Homer, Juvenal, South Africa, and the mall

Yesterday I found myself reading Chapman’s translation of the Odyssey, in the mall, for the first time. My first look into Chapman’s Homer came about because I was killing time waiting for my partner, Christine, and wandered into a Cole’s bookstore and saw the volume on sale for $4.99. After purchasing it, I took the book into the mall, sat on one of their cheesegrater benches, and began reading. The mall disappeared and I was back in some amalgam of ancient Greece and Renaissance England.
Peter Stothard, in his blog, observes that Juvenal’s Satires have a lot to say to disaffected, contemporary, upper middle class Afrikaaners who, like Juvenal, feel unhappy with their changed lot in life. I only really know two Afrikaaners, transplanted to frozen northern Canada, so I can’t say if what Stothard says is accurate, but his observation strikes me as yet again proof that the classics still have relevance today and that there are certain uses we can make of them today. They put our world into perspective, they tell us we are not alone, that someone has felt this before us, and that we are normal in our unhappiness, our alienation, our desire to be somewhere else.
Links to books: Juvenal, Chapman’s Homer

Technorati Tags: books, classics, Homer, Juvenal, South Africa