An interesting day - I didn't have time this morning to find an hour for this "Learning Activity", but after I arrived in my office, a colleague lent me the book "Six Memos for the Next Millennium" by Italo Calvino.

The book is a series of 6 essays for the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures in 1985. I began reading the first essay and was quickly hooked. I decided this would be a good way to spend an hour "Learning". Here is a retype of the notes I made while reading the first essay.

Calvino points out that the essays are on literature, and that he is confident on the future of literature: "there are things that only literature can give us, by means specific to it" (p. 1)

The first essay is called Lightness.

"I have tried to remove weight from the structures of stories and from language" (p.3)

There is mention of Medusa nd Perseus and Pegasus. I assume the full story is in Ovid's Metamorpheses. Later I find out I am right! I must buy this book.

Calvino also mentions The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera. "...shows us how everything we choose and value in life for its lightness soon reveals its true, unbearable weight" (p. 7)

He then mentions De Rerum Natura of Lucretius (50 years before Ovid). Check this out on the web. Done (see below)

Calvino mentions that Pythagorus is viewed by Ovid as being much like the Buddha! (see if I can find out more about this!)

Image for the new millennium: "the sudden agile leap of  the poet-philosopher who raises himself above the weight of the world" (p.12)

Other literary examples of "lightness":  Thousand and One Nights

I then began a few web searches. Using Hotbot and the keyword Lucretius and found the full text of "On the Nature of Things".

This is a great site:  Great Books Index I clicked on the Lucretius link and I was there. I must return to this site. It looks like it is relevant to much of what I started with The Odyssey. Amazing - I have come full circle.

I also found the full text for The Thousand and One Nights. I notice that it includes Sinbad the Sailor, Aladdin and Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. This may be another book I should come back and read!!