Forth Eorlingas!

I grew up on Tolkien. Dad read The Hobbit aloud when I was just a wee lad, and I shivered hearing Riddles in the Dark. I heard The Lord of the Rings read aloud from when I was nine or so till I was twelve, and then I began reading them on my own. I read them every year for five years. Two or three years ago I stopped, and save for a devouring of The Hobbit, my Tolkien reading was stinted. 

I fixed that last month. The final two days of break I began the first book, The Fellowship of the Ring. I devoured it (a verb I use frequently with respect to Tolkien) in a few readings, and borrowed the entire volume from Greenfield Library. I finished The Return of the King yesterday. 

What a magnificent piece of storytelling! No other author can move me to awe, tears, and laughter in less than ten pages! Reading about the Riders of Rohan hurtling to their doom at Minis Tirith and the death of Theoden, weeping over Eowyn, and laughing at Merry and Aragorn (if you do not laugh at the chapter "Houses of Healing" you need a new sense of humor) has never meant so much to me. I have seldom identified more with character than in Middle-Earth. Once again I will put The Lord of the Rings on the top of my permanent reading list, the List whose constituents fit on one numbering hand; so far the Bible and Dante's Commedia are on it, but this is the third. 

Tolkien also reminded me why I love good writing and great literature. I doubt I shall ever read Rowling's work ever again - there is simply nothing there. Any urge I could have towards her work is met fuller and deeper by far in The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, Unifinished Tales, and Silmarillion. Even her fourth book, which I think was the best of the lot, holds little interest now. A nice story, but not much there. Thus I rededicate myself to the book I loved as a child. It is inexhaustible; rather, it has grown with me, and I think it shall continue to do so. Farewell, Middle-Earth! I will see you in my dreams, and ride with Theoden as a Rider of Rohan. Forth Eorlingas!

Second Semester, Aristotle

I am reading a lot of Aristotle this semester. I wish to devour his Physics, Metaphysics, and On the Soul. I did not understand the first two last year, a sad fact I wish to straighten. It will take a tremendous amount of work, but I am willing to do it.

Second semester of Sophomore year is the Poetry Semester. Almost everything we read is English lyric poetry or Shakespeare. We read eight plays, one of which (King Lear) we study in Language, and study his sonnets and early English poetry like Wyatt and Spenser. We also read the Commedia, a tremendous literary achievement from Dane Alighieri.

I am terribly excited. My studies of poetry have sucked, though I have (I think) always rather appreciated it, if you will consider my childhood and my Language Arts classes in eighth grade and first two years of high school. Now I will read the majority of the Shakespeare corpus and become intimately familiar with a few of his sonnets, two of which I will memorize. And Dante! Glorious Dante! Chaucer! Poetry! I will let my dialectic-loving side relax a little and enjoy myself. After all, I will be studying Aristotle's Logic in Language and reading his two greatest treatises. Poetry is good for the soul. I will never enjoy it so much as straight up philosophy or theology (Aquinas is a river of gold!), but I certainly hold it in the highest respect.