The Restored Picture of Health

After a miserable night and day of grippe, my ill-health has subsided and left me with a benign case of the sniffles. Whilst lying awake in the hours before daybreak worrying that my dinner would again see the light of day, I told myself to avoid gluttony hereafter, and perhaps the memory of my tormented resolves will indeed cause me to exercise more moderation in my consumption henceforth.

The last sentence is probably so convoluted and archaically worded because I just began to work on my play based on A Christmas Carol again. I was looking up videos on YouTube because I couldn't remember whether the Spirit of Christmas Past was the lovely angel or the jolly hybrid of Father Christmas and Bacchus. There I realized that I'm confusing the film versions of 1938 with Reginald Owen and of 1951 with Alastair Sim, and that I should credit both. After I've written my version of the story I want to reread Charles Dickens's original and improve my version as much as I can. While I was on the Internet I also took a look at William Congreve's play The Way of the World, at the first twenty or so lines, to be precise. The prologue is very witty, and the opening dialogue reminded me greatly of The Importance of Being Earnest (which I had to read in English 110, but which I had also read before that (c: ).

Nearly everyone in my family is or has been sick. Ge. had a very miserable few days, as did J., who is now reclining on the small red living room sofa with a wet washcloth on his brow and a blanket guarding his tender frame from the cold. His black shirt makes him look very pale indeed. Papa is still having a bad time of it. T.'s cold has improved. Gi. is probably only sleepy, but he doesn't look too chirpy either. Mama probably has vestiges of a cold but otherwise seems in good spirits.

The rest of the day was taken up by reading articles on nytimes.com, theglobeandmail.com, and guardian.co.uk; "lurking" on an online forum; reading Hunter's Marjory at gutenberg.org; and running errands with Mama as well as hopping over to Plus on my own. But I also read the beginning of a book on Nicolaus Copernicus, published 1954. After a few pages I checked the front to see if it really was published in 1954 and not 1945, because the main thesis of the author seemed to be that the origins of and influences on Copernicus were mostly, or exclusively, German, not Polish. The final sentence is: "West Prussia with Thorn, the land of his birth, and Ermeland with Frauenburg, his second home, therefore have a special right to be proud of the great genius Copernicus whom they brought forth and gave to the German people and to all men." Perhaps the book was indeed published earlier than 1954, because the copy we have is a translation from the German. After that, I read the first "Gesang" in Goethe's Hermann und Dorothea. Then I dove into Keats's "Isabella, or the Pot of Basil." The last time I read that poem was when I was visiting my aunt in England in 2005. It reminds me of the tale of Andersen or Wilde, where the skull of a murdered beloved is hidden in a flower-pot until the hour of macabre revelation and retribution. The veneer (or topsoil) of civilization is thin indeed! :c(

I've forgotten to mention that I tried to read Kant's Kritik der Urteilskraft. My concentration and comprehension didn't make it through the first sentence, though I read on a little farther. I reflected how lovely it would be if the long convoluted sentences were chopped up into sensible shorter ones. Then I skimmed further until I reached "Ideale der Schönheit," where the first sentences were comprehensible but of which I don't remember anything either. I think at present my mindset is just like the one I had in high school regarding math; I stubbornly desire not to understand, unless someone takes the trouble to explain things to me clearly and methodically. But I intend to revisit the book in the next few weeks so that I will become used to it, and I think that Kant is a difficult philosopher to read anyway.

I don't understand why philosophers like Leibniz (I read the first pages of Monadologie), Kant, and Aristotle (I read the first pages of his Poetik) make statements about things without attempting to prove them. A few interesting bits of insight apart, I much prefer reading about alternate world views as they are presented in fairy tales or religious texts. The former don't pretend to be truthful and the latter promise a splendid (or at least exciting) afterlife. Well, I've been exaggerating. I guess I just don't have a high level of thinking. While I don't mind philosophizing now and then, I want to do it on my own terms; also, I do mind when something is stated as if it is fact though, in fact (pun, alas, intended), it is only a hypothesis. Perhaps I should, after all, begin by reading the ancient Greek philosophers and then work my way up through centuries of boringness. (c: