Box ticking and the like

I've managed to squeeze out my German Reading Skills assignment today: translations of 2 Berthold Brecht poems and a 500 word literary commentary on each. I've been deferring doing it so that I can make some solid progress on my chapters before next week's supervisory meeting, but with hand-in at tomorrow's session I could procrastinate no longer. The stupid thing is that I've actually started to care about doing well in something that is a relatively unimportant supplement to my main studies. I only need to improve my German so that I can read the poxy but abundant secondary literature in the field of Pauline studies. I resent the time it takes up, but need to tick the box on my training needs programme. Likewise, a two-hour presentation skills 'workshop' will entail two three-hour trips down to uni and back. Basically, a whole day used up (never mind the expense) so that I can tick a box. And I spent an entire day at a very dull conference (on a Saturday, for crying out loud) for the same reason. This can't be right, can it? The whole system has become so obsessed with measurable targets and learning outcomes and investing in students that the whole ethos of research - actually doing the research is being dangerously undermined by the pursuit of demonstrable objectives. If I'm spending less time on my doctoral studies in order to fulfil these peripheral goals - and my time is pretty constrained at the best of times - then the main body of my PhD will suffer. No argument. Forty hours a week (full-time study) minus the twelve or so hours spent on peripherals does NOT add up to a satisfactory week's output.

The Bubble

I think one on the most difficult things about doing a PhD the way I'm doing it (a hundred plus miles from the campus) is the sense of isolation. But not just the sense of isolation from my department colleagues, but a sense of isolation from almost everyone that I come into contact with on a day-to-day basis. My family are great (in that they have realistic expectations about what sort of tea will make it to the table and whether socks come in pairs anymore: I'm 'on-site' when it comes to that sort of stuff, so it would be perverse to wait for others to do it) but it is just not fair to buttonhole them with an assessment of, say, how Jewish Paul the apostle really was, or how Jesus is always written of as physically making the first move in a clause and what verbs are involved. So I don't tend to. The husband will make a reasonably convincing attempt at interest and comprehension (and he is excellent at spotting a false premise or typo) but it's difficult to give him the sort of background knowledge (in a nutshell) to an argument that I've spent the last four or so years accumulating. So I confine myself to generalities. My parents (into their eighties) do show an interest, but have to keep asking me what it is I'm doing exactly. My parents-in-law (just into their sixties) show no interest at all. When I tell them I've been 'working', they never ask 'what doing?' I think they'd prefer it if I worked in Spar or an office or something, then they'd feel comfortable asking questions about my daily round. As it is, there's just an uninterested silence. I'm presuming it's uninterested - wouldn't you ask if you were the slightest bit curious? God knows what they think I do all day! Self-flagellating? Running a crack-den? The children are just lovely but still think that I'm vaguely Classics-based. So nothing doing there. I do have a couple of post-grad friends, but no-one that I see on a regular basis. So my thoughts just end up going around and around in my head like flies trapped in a jam-jar.

And to tell the truth, I don't mind too much. I've always been a bit of a hermit: give me a good book and a glass of wine and I'm happy. And since these studies are what I've chosen to do, and enjoy doing, I can happily spend all day picking through texts and assembling thoughts. Occasionally though, I get the sort of feeling that I imagine horses getting when confronted with a jump they just don't wish to take: gut-based refusal. I have to snap my laptop shut and run off, usually into town for a well-earned latte and a bun.

Hello?

I spent ten minutes or so last night tackling a blog of a certain persuasion that had posted a translation of a portion of a Pauline epistle that contained a number of blatantly biased interpolations i.e. words had been added to the base Greek text to form a value-judgement that simply were not in the original (it was a quote from The Message bible). I've noticed before that this blog has a very conservative worldview and the contributors by-and-large clap each other on the back and tend to end up agreeing amongst themselves. I guess I was putting my head into the lion's jaws, but I get very, very annoyed by the casual skewing of scriptural texts to present an agendum/world-view that reflects that of the translator NOT the 'author'. I always look at the original Greek text (OK - I admit that the word 'original' is fraught with difficulty: we don't actually have any biblical texts that come straight from the author's pen/mouth/amanuensis/best mate ['autographs', as they're known]; the oldest copies that we have are probably appreciably later than the 1st century CE, and have probably undergone numerous alterations in the interim. When I say 'original', I mean the text that has been assembled by biblical scholars as the nearest to the 'autograph': also contentious yada yada yada...) and see what is there. Only then can we try to think about what it means (not 'what we want it to mean' or 'what we think it should say' or 'what the author really meant, given what we clever moderns know about his context').
So when I see a biblical translation that is, by the mildest judgement, wildly inventive or, by the most critical judgement, wilfully misleading, (this poster actually admitted he doesn't read Greek: how could he uphold any particular translation?), I feel aggrieved on behalf of the original text. So I made my point and, with the exception of one other poster, I might as well have textually invisible! I have read before that this particular blog doesn't really welcome posts from women - I think we're probably supposed to be raising the young 'uns or patching clothes in the kitchen or something* - so I shouldn't have been entirely surprised. However, I had nodded towards the problem of the subjective/objective genitive ('the faithfulness of Christ' versus 'faith in Christ...yawn...unsolvable dichotomy) in my post. Lo and behold, a subsequent poster raised this very issue as if I hadn't, and was treated to a fulsome reply by one of the blog-hosts. Hello? Hello? And people wonder why there aren't more women bibliobloggers!

* my own bit of blatantly biased interpolation.

Tuesday, and it's Goethe.

Fortunately, this week, due to notes being plastered all over the house and well-intentioned texts from daughter #2, I not only remembered - but also attended - the German Reading Skills class. And I really enjoyed it. The tutor has devised a pretty agreeable mix of grammar (all basic stuff, I'm pleased to say) with literary appreciation. The initial tranche of work tackled this morning consisted of reviewing three translations of Rilke's poem Der Panther, discussing the merits of literal v. dynamic translation, alliteration, rhyme schemes, enjambement and the like. I have to say I felt quite at ease with this sort of thing and it scarcely made any difference that my knowledge of German is rather limited. We then tackled the pluperfect tense (das Plusquamperfekt) and attempted a few sentences. Fortunately, it's all quite bolt-together stuff, so not too terrifying. Then on to an examination of the text of Goethe's Erlkonig poem, working in pairs, dissecting the language, working out the subtext, looking at imagery etc. All good fun, but other than gaining a familiarity with the written German language, I'm not really sure it's going to pay dividends when it comes to tackling Theological German. Never mind! I am presently enjoying it to the extent that I'm actually considering (given that I pass my year-end assessment) continuing onto the next level, where the study is devoted to the works of Goethe all year. And as I have to pay for it myself, I might end up looking at it as an indulgence, something that I'm doing because I enjoy language for its own sake - not merely because it gives me another skill-setto put on my training needs form.

It's been quite hard getting back in to the swing of things since the half-term break, during which we spent a couple of days in Barcelona. It's amazing just how tiring travel can be - not just the getting there and the navigating our way around a strange city - but the rather more subtle strain of understanding foreign language, transport and mores, just having to be fully alert at all times. I generally sleep like a dead thing when I return from a trip: I guess I just have to recharge the batteries! Monday was also a write-off as it was my birthday, so I had to be generally sociable, which was quite nice. Actually, there was no way I was going to do any work, but I did feel slightly uneasy that - once again - time was slipping away from me. I started again in earnest on Tuesday, but somehow (horror of horrors!) it completely slipped my memory that I had a German Reading Skills tutorial in the morning. Not good! The rest of the week was pretty productive though and I've managed to put together some pretty cogent thoughts on 'authorial intent' and 'reader response' - not that it forms a big part of my thesis, I just have to address them as valid concerns. The chapter is looking pretty reasonable now, so I'm trying to look ahead to the next one in which I'll attempt a survey of ancient opinion on Paul's writings. Actually, not too ancient, as the first person who has a substantial amount to say about the apostle (as opposed to just quoting his words) is Augustine of Hippo who was around in latter half of the 4th, early 5th century CE. I'm finding Augustine increasingly fascinating: he had some pretty interesting stuff to say about language and signs (as later did Thomas Aquinas), prefiguring Locke's conceptions by nearly 1400 years! In fact the whole of the north of Africa, from Alexandria to Carthage, was a hotbed of religious intellectual activity in the early hundreds and a number of the fathers of the church, including Tertullian, Cyprian, Origen and Clement hailed from that part of that continent.
Augustine was of Berber descent, son of a pagan father and devout Christian mother (Monica, latterly Saint Monica). He initially had no religious calling at all, maintaining a concubine and the son he had by her until he got turned onto philosophy. He embraced, by turn, Manichaeism, academic Skepticism and neo-Platonism before undergoing a conversion experience that saw his baptism, along with that of his son, Adeodatus. His ferocious intellect and copious writings ensured that it was a spiral to the top of the church tree from then on. Sadly his concubine - actually two concubines (plus a fiancee) - were forgotten about in the surge of his new pious existence, which seems to have only got of the ground once his libido started to decline in his forties....

Bloody Computers!!!!

I am incredibly annoyed! Having reset my password, as suggested by the IT department, to a 'stronger' one, I find myself now unable to log-in to any of the university facilities. And, yes, I did make a note of it so that I'd get it right, and check the caps lock.....only now it doesn't want to work at all! I tried resetting again, but I think that the security is 'suspicious' of my activity, and my frenzied attempts to access my email has been interpreted as an act of hacking or something, as my account has been temporarily disabled. Grrrr! I was just trying to be efficient and security conscious, too. Should have left it as it was, and the stupid thing is that I kind of knew that something like this would happen. Nothing to do with computers is ever easy, and even as I entered my new, improved password, I was thinking to myself that it would all go horribly awry and that I should leave well alone. Bugger. Now I'll have to wait until tomorrow to ring eHelpdesk. I'm not entirely sure that the identity checking bit of it is actually working properly...it did seem incredibly slow, so my new password is probably trapped in its constipated bowels somewhere....dammit!!!!