To do before Friday evening

[tree_and_leaf]

*Finish organising word nets for section of thesis
- on a related note, work out why, exactly, wordle isn't working for my computer, and fix it (I do actually have a semi-legitimate academic use for this, it's not just playing!)
*Trail out to teacher training college, extract interesting sounding article from volume of feminist theology (and how much do I hate the local library policy of not duplicating holdings across institutions? It's one thing not buying several copies of volumes for department libraries down the hall from each other, but when you need to travel half an hour by tram to use the library of a university you're not even a member of...)
* Re-wax Grönland jacket and hat
* Give brief presentation on Barlaam and Josephaat manuscript; explain how the Buddha ended up becoming a Christian saint.
* Wash Scout uniform and sleeping bag inner
* Book flight home
* Work out what I did with those blank CDs, and burn some files
* Cancel Spiegel (which has had some headdeskily daft articles recently, anyway, including the latest Batshit Insane Theory that Goethe was having an affair with Anna Amalia rather than Charlotte von Stein†, cancel internet contract
* Sharpen knife
* Sort out tent issue, given that I now can't borrow the one I was going to
* Attempt to prevent assassination of Charidisch prince (OK, this is an RPG goal rather than a real one)

... I have the strong feeling I've forgotten something


† Because C von S wasn't intellekshul enough, apparently. I would counter (a) Goethe seems to have had a habit of wanting people to show off to (b) C v S may not have been as intellectual as Anna Amalia, but the evidence of his wife suggests that Goethe didn't primarily go for academic competence in a woman (c) assuming he'd dumped the Dowager Duchess to run off to Rome, how likely is it that he'd have been allowed back to Weimar on rather improved terms?

Comments

[fpb.livejournal.com]

I guess that for some people just admire the greatness of Goethe was never going to be enough. One has to go "behind" things, to "discover" the "truth" about said greatness - otherwise, what share does one have in it? And yet it is my firm belief that high achievement in any area reflects on us all as human beings.

[tree_and_leaf]

I agree with you; although there's an odd tendency even with in respecatble Goethe criticism to put a lot of weight on the biography (well, Werther rather invites it, I suppose); of course, there's also the element of simple egotism. Having read an interview with the chap proposing the theory, he seems to be deriving most of his motivation from showing up professional Germanists; he sounds quite unlikable, even by the standards of conspiracy theorists. (I suppose I might be a bit biased against people who make general statements about the laziness of Germanists, though Goethe's not exactly my area...)