Hogue's my Hero

I'd like to alert all of our loyal readers to the greatest book ever published on the Greek verb:

Addison Hogue's The Irregular Verbs of Attic Prose: their forms, prominent meanings, and important compounds; together with lists of related words and English derivatives.

Here is a photo of a dapper young Professor Hogue looking not unlike Val Kilmer's Doc Holiday:



In Part I Hogue leads the reader through the principal parts of regular verbs patiently and skilfully, explaining how to form them, what use to make of them, and offering novel insights along the way such as reminding you that ēporēsa must be the aorist of an epsilon contract, and not an alpha contract (remember the eri rule!).

In 15 pages Hogue reinforces everything you've ever learned about regular verbs, teaches you to think about them more clearly, and prepares you to dive into the real meat of the book: the irregular verbs.

He has limited himself to the most common verbs encountered in Attic prose and reassures that we don't need anything more extensive, and I think he's right. The rarer verbs are frankly too rare to memorize and the variants of dialect forms, as Hogue notes, will not prove troublesome once the Attic forms are mastered.

Part II begins with a brief set of preliminary remarks on the logic of the entries to follow which is packed with more good sense about how to think about verbs. Hogue then dives right in to the verbs, and each entry gives the headword, a brief definition, the principal parts and any other forms of interest. This is followed by a series of notes which include points on inflection, usage, and derivative words.

One of the most impressive features is the treatment of compounds. How many times have you been stumped by compounds of histēmi? Here they're all laid out with clear explanations of all uses and shades of meaning.

Addison Hogue, we here at the Campus salute you.

Unfortunately the book is out of print and I am unable to find a copy for purchase ANYWHERE IN THE UNIVERSE. A company called AstroLogos does a print-on-demand copy for over $100, but heck -- I could photocopy this library copy for $14.00 even.

Tearing Down the Hous(e), Man

This is long overdue, but we finally have a new Housman quote. This one is drawn from memory (it preceded an article we'd read for some seminar, probably Vergil's Aeneid).

Housman was quoted as saying that whenever he read Vergil in translation he would say,

Out, hyperbolical fiend! how vexest thou this man!

This, of course, is a quote from Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, act 4 scene 2.

On First Looking into Chapman's Homer

Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne:
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He star'd at the Pacific--and all his men
Look'd at each other with a wild surmise--
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

(John Keats)

what is a classicist?

today i read t.s. eliot's essay 'what is a classic?' (given as lecture to virgil society in 1944, published 1945). much to the chagrin and scorn, i suspect, of most modern commentators, he actually has the audacity to make unabashed value-judgments about literature, calling some better than others! he wears his eurocentrism on his sleeve (a bit excessively at times, to my mind). there are a number of aspects to the essay which i enjoy--for example, his attempt to formulate positive definitional criteria by which one may recognize greatness in literature. the one word he centers on to define the 'classic' is 'maturity'. unfortunately, instead of further defining this word in any rigorous fashion, he resorts to the pornography definition ('you know it when you see it'--this line of thinking has always been a little unsettling to me) with a little touch of high-handed dismissiveness:

'To define maturity without assuming that the hearer already knows what it means, is almost impossible: let us say then, that if we are properly mature, as well as educated persons, we can recognize maturity in a civilization and in a literature, as we do in the other human beings whom we encounter. To make the meaning of maturity really apprehensible--indeed, even to make it acceptable--to the immature is perhaps impossible. But if we are mature we either recognize maturity immediately, or come to know it on more intimate experience.'

This is, in the end, though, rather a small point, i think, and does not destroy the essay as a whole. he has some intriguing comments on the development of a 'common style' in the writing of a culture ('A common style is one which makes us exclaim, not "this is a man of genius using the language" but "this realizes the genius of the language") and makes some interesting comparisons of latin literature with english literature (alexander pope being the closest approximation of a 'classic' in the english language).

he crescendoes toward virgil as the epitome of what a 'classic' is, and points toward his universality, over and against the 'proviniciality' (read the essay for his definition) of writers in any modern language (this is not necessarily seen as a detriment). he writes, 'It is necessary to go the the two dead languages: it is important that they are dead, because through their death we have come into our inheritance...'. he claims that individual writers (shakespeare, pope, etc.) may have exhausted one aspect and mode of expression in the english language, but not the whole language itself, whereas virgil exhausted latin's entirety, making it impossible not to work in his shadow in the post-virgilian world. eliot gives a good impression herein of the *feeling* one gets when reading virgil, that feeling of the sheer comprehensiveness of it all.

at any rate, it is well worth reading, if for no other reason than that eliot himself writes with a masterful facility. i leave you with a final comment from him (included mostly for his use of the word 'ruffians', and also for his calling horace a 'plebeian'):

'I think that we are conscious, in Virgil more than in any other Latin poet--for Catullus and Propertius seem ruffians, and Horace somewhat plebeian, by comparison--of a refinement of manner, springing from a delicate sensibility, and particularly in that test of manners, private a public conduct between the sexes.'

nothing to do with dennis

dennis, have you secretly been reading john winkler again?

Historical Document Reveals All!

As I arrived with coffee and breakfast at ye old grad lounge this morning I was met by a bevy of ants on the dining table. I quickly picked up my things, shuffling over to the stiff sofa with its little wooden table that has become somehow a repository of ancient issues of WiReD. Instead of another bold prediction about kitchen robots or cellophane underwear framing a cutting edge design which invariably incorporates neon green and fake terminal fonts, I found the Alumnae Association Reunion Songbook.

I had no idea I'd landed in a gold mine.

This book will doubtless entertain us all through this blog for a long time to come, and I'll begin with a few short snippets.

The first is perhaps more disturbing than amusing. This is the closing verse of the Freshman Show Song of 1980, sung to the tune of If I Only Had a Brain from The Wizard of Oz. It's theme is attaining that elusive perfect GPA, the 4.0:

Oh, I would not just be a dummy

With kids to call me "Mummy"

No, I'd be something more (doo doo doo doo doo doo)

I don't want a 3 point 7

Oh, I'd really be in heaven

If I only had a four!

For the record, your mother is an idiot because she had you. She could have done more with her life, like a Bryn Mawr woman who chases meaningless numbers and disdains the lives of others. This is at once the cult of the academy and the indoctrination of radical feminism. But then again, what would you expect?

My favorite song so far is the Bryn Mawr Girls' Song which one day will posted in full. Here are some choice excerpts:

Oh, you young college from far and near--

When you want some lovin' come flocking here,

And we'll show we do it at Bryn Mawr.

They get bonus points for using the word 'lest' in the next verse, but you'll have to wait for that.

why billy joel has written some of the most important music of all time

guess what? the emperor vespasian instituted a toll on urinals in the city of rome.

Nothing to do with Dionysus

Nor with this blog, but just too funny to let go ...

Echoes of Horace?

Stolen from the Onion:

City Maoist Visits Country Maoist
WUHAN, CHINA—City Maoist Xing Zhen Shengde returned Monday from a visit to Dunyang, where his country Maoist cousin Ni Yuxian resides. "The great Chairman Mao said we would build a socialist society based on agriculture and peasant farming, and that the peasant had the strength of the mountain and the wind in the trees," the urbane Marxist-Leninist reported Tuesday. "Nevertheless, I did not enjoy eating the rotting pig heads that pass for food in that hell-on-earth. Also, all of the peasants wore sandals." Ni said he understands that sturdy shoes must indeed be needed for escaping the muggers and prostitutes on every street corner in Wuhan.

I was in Pittsburgh for the past few days, and shall likely have more to say soon, but I thought I should mention that through Eric's recommendation of the late David Stove I was led to Keith Windschuttle's The Killing of History, which I finished on the train today.

And I highly recommend it. As much as I recommend John Vanderslice's Cellar Door. Up Above the Sea is my early favorite for jam of the year.