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!!!!

Reading German: Part One

Just got back from the first lesson of my Level 2 German Reading Skills course: it was a bit of a shock to the system, I can tell you! The main problem is that there isn't a level 1 reading skills class, which would have been my preferred starting point, but - really - I don't want to have to go through the whole 'which way is the airport/can I buy two beers and a sandwich please'. That would be of no use at all in my quest to acquire a reading knowledge of theological German. I need to be able to read it - speaking it be darned! That having been said, I last did German in earnest about 36 years ago, just before I dropped it in favour of the physics option (why did I do that?) at O-level. I have some familiarity, but not much, so that when the tutor asked us to introduce ourselves and tell a little about ourselves (in German), my mind went blank and I nearly passed out. Fortunately, she is excellent - patient, helpful and very encouraging. My frozen panic subsided a little as she went through the course path and aims and we started with some tense recognition and revision. I am quite lucky in that I know quite a lot about grammar, if not German grammar as such, and can understand the mechanics of it, thanks to many years of Greek and Latin, if not the precise application. So far so good. Most of the class were undergrads - English Lit. students mainly. There was one other mature student - married to a German (as I understood it) - who seemed to have a more than adequate grasp of the language. We completed a few simple exercises: simple for them, I mean, I struggled somewhat and it was only when we moved onto literary appreciation that I started to feel slightly more comfortable. I can read far more than I can speak, and lit.app.is a piece of cake, and a very enjoyable one at that. So, in my favour I have: a very, very rudimentary knowledge of German; a sound grasp of the universal principles of grammar and a feel for literary writing. By the end of the session I'd started to feel more like I could do this rather than dumbstruck horror. We have a little homework and actually, as I look at it, I'm starting to feel quite a bit more positive about the whole experience!

I haven't moved away from the computer much this week which has paid dividends in that I have pretty much completed the next tranche of work required for my next supervisory meeting next week. But I have to say, it's been a bit like pulling teeth, or giving birth to a mountain....Stuff that's been floating around my head for the past couple of years, vague, puffy half-thoughts have been plucked out of the ether and given verbal form and I now have my 'scope of thesis down' on paper (or on the computer, at least). This has generated some useful study questions that will help delineate forthcoming chapters. When I first considered doctoral work I was a bit sniffy about study questions, considering them a hobble to creativity, but having realised that I could go off tangentially forever, I am quite pleased to have some cogent guidelines for thought.

Academic Down Time

I admit that I have NOT done well on the work front today: daughter #3 had a teacher training day, daughter #2, spouse and Bouncing Babba came round early desperate to show me photos of their trip away (mostly of the BB enjoying himself). I was anticipating the Oldies rolling up mid-morning, as is their want on a Friday, but as luck would have it, the Tesco man arrived earlier than usual to deliver the week's food. This meant that I could put plan B into action and pop into town to see the relics of St Therese of Lisieux at the Minster before they continued on their journey. This was duly achieved and distracted by the delicious sandwiches in Olio & Farina (gorgonzola, mortadella and salad on ciabatta) we dived in for a spot of lunch. We then spent a bit of time looking for a suitably lightweight rowing jacket for #3 (result!) and a new purse for me as my bank cards had annoyingly just all spilled out into my manbag for the nth time (again, result!). By the time we got home it was already half past one and I spent a little while looking for articles on the 'fallacy of intention'. Three fifteen and it was time to pick up the Bright-Eyed Boy and get #3 to the boathouse in time for her training session, which we nearly didn't because of the horrendous road works that have locked the centre of town solid.

I've developed this annoying mental countdown machine in my head and I'm all too aware that I've lost a number of working hours today through a combination of factors: being too available, being easily distracted, being a chauffeur (chauffeuse?). I'm thinking about getting a sign made that reads 'The (potential) Doctor is unavailable for consultation. Please come back after 5pm' and hang it in the front window. Unfortunately, many of the distractions come from within....and not just from within the house! I shall try to be good, however, and take the laptop to Starbucks whilst #3 is rowing again tomorrow morning. Must remember the blinkers and earplugs though.......!

And, yes, I could have spent the time that I spent writing this working, rather than blogging, but -hey! - it's 5pm Friday evening now. Where do the days go?

Pardon?

I regularly read a number of biblioblogs (blogs that deal with theology, religion and bible studies) and occasionally they yield up some reasonably interesting nuggets, but I came across two today - of a certain theological persuasion - that were literally begging for money for the upkeep of either their sites or some associated mission. I was quite astonished, and yet there were replies saying things like 'Yeah...sorry to hear about your financial worries, have X number of dollars.' What? Isn't this open to all sorts of abuse? How do people know where their money goes, or are they all so anxious to buy a bit of heaven-time that they daren't go 'Hang on a minute....' How is this so different from the selling of indulgences that the Reformation got all hot under the collar about way back when?