I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
All members of the Core community are invited to attend “Poetry’s Closer Contact,” a reading of poems across the ages by friends and faculty of the Core Curriculum. The readers in this year's line-up, as arranged by Prof. Formichelli, are:
Each will read for not more than six minutes. The reading will commence at 7 PM tomorrow evening (Wednesday, 23 February 2011) at The BU Castle, 225 Bay State Road. Please join us after the reading for a reception.
CC102. Copies of The Life of the Buddha by Ashvaghosha are available in the Core office, CAS room 119. This is required reading for this week.
CC202: There will be no lecture this week.
This Week
Wednesday, February 23. Enjoy the annual department poetry reading by friends and faculty of the Core, organized this year by Prof. Formichelli as “Poetry’s Closer Contact.” 7 PM at The Castle, 225 Bay State Road. Refreshments will follow.
Coming Up
Monday, March 7. Professor Peter Hawkins of Yale University will speak on "America's Underworld: Sandow Birk's Divine Comedy." Birk is a painter who illustrated the Commedia by depicting decadent urban spaces in LA, NYC, and San Francisco. 5:30 PM at The Castle. Refreshments will follow.
Wisdom and Spirit of the universe!
Thou Soul, that art the Eternity of thought!
And giv'st to forms and images a breath
And everlasting motion! not in vain,
By day or star-light, thus from my first dawn
Of childhood didst thou intertwine for me
The passions that build up our human soul;
Not with the mean and vulgar works of Man;
But with high objects, with enduring things,
With life and nature; purifying thus
The elements of feeling and of thought,
And sanctifying by such discipline
Both pain and fear,—until we recognize
A grandeur in the beatings of the heart.
- William Wordsworth, "Influence of Natural Objects in Calling Forth and Strengthening the Imagination in Boyhood and Early Youth"
Is there, for honest poverty,
That hangs his head, and a' that?
The coward-slave, we pass him by,
We dare be poor for a' that!
For a' that, and a' that,
Our toils obscure, and a' that;
The rank is but the guinea-stamp,
The man 's the gowd for a' that!
What tho' on hamely fare we dine,
Wear hoddin grey, and a' that;
Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine,
A man 's a man, for a' that!
For a' that, and a' that,
Their tinsel show, and a' that;
The honest man, though e'er sae poor,
Is king o' men for a' that!
- from "Is There for Honest Poverty" by Robert Burns, whose poetry among others' will be considered by Prof. Christopher Ricks in a lecture next Tuesday for the students of CC202
This month, in their Readings department, Harper’s magazine published a list of questions* from the entrance examination to All Soul’s College at Oxford University. Applicants take four examinations of three hours each, and in the general subject tests must answer three questions from a list. The question in the title to the post was one of the few science questions; other science-related questions include:
If there are millions of other planets capable of supporting advanced life-forms, why haven’t we seen or heard from them?
Is there anything to be said for astrology?
What can we learn from a century of sound recording?
How many people should there be?
Has there ever been a period that was not an information age?
Elsewhere in the list you find abundant questions that Core students can relate to:
From where does a sense of community come?
What has happened to epic poetry?
Why does truthfulness matter?
Would it have been better had some surviving works of ancient authors been lost?
Have any philosophical problems been finally solved?
Is Amazon.com good for literature?
Has morality made progress?
Is nothing sacred?
Provocative questions! Last year, to the chagrin of the traditionalists, the college dropped its famous one-word essay subject, in which applicants were asked to write coherently for three hours about a single word, such as “innocence,” “miracles” or “water.” Detractors argued that the entrance test, sometimes known as the “world’s hardest exam,” has now been made too easy. I wonder how an entrance-earning essay on the word “science” would read...
Read a longer sample of questions published in the Guardian, or about how a few of the paper’s hand-picked entrants fared under exam conditions. The college’s own collection of general subject exams from the last five years is also available online. Click here to browse other subject exams.
_ _ * = In the ironic fashion typical of Harper’s, this list was juxtaposed with a list of questions posted to online message boards by Jared Loughner, who is charged for a shooting that killed six people in Tucson. [back to top of post]
O Earth O Earth return!
Arise from out the dewy grass;
Night is worn,
And the mourn
Rises from the slumberous mass.
- from "Introduction" to Songs of Experience by William Blake, whose poetry among others' will be considered by Prof. Christopher Ricks in a lecture next Tuesday for the students of CC202
We can certainly turn to the Bible for guidance on moral issues, but we should not expect to find simple answers to the moral questions we are asking. Sometimes Biblical conclusions are patently immoral. Sometimes they are deeply inspiring. In either case, we are left with the responsibility for determining what we will believe and affirm.
Unprotected Texts has been featured inNewsweek, and Prof. Knust is a guest voice this week on The Washington Post’s “On Faith” blog. In The Huffington Post, she talks with fellow BU Professor Stephen Prothero where she says “the Bible continues to be invoked in today’s public debates as if it should have the last word on contemporary American sexual morals,” and that “the only way the Bible can be a sexual rulebook is if no one reads it.”
For years we have heard about the “dilemma” that Arjuna faces as he stands with his charioteer Krishna between two armies who are preparing to destroy each other. Should he fight in a battle that will lead to the destruction of his friends and family, or should he drop his bow and withdraw from the battle? What is Arjuna’s dharma? What is the “right” thing for him to do?
Prof. Hudson argued in her lecture that Arjuna actually doesn’t face a dilemma. Along with his brothers and his family, Arjuna already knows that he has done everything he can to avoid the battle, and the battle must go on. What stops him is his feeling of grief, a feeling that clouds his vision and makes his mind reel. Krishna responds by teaching Arjuna how to see, not from his own particular point of view, but from the point of view of “Time,” in which everyone is born and lives and finally passes away. Krishna's point about the destructive and creative cycle of the cosmos is conveyed in the revelation of Krishna’s divine form (a phenomenon called theophany) and in Mahabharata 1.1.188-190:
Time ripens the creatures. Time rots them. And Time again puts out the Time that burns down the creatures. Time unfolds all beings in the world, holy and unholy. Time shrinks them and expands them again. Time walks in all creatures, unaverted, impartial. Whatever beings there are in the past will be in the future, whatever are busy now, they are all the creatures of Time—know it and do not lose your sense.
The question posed by Prof. Hudson’s lecture is how this change in Arjuna’s perspective makes it possible for him to be free from grief and throw himself back into the battle.
*
NB: The video below contains the theophany scene from a serialized version of the Mahabharata made for TV, episode 74. Click here to see another depiction of this revelation.
A woman who expends her energy, who has responsibilities, who knows how harsh is the struggle against the world's opposition, needs -- like the male -- not only to satisfy her physical desires but also to enjoy the relaxation and diversion provided by agreeable sexual adventures.
-- French existentialist philosopher Simone de Beauvoir, from The Second Sex: Woman's Life Today (pg. 686), a book being studied this spring in the second-semester Core Social Sciences, CC204: Inequality. Prof. Maureen Sullivan will deliver a lecture addressing empirical evidences for gender inequality in the United States, tomorrow, Thursday February 17.
The Core Blog is a hub for information and media related to the CAS Core Curriculum at Boston University. It will be updated regularly, with photo galleries, interviews, links to related reading online, news of events or activities, and other kinds of content that help connect our Core people—prospective, current, and former students—with each other.
You can stop by here once a week to scroll through the posts, or make this your homepage in order to keep your finger on the pulse of the Core. Either way, we hope you find this to be a pleasant way to strengthen your connection with the great people, the great books, and the great questions we encounter in the Core.
