Books 2011: I know that odour. It is the open grave.

Books 2011: 200


nonfiction

200. Aeschylus, The Oresteia: Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, The Eumenides. Penguin Classics, London, 1979. First edition 1966. Translated by Robert Fagles, with an introduction and notes in collaboration with W.B. Stanford.

The introduction is in love with its own clever enthusiasm and lit'rary analysis. (And not long on basic historical detail.) But the translation is clear and lyric, reaching to the poetic, and Fagle does a strong chorus line.

Agamemnon is the strongest of the plays, and certainly the strongest of the translations. If you're only reading one, read it. After it follow in order of decreasing power The Libation Bearers and The Eumenides, though I suspect The Eumenides would have meant much more to an Athenien audience.

---

200 books the year, not including re-reads. This is a record. And the year's not over yet.

I am thinking about the woman in the century of peace

I'm sitting in a coffee shop, four days before Christmas, working on my thesis. It's ten to four and twilight is blue-grey between the buildings, and for reasons that I cannot explain I feel in great charity with the world.

Barring acts of malevolent deity and natural disasters, in the spring I'm going back to Greece for a six-week internship. The internship is part-time: I'll have time left over to work on my own research. If all goes well, I'll be home for June: if everything comes right, I'll be away again in July or August, back to the land of sunlight and stark shadows in the season of the heat.

It might be hard, but so far, the PhD is being so damn worth it.