never doubt that I am a dork.
Feb. 28th, 2004 09:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nigeltdeSpeaking of sidekick POV (and I've just realised that it's quite common in historical novels), I've just finished reading Mary Renault's The Persian Boy, which was really, really good, absolutely fascinating. The sheer scope of it...Alexander in India with his armies behind him, coming down out of the hills to meet tall King Poros on the plain with his jewels and his green beard and his score of painted elephants. I'd wake up every now and then and think, my god, this actually happened, this guy actually existed. It feels like a fantasy novel, what with the 30 000 perfect Persian fighting youths and the magnificent feasts and death pyres and heartbreakingly beautiful lost cities and the lost gods and lost tales. Lainy, you have to read this, I think you'd really enjoy it (and do you have any similar recommendations?). Although I did tear up a couple of times (well, bawled like a baby when Bucephalus and especially Hephaestion died). Apparently the Oliver Stone movie is based on this book and I am very interested to see how it will be adapted. It is difficult to not have high expectations. I hope the women's roles are expanded; though only mentioned a couple of times, Sisygambis and Olympias were fascinating to read about, and even Roxane, who I was quite dismissive of during the novel, aroused my interest greatly when in the author's note it is mentioned that she had Stateira murdered.
I was thinking about what it means to have someone great and good to love and follow and deify - something I find myself quite wishing for coccasionally, when it strikes me especially hard that I really have No Idea what I'm going to do with my life* - and wondering whether we are even able to have people like that anymore, considering the hugely changed roles of war, leadership, religion and sovereignty. Che Guevera *perhaps* qualifies, but you know, I think the legacy has come to us more in the form of people like Hitler and particularly Stalin. Except, deified rulers were, as I understand it, quite par for the course throughout civilisation, right up till the French Revolutionaries told Louis to fuck off, God really doesn't think you're all that, you twat, and that's just the Western world (I mean, Mao!). It's the benevolent ones that are truly extraordinary. Stalin doesn't follow on from Alexander but from (and I have no idea about ancient history, but they surely existed), for example, those Ceasars who were tyrants but worked the propaganda mills (and kept the citizens happy with the occasional bloodbath). God, I wish I had time to study EVERYTHING at uni.
Wow, I'm so boring. You know, the other day I invented this really exciting awesome party game where everyone sits in a circle and trys to come up with a synonym for the synonym the person next to them says. I spent, like, ten minutes trying to figure out whether it would be possible to go from an abstract concept to, say, a noun, and then trying to think of a suitable word with two meanings that could bridge the gap.
*which is when the inevitable Roles of Faith and Meaning questions arise, and maybe I should be a sociologist. Or maybe I should just get my head examined.
I was thinking about what it means to have someone great and good to love and follow and deify - something I find myself quite wishing for coccasionally, when it strikes me especially hard that I really have No Idea what I'm going to do with my life* - and wondering whether we are even able to have people like that anymore, considering the hugely changed roles of war, leadership, religion and sovereignty. Che Guevera *perhaps* qualifies, but you know, I think the legacy has come to us more in the form of people like Hitler and particularly Stalin. Except, deified rulers were, as I understand it, quite par for the course throughout civilisation, right up till the French Revolutionaries told Louis to fuck off, God really doesn't think you're all that, you twat, and that's just the Western world (I mean, Mao!). It's the benevolent ones that are truly extraordinary. Stalin doesn't follow on from Alexander but from (and I have no idea about ancient history, but they surely existed), for example, those Ceasars who were tyrants but worked the propaganda mills (and kept the citizens happy with the occasional bloodbath). God, I wish I had time to study EVERYTHING at uni.
Wow, I'm so boring. You know, the other day I invented this really exciting awesome party game where everyone sits in a circle and trys to come up with a synonym for the synonym the person next to them says. I spent, like, ten minutes trying to figure out whether it would be possible to go from an abstract concept to, say, a noun, and then trying to think of a suitable word with two meanings that could bridge the gap.
*which is when the inevitable Roles of Faith and Meaning questions arise, and maybe I should be a sociologist. Or maybe I should just get my head examined.
I'm Boring, TOO!
Date: 2004-03-02 05:32 pm (UTC)Re: I'm Boring, TOO!
Date: 2004-03-02 06:13 pm (UTC)(Oh *do* read The Persian Boy! It's wonderful.)