I'm still here...

It's now day nine without smoking. It's actually not as bad as I thought it would be.
One of my few friends who still smokes gave me one last night, and boy it tasted different! just like it did back in grade 9 (I had a rush of images, such as me with sideburns and a jean jacket back in 1995. Damn that was ten years ago!).

Finally got my hands on a copy of C.S. Lewis' Preface to Paradise Lost. I didn't read all of it, but it's worth reading for sure. A funny part came right at the end in his conclusion when he, somewhat tangentially, remarks on audiences and Ulysses (he's referring to what we now call "stream of consciousness," though he never refers to it as that). The book was published in 1942, and the last couple of pages are his argument against not the aesthetic validity of stream of consciousness (Ulysses being the English exemplar, but by no means the originator), but the epistemic. Funny stuff (not haha funny but funny nonetheless). I'm in the process of thinking up a paper, so maybe when that's done I'll have better comments.

I recently read an English translation of Moliere's The Misanthrope. I just picked up his Tartuffe and Racine's Andromaque in French. I started reading the latter, and although I haven't spoken or used French in about 7-8 years, I still remember most of it, except maybe odd tenses or words. I can usually read regular prose all right, but sometimes even modern prose does things with tenses English doesn't. For example, in my edition of Racine, his biographical blurb changes tenses constantly. Instead of "il est nee" we have "Racine nait," followed by "sa mere meurt" and "il aura", etc etc.
Anyway, I'm past the first speech by Orestes and Pylade, in other words, page one, and I think I know what's going on :)