The Market, Energy, And Political Page, T+67 -- October 26, 2018

Making America great!

GDP: CNBC reports that the 3.5% growth is "faster than expected." Behind paywall at The Washington Post.

Disclaimer: this is not an investment site. Do not make any investment, financial, job, travel, or relationship decisions based on what you read here or think you may have read here. Having said that, they're having a sale on Wall Street.

Trump to address Future Farmers of America (FFA): Indianapolis, before the mid-terms. Link here. Wow, for a White House in chaos, the president sure gets a lot done. It was also reported that he was tweeting at 3:00 a.m. this morning. Does he ever sleep?

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A Note To The Granddaughters

Our middle granddaughter's "English/literature" class is reading Beowulf. They are literally reading the poem, line-by-line. One student reads aloud from the Seamus Heaney translation and then every so often the class takes a break and discusses what they have just read. The first quiz: five questions, short paragraph answers. The first question had to do with the Christian / pagan issues in the poem.

The poem has long fascinated me and I have read parts of the poem, including translations by Heaney and JRR Tolkien. It's a slog to get through and I admire anyone for sticking with it. Like so much literature, reading "about" it is often more interesting than "reading it."

To be prepared to talk with Olivia about Beowulf I picked up a small monograph of the poem by Harold Bloom and read much of it yesterday. Olivia and I talked about it to and from her soccer practice last night. She is absolutely enthralled by the poem. What upsets her most: some kids don't seem to take it as seriously and/or enjoy it as much as she does. LOL.

In his very short introduction, Harold Bloom immediately jumps into the Christian / pagan issue of Beowulf. He tends to suggest that too much has been made about that. I agree wholeheartedly but that's simply because I'm not a "close reader" of the poem. It was very, very difficult for me to read it (and I'm talking about the translations). Bloom ends his introduction with this:

Hence the dark conclusion, where the dragon and the hero expire together. All of the poem then is a beautiful fading away of Germanic origins, presumably into the light of a Christian common day. An even subtler reading is offered by Fred C. Robinson, who sees the poem as a blend of pagan heroism and Christian regret. This double perspective does seem to be a prominent feature of Beowulf and reminds me of the double perspective of the Aeneid, a poem at once Augstand and Epicurean.

Wow, it is so coincidental that I am in my Aenied phase and re-reading that poem ( Frederick Ahl's translation). I've enjoyed that translation so much that despite my lack of shelf space for any more books, I've ordered my own copy. LOL.

By the way, compared to both the Iliad and the Odyssey, the Aenied and Beowulf seem "less satisfactory" to me. One wonders if that is because the authors of the latter two were conflicted / unable to come to terms with that "double perspective." Almost as if the story took them where they had not planned to go; their stories took on a direction the poets had not intended. In Beowulf, the poet's hero dies; as for the Aenied, the poet was unable to finish the work, and it appears he had twenty years or so to work on it.

By the way, yesterday I did drop off a box of books from my own library to the high school where our oldest granddaughter is enrolled.

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Laura's Response

After reading the above, our younger daughter Laura, out in Oregon, sent me this note:

I arrived at my friend's house last night just as Jeopardy was nearing the "Final Jeopardy" question. 

The category was English Literature and the clue described a character.   

Instantly I knew who it was, but couldn't think of the name.  I knew the first letter... so I started saying random names out lout to see if I would hit on it, and I did.   

I finally settled on Grendel.  My friend's husband said Beowulf, and both my friend's 27-year-old daughter and I, said, "No, that's the book and that's the hero, this is the villain." 

 We were correct. See... I paid attention in high school English... 11th grade to be exact!

So imagine my surprise when I checked out your blog today and I saw the post about Beowulf.    :)

One more reason why I love to blog.