Literary Thoughts

On occasion it has occurred to me, while reading some of my favorite books, that there are passages with so much depth and meaning to them that I ought to share them with others. I usually forget at that point that I have a blog with which to share these wonderous pieces of literary delight. But now, reading Homer's The Odyssey, with the laptop in front of me, I have found an allegory for one of life's most important lessons:

"My word, how mortals take the gods to task!
All their afflictions come from us, we hear,
And what of their own failings? Greed and folly
double the suffering in the lot of man.
See how Aigísthos, for his double portion,
stole Agamémnon's wife and killed the soldier
on his homecoming day. And yet Aigísthos
knew that his own doom lay in this. We gods
had warned him, sent down Hermês Argeiphontês,
our most observant courier, to say:
'Don't kill the man, don't touch his wife,
or face a reckoning with Orestês
the day he comes of age and wants his patrimony.'
Friendly advice - but would Aigísthos take it?
now he has paid the reckoning in full."

The Greek poets were fantastic in their ability to take so many lessons one learns about life and turn them into warning stories. "You reap what you sow," becomes the lesson here. We can blame none but ourselves for the foolish things we do, and always does the swift hand of vengeance or justice come striking back when we allow our darker side to show - following the selfish desires leads to an end that we may not foresee, but cannot avoid.

To borrow a phrase that someone in my Art and Public Policy class used last semester: "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." How true this is.