Coleridge: Rime, Christabel, Kubla Khan, & More

[BAYLOR]

Probably none of us here has read Homer -- that is, what Homer actually wrote, in ancient Greek. There are people who have learned that language so that they could read Homer wrote. Not having done so, I have no right to an opinion about what Homer wrote, except to say that I envy those who can read him and imagine that many of them wouldn't give up that ability for just about anything.

Happily for us, we all can read what Coleridge actually wrote. If reading his poetry takes more effort than reading a prose paraphrase would, perhaps we should take it that, at last, that would be effort well spent. My experience, for what it's worth, is that it has been.

I would give up all my non-Inklings science fiction* rather than give up the Ancient Mariner, if I had to choose.

*Yes, Wells, Hodgson, Lindsay, Lovecraft, Asimov, Simak, Campbell, Heinlein, van Vogt, Clarke, Bradbury, Le Guin, Miller, Pohl, Anderson, Vance, Brunner... I would give up all those books rather than give up this one poem -- though I would miss some of them keenly.

Ive read a fair amount poetry and I can appreciate it for what it is but, if given the choice , I tend toward prose works.

 

[hitmouse]

Probably none of us here has read Homer -- that is, what Homer actually wrote, in ancient Greek. There are people who have learned that language so that they could read Homer wrote. Not having done so, I have no right to an opinion about what Homer wrote, except to say that I envy those who can read him and imagine that many of them wouldn't give up that ability for just about anything.

Happily for us, we all can read what Coleridge actually wrote. If reading his poetry takes more effort than reading a prose paraphrase would, perhaps we should take it that, at last, that would be effort well spent. My experience, for what it's worth, is that it has been.

I would give up all my non-Inklings science fiction* rather than give up the Ancient Mariner, if I had to choose.

*Yes, Wells, Hodgson, Lindsay, Lovecraft, Asimov, Simak, Campbell, Heinlein, van Vogt, Clarke, Bradbury, Le Guin, Miller, Pohl, Anderson, Vance, Brunner... I would give up all those books rather than give up this one poem -- though I would miss some of them keenly.

My grandmother took a degree in classics in the 1920s, and read Homer in Ancient Greek. I have her old books. She was a bit otherworldly. She once stepped off a boat in Pireus and asked directions to the Acropolis, in Ancient Greek. The response was something like: “Madam, we stopped speaking that language 2000 years ago.”

 

[Extollager]

Yes, I suppose it was like she stepped off the boat at Southampton and cried, "Hwæt!"

 

[hitmouse]

Yes, I suppose it was like she stepped off the boat at Southampton and cried, "Hwæt!"

She was a missionary in India for nearly 40 years, and the boat from Southampton to Bombay would have made a few stops on the way. She never told me what she said when she got back to Southampton.
She did once ask a man in Paris if she was on the left or the right bank of the Seine. He replied that it depended which way one was facing.
My grandfather loved to tell these stories.

 

[Extollager]

I hope the stories are written somewhere. I'm haunted by the thought of the delightful anecdotes that last a generation or two and then are forgotten.

 

[BAYLOR]

I hope the stories are written somewhere. I'm haunted by the thought of the delightful anecdotes that last a generation or two and then are forgotten.

It happens, and there is nothing to be done about it. In the end ,everything of this world falls to dust.

 

[Extollager]

The Coleridge collection.