Knight's Reading List XXI: September 2008

Reading List:

Anonymous. Pervigilium Veneris.
Berton, Pierre. The Great Depression.
Tibullus. Tibullus.
Zegarelli, Mark. Logic for Dummies.

Non-Fiction:

Berton, Pierre. The Great Depression. 1990. xviii + 675 pages. Index.

With all the recent talk about the New Deal, I think was good for me to read Pierre Berton’s account of the Great Depression in Canada. Berton often draws a stark contrast between the experimentalism and optimism of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the stodgy conservatism and passivity of the two Canadian prime ministers of the period, Richard Bennett and William Lyon Mackenzie King. Bennett was a Conservative and Mackenzie King was a Liberal, but that made little different. They were afraid of communists, they were afraid of expanding the power of the central government, they were afraid of running up deficits, they were afraid of their own shadows. (In the case of Mackenzie King, who was heavily involved in spiritualism, this last was almost literally true. He backed away from anything his late mother might have disapproved of.)

The result was a terrible experience. Children on the prairies were reduced to eating Russian olives and thistles. The dole was quite intentionally stingy and humiliating. A lot of effort was put into moving young men into camps in the woods and keeping them behind wire, rather than putting them to useful work. This was a government, whether led by a Liberal or a Conservative, which was afraid of its own people, and which had no sympathy for them. Let us hope that Americans don’t forget how fortunate we were to have FDR, and that the fears of present-day “conservatives” don’t stifle the government’s efforts to solve our current economic problems.

Zegarelli, Mark. Logic for Dummies. Indianapolis: Wiley Publishing, Inc., 2007. xviii + 362 pages.

Not everyone likes formal logic. I have recently read Quine’s Elementary Logic and Methods of Logic, and these are serious, useful books on the use of formal logic for sentential analysis. Mark Zegarelli has written a book which combines a systematic presentation of formal logic with a light touch. I’m not sure I understand formal logic better from Zegarelli than from Quine or Kahane, but it was more fun reading about it in Zegarelli’s version. I may even be more apt to apply these principles and techniques than I would have after reading the other texts.

Poetry:

Anonymous. Pervigilium Veneris. Translated by J. W. Mackail. Revised by G. P. Goold. Pages 341-359 in Catullus, Tibullus, Pervigilium Veneris, 2nd edition revised by G. P. Goold. Cambridge, MA and London, England: Harvard University Press, 1962. Loeb Classical Library 6.

Tibullus. Tibullus. Translated by J. P. Postgate. With revisions by G. P. Goold. Pages 185-339 in Catullus, Tibullus, Pervigilium Veneris, 2nd edition revised by G. P. Goold. Cambridge, MA and London, England: Harvard University Press, 1962. Loeb Classical Library 6.

It may be useful to point out that the Loeb Classical Library series from Harvard University Press comes in two colors: green and red. The books with green covers and dust jackets are translations of works in Greek. Those with red covers and dust jackets are translations of Latin originals. (Green = Greek; Red = Roman). Each work is presented in the original language on the verso, and the translation is opposite on the recto. The small format means that one can cover the translation with a 3” x 5” index card to focus on the original.

When Albius Tibullus died in 19 BCE, he left behind two books of poetry: Delia and Nemesis. These are reproduced here, along with a “poetic miscellany” called The Messala Collection. Tibullus wrote narrative poems with a rather rural flavor. “When the time is ripe, let me plant the tender vines and the stout orchard trees with my own deft hands, a countryman indeed.” (I, i) There are plenty of poems about love here, and fervent love at that, but at a more leisurely pace than that of Catullus. Given the martial nature of Roman society, I, x “Against War” is particularly interesting. “What madness is it to call black Death to us by warfare!”

The anonymous poem Pervigilium Veneris (The Vigil of Venus) is, the translator says, ascribed to one Tiberianus, and to the African school of the late third and early fourth centuries. It is a celebratory poem in ten stanzas, including three poems on Spring, three on the festival of Venus, and four litanies to Venus. The first poem is punctuated by a refrain: Cras amet qui numquam amavit, quique amavit cras amet!. (Let him love tomorrow who has never loved, and let him who has tomorrow love!) This recalls to mind one of the anomalies of the identification of Greek gods with Latin deities. Venus is usually identified with the Aphrodite of the Greeks, but I think it is fair to say that Venus is more of a Goddess of Spring and of the fertility of the Earth than Aphrodite.