Week 10 of the humanities crash course had me reading (and listening to) classic Greek plays. I also listened to the blues and watched a movie starring a venerable recently departed actor. How do they connect? Perhaps they don’t. Let’s find out. Readings The plan for this week included six classic Greek tragedies and one comedy: Sophocles’s Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus, and Antigone, Aeschylus’s Agamemnon, Euripides’s The Bacchae, and Aristophanes’s Lysistrata. The tragedies by Sophocles form a trilogy. Oedipus Rex is by far the most famous: the titular character discovers he’s not just responsible for his father’s death, but inadvertently married his widowed mother in its wake. Much sadness ensues. The other two plays continue the story. Oedipus at Colonus has him and his daughters seeking protection in a foreign land as his sons duke it out over his throne. In Antigone, Oedipus’s daughter faces the consequences of burying her brother after his demise in that struggle. In both plays, sadness ensues. Agamemnon dramatizes a story we’ve already encountered in the Odyssey: the titular king returns home only to be betrayed and murdered by his wife and her lover. The motive? The usual: revenge, lust, power. Sadness ensues. The Bacchae centers on the cult of the demigod Dionysus. He comes to Thebes to avenge a slanderous rumor and spread his own cult. Not recognizing him, King Pentheus arrests him and persecutes his followers, a group of women that includes Pentheus’s mother, Agave. In ecstatic frenzy, Agave and the women tear him apart. Again, not light fare. Lysistrata, a comedy, was a respite. Looking to end to the Peloponnesian War, a group of women led by the titular character convince Greek women to go on a sex strike until the men stop the fighting. For such an old play, it’s surprisingly funny. (More on this below.) These plays are very famous, but I’d never read them. This time, I heard dramatizations of Sophocles’s plays and an audiobook of The Bacchae, and read ebooks of the remaining two. The dramatizations were the most powerful and understandable, but reading Lysistrata helped me appreciate the puns. Audiovisual Music: Gioia recommended classic blues tunes. I listened to Apple Music collections for Blind Lemon Jefferson and Blind Willie Johnson. I also revisited an album of blues music compiled for Martin Scorcese’s film series, The Blues. My favorite track here is Lead Belly’s C.C. Rider, a song that’s lived rent free in my brain the last several days: Art: Gioia recommended looking at Greek pottery. I studied some of this in college and didn’t spend much time looking again. Cinema: rather than something related to the readings, I sought out a movie starring Gene Hackman, who died a couple of weeks ago. I opted for Francis Ford Coppola’s THE CONVERSATION, which is about the ethics of privacy-invading technologies. Even though the movie is fifty-one years old, that description should make it clear that it’s highly relevant today. Reflections I was surprised by the freshness of the plays. Yes, most namechecks are meaningless without notes. (That’s an advantage books have over audiobooks.) But the stories deal with timeless themes: truth-seeking, repression, free will vs. predestination, the influence of religious belief on our actions, relations between the sexes, etc. Unsurprisingly, some of these themes are also central to THE CONVERSATION. I sensed parallels between Oedipus and the film’s protagonist, Harry Caul. ChatGPT provided useful insights. (Spoilers here for both the play and movie – but c’mon, these are old works!) Both characters investigate the truth only to find painful revelations about themselves. Both believe that gaining knowledge will help them control events – but their efforts only lead to self-destruction. Both misunderstand key pieces of evidence. Both end up “isolated, ruined by their own knowledge, and stripped of their former identity.” (I liked how ChatGPT phrased this!) Both stories explore the limits of perception: it’s possible to see (and record) and remain ignorant of the truth. Heavy stuff – as is wont in drama. Bur for me, the bigger surprise in exploring these works was Lysistrata. Humor is highly contextual: even contemporary stuff doesn’t play well across cultures. But this ancient Greek play is filled with randy situations and double entendres that are still funny. Much rides on the translation. The edition I read was translated by Jack Lindsay, and I marveled at his skills. It must’ve been challenging to get the rhymes and puns in and still make the story work. A note in the text mentioned that the Spartans in the story were translated to sound like Scots to make them relatable to the intended English audience. (!) Obviously, none of these ancient texts I’ve been reading were written in English. That will change in the latter stages of the course. I’m wondering if I should read texts originally written in Spanish and Italian in those languages, since I can. (But what would that do to my notes and running interactions with the LLMs? It’s an opportunity to explore…) Notes on Note-taking Part of why I’m undertaking this course is to experiment with note-taking and LLMs. This week, I tried a few new things. First, before reading each play, I read through its synopsis in Wikipedia. This helped me understand the narrative thread and themes and generally get oriented in unfamiliar terrain. Second, I tried a new cadence for capturing notes. These are short plays; I read one per day. (Except The Bacchae, which I read over two days.) During my early morning journaling sessions, I wrote down a synopsis of the play I’d read the previous day. Then, I asked GPT-4o for comments on the synopsis. The LLM invariably pointed out important things I’d missed. The point wasn’t making more complete notes, but helping me understand and remember better by writing down my fresh memories and reviewing them through a “third party.” I was forced to be clear and complete, since I knew I’d be asking for feedback. Third, I added new sections to my notes for each work. After the synopsis, I asked GPT-4o for an outline explaining why the work is considered important. I read these outlines and reflected on them. Then, I asked for criticisms, both modern and contemporary, that could be leveled against these works. Frankly, this is risky. One of my guidelines has been to stick to prompts where I can verify the LLM’s output. If I ask for a summary of a work I’ve just read, I’ll have a better shot at knowing whether the LLM is hallucinating. But in this case, I’m asking for stuff that I won’t be able to validate. Still, I’m not using these prompts to generate authoritative texts. Instead, the answers help me consider the work from different perspectives. The LLM helps me step outside my experience – and that’s one of the reasons for studying the humanities. Up Next Gioia scheduled Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus for week 11. I’ve read Meditations twice and loved it, and will revisit it now more systemically. But since I’m already familiar with this work, I’ll also spend more time with the Bible – the Book of Job, in particular. In addition to Job itself, I plan to read Mark Larrimore’s The Book of Job: A Biography, which explores its background. It’ll be the first time in the course that I read a work about a work. (As you may surmise, I’m keen on Job.) This will also be the first physical book I read in the course. Otherwise, I’m sticking with Gioia’s recommendations. Check out his post for the full syllabus. Again, there’s a YouTube playlist for the videos I’m sharing here. I’m also sharing these posts via Substack if you’d like to subscribe and comment. See you next week!

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