 pm
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I'm not sure I've ever (since I hated the Odyssey in 9th grade) indulged
in what I might characterize as an immature dislike of a work of
literature.  I have dislikes, but they are, I venture to say and hope,
mature, and they tend to abide.  But there's a much larger class of books
I would call not-yets.  Books that haven't yet worked for me, but that's
just because we aren't ready for each other.  I had to wait to age 23 for
Ulysses to explode into my consciousness (TAN:  and the aftershocks recur,
and by the way the Broadway musical version of "James Joyce's The Dead" is
utterly gorgeous) and age 43 for Proust to do likewise, but Finnegans Wake
is still asleep and numerous flirtations with Robert Musil have led to
nothing more than a good night kiss or two. Cicero I tolerated as an
undergraduate, but he continues to grow and mature -- or rather, perhaps,
I do.  I cherish the not-yets:  among them lie hidden many of the fresh
and vital pleasures of my old age, I'm quite sure.  Music is the same way. 

Who has faded?  Tacitus -- his pungency seems now thin, his sense of his
own times jaded and narrow-minded.  I would still teach him, but
autumnally and thoughtfully.

Jim O'Donnell
Classics, U. of Penn
jod@ccat.sas.upenn.edu
.