Wednesday, April 25. Anzac Day. Perhaps we should get the Eurostar to France and drop in on the Western Front - I'm sure there'd be a group from my old school paying their respects. Old school activities, right wing politics, both manifestations of getting stuck in adolescence. Wondered during the night how my reaction to a work like the Birth of Venus might be describable in terms of Lacan's discourses. It's all a question of where the implied reader is to be located. If implied reader = Other = inarticulate $, then it is the discourse of the analyst where delight (a) is Agent. The payoff being S1, a new social realignment, as Production. But perhaps it is inarticulateness in the face of the work that is Production. Seems a fruitful line of thought. Is the difference between these 2 the difference between the beautiful and the sublime? A book I picked up in Blackwell's about C. S. Lewis's fantasy novels in the first 60 pages has used both the words 'scary' and 'comfy' in ordinary critical discourse. Oddly enough, these same two words came up in a discussion I was having with S about the way baby words crowded out real ones. Enough to upset your tummy!
At breakfast in the college dining room there seemed to be many fewer students than expected - surprising, as we would have thought all Oxford colleges were chock a block. Students usually in same-sex groups - they are very young, reinforcing my feelings about undesirability of them being driven into each others' arms. They have to pay for each element of the meal individually - a rasher of bacon costs 34p, I noticed - so perhaps the reason there are fewer than I might have expected is that they skip breakfast.
Went to the Ashmolean in the morning while L looked after washing. Large parties of primary school children being taken around the displays of Ancient Egypt, which I find a rather repellent civilisation. Took a long time to find the A-S collections; if the Alfred jewel was there, as they claim, I didn't see it. The whole place could do with more exposition - rather a pointless collection, I thought, taking it all round. Big surprise a reproduction of the Willendorf Venus, which turned out to be only around 7.5 cm high, whereas from pictures I'd expected something quite massive. Then to lunch with Gill and David W and Nick and Lindy P (cousins' cousins) at the White Horse. Though Nick someone I have always known about, we had never properly met, since the only other time we encountered one another (12 years ago) I couldn't really be counted as one of the company, in consequence of gastric flu (that tainted gherkin again). Nick and Lindy have been big in disadvantaged education. A pleasant afternoon, then back to St Hugh's in pouring rain. After goodbyes L and I walked round the block, admiring walls of ancient eroded red brick, much older than the college, and college lawns with tulips and daffodils. In Italy the tulips were already over. Out for a walk in the evening found an Italian place for pasta where we were the last customers (suspect the pesto was thinned with beef stock, so if you're a vegetarian, be wary). I'm not sure how the conversation turned that way, but the proprietor brought out an MS book he had written, about as thick as a house brick, which was an exhaustive English-Spanish dictionary of phrasal verbs. Also favoured us with a brief history of the English language, so we went to bed much enlightened.