Renewal

Guys... this program is hard. I mean, not that I'm surprised, but by the time Thursday rolls around I typically just want to go home, put on my PJ pants, veg in front of the TV, and ponder why I just spent the week desperately trying to teach kids about drama, while simultaneously struggling through dense theoretical reading on narrative and discourse, evidence and hegemonies. Why does history (even theatre history) matter at all? I had a blog devoted to that topic once; maybe I'll start it up again in a more manageable way.

Anyway, yesterday made me think it might all be worth it. My students were all wonderful in section. I gave an improv workshop (thank you, years of I.T.) and they all seemed to enjoy doing a shake-out, learning how to do 3-line scenes, and playing Fire and Ice. They all listened with rapt attention while I talked to them about how to make their writing less passive in formal papers. My historiography seminar in the afternoon drained me, but after class two of my fellow PhDers and I headed downtown. I haven't really been to downtown Seattle yet-- in fact, I haven't really seen much except my apartment, the bus, and the campus. But last night we went downtown, and it was nice to feel like I was in a city. We had dinner at a restaurant/wine bar called Purple-- warmed goat cheese with wild honey and dried cranberries, an avocado BLT with the best french fries in the world, and a lovely, necessary glass of white wine.

Then we saw Stephen Greenblatt. STEPHEN GREENBLATT. He's amazing; he edited my Norton Anthology of Shakespeare, wrote Will in the World and Hamlet in Purgatory, and is a leader of New Historicism (which a lot of people have problems with, I need to research it more). I've heard so much about the man, but don't know his work half so well as I should. Anyway, he has a new book out called Swerve about an Italian man in 15th century Germany rediscovering the work of Lucretius. He sees in that discovery the beginnings of humanism, which soon raced across Europe. He came to Seattle to give a book talk.

Greenblatt is an incredible speaker. An hour went by without my realizing it. As he spoke, he seemed to almost become Poggio in the German monastery. I could see the whole tableau of Western Europe in the late middle ages. I suddenly understood Epicurianism more fully than I ever have before. His evident knowledge left me in awe. Of course, the whole time I kept thinking of constructing narrative and he mentioned that he "liked the guy [Poggio]", which led me back to a classroom discussion about writing biography of people you liked versus people you don't like, but for an hour it didn't matter. For an hour I sat enraptured by the story, I appreciated history again, I wanted to write books, I wanted to research, I wanted to sit there in that somewhat crowded room with Stephen Greenblatt for hours and talk about the world that once existed.

Even if creating narrative is tricky business methodologically speaking, it makes for an extremely exciting hour. I felt bettered by the evening, more alive, more excited, my passion renewed. I felt as if a window had opened and I could see the philosophies of the past here in the present. I became more thoughtful, and ever more astounded by those who had come before me-- from antiquity, to the middle ages, to even within my own century. And maybe, just maybe, that's the reason to do history.