Ivy League On-Line

For those who know Harvard Professor Greg Nagy, about whom Nathan Heller writes in some detail in his recent New Yorker article on MOOCs, there must be the supreme irony that Nagy, the Homerist who insists upon the theory of oral poetic performance constantly in flux until the Hellenistic age of the text in contradistinction to his great rival M.L.West who argues for a written text for the Iliad and Odyssey as early as the seventh century BCE, is so keen on the possibility of video DVD versions of his celebrated lectures to his students, wanting above all else a fixed text, not only that but one that will survive his own lifetime, even as he tries by putting off retiring as he reaches demonstrable old age, to make no room for younger, alternative interpretations of the ancient poems at Harvard.  Nagy a very witty and simpatico gentleman would be the first to smile at this observation, I imagine, without denying its fundamental truth.  I shudder to think that Nagy on Homer will continue through the ages as the definitive "take" on the poems (which the prestige, ubiquity, and low cost of MOOCs will ensure), simply because I have always agreed with my great Harvard teacher Arthur Darby Nock, who used to remark often enough that literary takes on ancient works are like women's fashions, they change with the year.  So personally I really think it would be a good thing to retire Nagy on Homer which is now pretty much showing its age in any event.  The fact that my meager scholarly or critical offerings on the subject of Homer scarcely made their way out of the showroom to the catwalk for one evening is not a factor (he said, clawing the air, snarling through his put on smile) in this assessment. Criticism and discussion of texts belong to the age in which they were born; they present the ur-text which has no life really beyond each century's grasp of it.  It is not too ridiculous to say the the poem is simply the reception of it.  This is all a very complicated critical and scholarly subject, of course, which leads me to think of the unwashed thousands out there ready with their laptops to take in the highly refined and sophisticated perceptions of this elite faculty gathered for the project.  I am reminded of the times that I, the Distinguished Professor of Classics at Lehman College and the Graduate Center at the City University of New York (whew! how pretentious can you get?  Very, believe me, would be my husband's reply, if he were here at the moment), taught a Tuesday evening three hour literature course up in the Bronx which I agreed to do since I had no young children and no pressing need to be home.  I remember two aggressive, uncouth young women angrily demanding to know why my course was the only one available at the hour which they had set aside out of their work week to go to school.  Sorry, not my fault, I didn't make up the course catalog, was my meek reply.  They were not happy campers throughout the term, considering it absolute nonsense-and voicing that opinion more than once-to sit through what they considered utter twaddle, although they were bright enough to do what it took to get B's.  Then there were those parents whose baby sitter failed them just as they were coming to class who brought the little seven to nine year old along, requiring the child to stand next to their seat in class for three hours without complaining! They were often Mexican with obvious Aztec, or Olmec or Mayan features and I considered how those cultures had valued stolidity, and I realized that I was in the presence of it then and there.  In the end I could not tolerate it, so I bought several boxes of crayons and drawing paper, to hand out on those desperate occasions.  The two classroom scenes I have conjured up required the masterpiece theater performance live, in the room, the compelling animal presence of the speaker, whose various asides if they did not completely repel, managed to convey perhaps some of the eternal fascination, nay even glamor, of a man who lived for learning and literature.  I know that the televised version of Cher's Las Vegas gig is endlessly thrilling, nay, captivating, but I don't think anyone speaking on Homer on a video can compel the same surrender.