Or maybe I just made a mistake.

Anyway, I corrected my misspelling.

And my name is next to his on the list. Did I mention that already? Have I told you? I looked at it again today. Yes, I did. And it’s still there.

(Can you tell I’m supposed to be grading papers?)

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Joseph and His Brothers, p. 1252

Can you see him winking at you? Mann, I mean. I can.

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–Thomas Mann, Joseph and His Brothers

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–Thomas Mann, Joseph and His Brothers
p. 1228

(So) True.

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Some of these words, like “sacerdotal” and “truculence” are words I have come across before, and have even looked up, and am slowly finding room to accomodate in my brain.

Many, many, many are awaiting time for me to look them up and define them, to apply meaning to them and to apply them to active use in my vocabulary.

And one of them– this is something I have Just Discovered– is Not Defined in my dictionary.

The word is “epagonemal.”

I have looked it up in the bible of English dictionaries, the Merriam-Webster Collegiate, my favorite, the one that lists, among others, my younger sister’s name among its editors. Webster has “epact” and then “eparchy,” with no “epag-” anywhere in between.

I’m not sure what to do about this, although I could, I guess, start with a quick e-mail to my sister.

Meanwhile, here is the sentence in which this word appears: “Besides which, this quota had a certain spiritual beauty and mythical appeal, since it was wisely and deliberately based on the sacred epagomenal number: the five extra days added to the year’s three hundred and sixty.” (Joseph, p. 1227)

Contextually speaking, one might derive several possible definitions for this word. Or one might know Greek (that’s what it appears to be rooted in) and so could figure it out.

But there is No Time for this now. I must move on, consigning this word’s meaning to the Unknown category in my mind, leaving it in the list at the back of the book but knowing that its definition is, for now, inaccessible to me. Yes, I must move on, for today I am Writing.

Funny thought, isn’t it?, to be writing a Master’s thesis on a book that was originally written in German and then (thank you, John E. Woods) translated masterfully into English, a book whose command of Idea and Language is so powerful that it must make use of words that I don’t even know. To be writing a Master’s thesis on a book that I Do Not Fully Understand, and to know that my thesis holds water, that it is strong, and well-supported and, even, New.

I guess it makes me feel as though my grey matter is functioning pretty well. I mean, I’m no idiot, anyway. I guess you couldn’t call me stupid.

I’m not a little relieved.

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-Thomas Mann, Joseph and His Brothers

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I have things to say and photos to post, but alas, I don’t know when. The boys who, now that we’ve started school, may use the computer only on the weekends, use the computer A Lot on the weekends, when I might have time to post a thing or two.

But I may use the computer any time and so, one might think, could use it in the evenings, when I am home from teaching all day and the children are abed.

I do use the computer at this time, O Reader, but not for posting to my blog. No, the evening hours are given to the writing of my Master’s thesis. Yes, I am up to my ears in books and note cards. My mind is all whirling eddies of ideas that I must harness and channel and direct into fruitful meaning. I am coming to know Thomas Mann in ways I had not imagined, and am hard at work to get this knowledge framed and fitted and suitable for my project.

And so, despite the fact that I have Much To Say here, I cannot say it now. I am aswim in the new semester, coming up only rarely for air, looking for a footing in the world of Thomas Mann and the world of the Genesis Joseph. I am teaching double the load I taught last year, which means, logically, that I have half the prep time. I am mommy to my three, and also soccer mom to Will, who made the middle school team. I am housewife and laundress and a passable cook, and somewhere in the midst of it all I am also planning– yes– to churn out a pretty good thesis.

Did I mention that Will had his first soccer game on Friday after school? And that we (later) also entertained over ten boys at our local pool in (late) celebration of his eleventh birthday?

It doesn’t stop, this busy life of mine, for theses or birthdays or, it would seem, much else….

Yes, I am swimming, and swimming hard. But I keep my eye on the shoreline, looking for Moses, waiting for him to part the water, looking forward to crossing this sea on dry ground.

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I have twenty students for whom I need to total grades and write comments.

I have a Good Portion of my Master’s thesis proposal written; I need to finish it and mail it to my professor tomorrow; I need to meet with him and my program director on Tuesday.

I have 9th grade curriculum to refine.

I have 10th grade curriculum to finish (and refine).

I have to pack up the contents of my classroom, my desk, my bookcases.

I have to pack clothes, shoes, toiletries and other sundries for our trip to Africa (Africa!) one week from Friday.

I have two days of school left.

I have three faculty-work-days left.

I have to research (and write) my Master’s thesis.

And I am (once upon a time, a long, long time ago) writing a novel.

A great work is set aside for the sake of a smaller one, whose demands could not be anticipated and which itself then devours years. One is forced to set it aside as well in response to the many demands of the day; one gives oneself over to secondary tasks, some of which require not weeks, but months and, wouldn’t you know, one is then required to insert still other smaller improvisations, without ever losing sight of one’s larger and still larger concerns. But the result is that bit by bit one comes to bear on one’s shoulders and in one’s mind the entire burden, the weight of every task and concurrent task. Patience is all– an equanimity that, should a man not possess it by nature, must be wrested from a nervous constitution given to despair. Endurance, stamina, perseverance is all, and every hope bears the name “time.” “Give me time” is one’s prayer to the eternal gods “and it will all be done.”

–Thomas Mann, “Sixteen Years,” his introduction to the American edition of Joseph and His Brothers

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There is Absolutely No Parking for people like me on a weekday, so I parked in the Gardens lot and then walked through the Gardens to get to the Allen Building, which houses so much that is important to the University, including, during his office hours, my professor.

The hillside next to the parking lot was Absolutely Yellow with daffodils, and also with pansies in shades of lavender. The sky was a shade of blue that UNC could only wish for, and the temperature was that early, warm spring variety– the kind when you really aren’t certain that you need your coat. There was the ancient smell of boxwood and the crunch of the sandy gravel under my feet; the roses in their beds showed signs of waking: new and ruddy leaves are just beginning to show at the ends of the short canes. And there, just past the gazebo, a few of the trees were in bloom.

My professor’s office has an extensive bank of paned and mullioned windows that look out onto the quad and chapel, and throughout our meeting campus sounds drifted up to make background noise for our conversation.

And the conversation. We talked for Over An Hour about Joseph and His Brothers, this book that asks for so much focus and concentration, that deserves so much more of my time than I can seem to give it. We talked about history and time and memory, about Mann’s life experience and the specific and dreadful years he gave to writing this book, about how, perhaps, this book was the means of his survival. We read passages aloud; we wondered about their weight and meaning; we marveled at the genius that could produce this.

And then I walked back, past the daffodils and crocii, through the fragrance of the boxwood, and back to the campus where I am spending all my days.

We all have our favorite things. When asked, we can likely list them. But it’s Another Thing Entirely, isn’t it? when we actually get to Do something that we Really Really Like.

I like to talk– seriously and deeply– about Really Good Books. Oh my, yes.

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It has been – I am not kidding — an amazing experience. No, the daily-ness of it hasn’t amazed me. It has been nothing like convenient to have, almost all the time, pressing reading and writing assignments leering over my shoulder. While other stay-at-home moms might finish their laundry folding and leaf through a magazine before bed, I’m lying awake trying to finish reading this essay by Freud or Walter Benjamin. I let all my magazine subscriptions run out Long Ago.

And the actual attending of classes—arranging with Bill the childcare, making sure I get the children where they need to go and getting to class on time and (greatest miracle) finding a parking place—has been, from time to time, an aggravation or, at the very least, Something Else to do on a weeknight.

But, really. This program has been Amazing. And I cannot tell you, here in this brief (?) posting how it has been amazing. I can only tell you that, over the last five years, it feels as though someone has peeled off the top of my head, and Made Room, changed my thinking and expanded it, and given me So Much More to think about. I am changed, and I am grateful.

The professor I have now is hands-down my favorite. I stumbled into his first course offering when I got bumped off the Internet during registration, and this was one of the most serendipitous accidents I’ve known (never judge a misfortune at first glance). He is German with a gentle accent and a really phenomenal vocabulary. In truth, I spend a significant amount of time during his class writing vocabulary words in the margins of my notes. Words like “instantiation” and “inchoate,” words that express Far More in their few syllables than I, in strings and strings of syllables, can even comprehend. And my professor’s German-to-English skills really boggle the mind. Do you know anyone—Anyone?—who can read Nietzsche in the German and translate it aloud, as he goes, into English? You know, when you are taking notes, you are not supposed to write, word for word, what the speaker is saying. But this man’s syntax, his vocabulary, border on the poetic. I do take notes word-for-word in his class, when I can. I Do. Because it’s just That Beautiful.

This is my third class with this professor, this genius. And he has, happily, agreed to work with me and serve as my advisor for my thesis project; this, because he hasn’t yet discovered my Inferior Intelligence.

All three of the courses I’ve had with him have been about modernism. With multiple references to Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Darwin, and even Wagner, we’ve plumbed the depths of modern man’s despair, of man’s decadence, of the shifting terrain of modern living in the literature of George Eliot, Goethe, and Thomas Mann.

Yes, Thomas Mann. This writer of whom I’d barely heard five years ago has been the subject of serious study for me lately. He was a stellar writer, and has taught me much about irony and philosophy even as he has laid out, again and again, plots and characters intricate, delicate and glorious. I love it.

My Masters thesis, in fact, will be on Mann and memory, memory and Mann in Mann’s tetralogy Joseph and His Brothers. I am looking forward to it.

For Wednesday’s class, I am preparing a paper on the role of memory in his Buddenbrooks. And I also have to finish reading (about 150 pages to go) Joseph Roth’s The Radetzky March.

I spent much of Friday evening on research for the Buddenbrooks essay. I spent more time on it yesterday afternoon, and last night read about 60 pages of the Roth novel. I thought, after I was ready for bed, that I’d get a few more pages in.

But when it came to it, I couldn’t pick up the Roth or the Mann again. Nope. Just couldn’t do it.

Because although both of these books are brilliantly written (and who doesn’t read for the writing—really), although they flesh out some philosophical ideas and practical realities that are intriguing, they are also… well, Sad.

I realized, as I climbed into bed, that I was tired of early twentieth century Europe on the brink of World War I. I was tired of decline and mental lassitude and bourgeois misery. Yes I Was.

And what does one do in circumstances such as these? Simple. One goes home. To Annie Dillard (oh my, yes) and Pittsburgh (ah!) and Life Through Words in ways that defy words for explanation.

She knows, Annie does, what it means to be alive, and to attend to that living. One can’t live—not all the time—in pre-WWI Europe. No. It’s good, from time to time, to come Home.

In the living room the mail slot clicked open and envelopes clattered down. In the back room, where our maid, Margaret Butler, was ironing, the steam iron thumped the muffled ironing board and hissed. The walls squeaked, the pipes knocked, the screen door trembled, the furnace banged, and the radiators clanged. This was the fall the loud trucks went by. I sat mindless and eternal on the kitchen floor, stony of head and solemn, playing with my fingers. Time streamed in full flood beside me on the kitchen floor; time roared raging beside me down its swollen banks; and when I woke I was so startled I fell in.

Who could ever tire of this heart-stopping transition, of this breakthrough shift between seeing and knowing you see, between being and knowing you be? It drives you to a life of concentration, it does, a life in which effort draws you down so very deep that when you surface you twist up exhilarated with a yelp and a gasp.

-Annie Dillard, An American Childhood

Thank you again, Annie, for the rescue.

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