(no subject)
I was walking back along Burrell's Walk today when a little Cambridge drama played out beside me: a middle-aged cyclist had to swerve to avoid a student whose bike didn't have lights. As he did so, he sort of growled under his breath, "Arh, no lights", in that very recognisable lecturing growl that people seem to develop. The student, undismayed, observed:
"No manners".
Other news: my supervision on Marie de France went reasonably well once I'd found the room. Our supervisor is younger than I'd imagined from her title 'Dr', with very blonde hair. She has quite decided views, as well, but does seem to want to discuss them with us and is very courteous about her decisiveness, so I think I like her, on the whole. My thought process, it seems, is very similar to that of twelth century Christians. I wonder why? She got fairly metaphysical about the text and prefers us to analyse it without doing tons of secondary reading, another two points in her favour. I do think, though, that she is drawing too much of a distinction between what is true in literature and what is true in life. She said that a love in literature is so close to pain because it must end in lovelessness or death - so the ideal love involves death of both lovers before it loses its power. If that is true, then the same goes for real life love - which it is, as far as I know. Although I don't think that the closeness to death is the same as proximity to pain; pain and death are not synonymous. Personally, I think that the close relationship between love and pain comes in literature because the love itself is raised to a status that it cannot live up to; love between fallible humans is limited by their fallibility and is not in itself a god. If it is given a sort of divine position and worship then it cannot live up to expectations and must go wrong in some way.
Two more humming-birds today. That makes four. I'm surprised at the way that they've trickled out; I thought that I'd get all I was going to get fairly soon. It suggests that either my friends are forgetful, or they don't see me very often, or they read livejournal every two or three days so they don't keep up with things exactly when they're posted. Or some combination of those factors, I suppose.
alfgifu
"No manners".
Other news: my supervision on Marie de France went reasonably well once I'd found the room. Our supervisor is younger than I'd imagined from her title 'Dr', with very blonde hair. She has quite decided views, as well, but does seem to want to discuss them with us and is very courteous about her decisiveness, so I think I like her, on the whole. My thought process, it seems, is very similar to that of twelth century Christians. I wonder why? She got fairly metaphysical about the text and prefers us to analyse it without doing tons of secondary reading, another two points in her favour. I do think, though, that she is drawing too much of a distinction between what is true in literature and what is true in life. She said that a love in literature is so close to pain because it must end in lovelessness or death - so the ideal love involves death of both lovers before it loses its power. If that is true, then the same goes for real life love - which it is, as far as I know. Although I don't think that the closeness to death is the same as proximity to pain; pain and death are not synonymous. Personally, I think that the close relationship between love and pain comes in literature because the love itself is raised to a status that it cannot live up to; love between fallible humans is limited by their fallibility and is not in itself a god. If it is given a sort of divine position and worship then it cannot live up to expectations and must go wrong in some way.
Two more humming-birds today. That makes four. I'm surprised at the way that they've trickled out; I thought that I'd get all I was going to get fairly soon. It suggests that either my friends are forgetful, or they don't see me very often, or they read livejournal every two or three days so they don't keep up with things exactly when they're posted. Or some combination of those factors, I suppose.
alfgifu