Friday, September 16, 2005

Decisions, decisions 

I'm going to go on exchange next year. Problemo: where?

Choices.
-A) Sciences-Po. Pros: hell prestigious, in Paris (hence easy to travel elsewhere, and hello...dream student life, sipping on coffee while scribbling in Moleskine in cafe!), possibly the only famous uni I'll ever get a chance to attend, may be able to bunk with relatives (but not sure if I want to), suits my Government major. Cons: in Paris (been there done that, also tres expensive), apparently crappy student life, hell hard.

-B) Aix-en-Provence. Pros: South! Of! France! More laidback, only 60 euros away from Barcelona, warm, cheaper than Paris, my friend might be going there. Cons: don't have government subjects, new agreement so will be guinea pig, sort of far from Paris.

-C) La Rochelle. Pros: apparently very good support for internationals, good student life, cheaper than Paris. Cons: ewww, Atlantic coast in Autumn-Winter. Also, it's like...UWS.

There's also Cachan, another prestigious uni but science-oriented apparently, and no government units.

I'm leaning towards Sciences-Po, but I'm afraid I'll be all miserable and lonely there and dying from the hard work. Then again, will probably only be taking French language units and one actual hardcore subject... plus all grades are "satisfied requirements" only when transferred to USyd transcript.

Oh well, will procrastinate.

In other news, I've bought my very first poetry books. I only had 15 bucks on me, and had to choose between the Palgrave's Golden Treasury anthology ($10), Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass, and a Wordsworth collection, both $5. Ended up with the anthology and Walt, since I figured I needed to balance out the over-Britishness. Still digging Wordsworth though. Digging Tennyson too now.

I can't believe I've only discovered poetry now. This year, pretty much. Oh, as a kid I had a poetry-reading phase and somehow got someone to give me a couple of children's anthologies. The one poem I remember is The Highwayman, which is rather macabre. But besides that, how lacking my education has been. Apart from Shakespeare, and he hardly counts since we did dramatic and literary analysis rather than full on poetic analysis. Did a bit of Virgil in Latin, which was good - a bit of scansion, a bit of analysis, but it was all rather perfunctory. I still remember the sort of wonder at discovering the beauty of the lines, after wrangling with the grammar and syntax. Words thunk up and written thousands of years past, somehow surviving to arrive in my clumsy hands. Man, I miss Latin. Summer project- revise grammar and do some translations for fun.

(Let's not comment on how nerdy that sounds, shall we)

I'm disappointed with Robert Browning. Apparently he was the model for Randolph Henry Ash in Possession. I liked Ash's clarity and narrative-driven poetry compared to Christabel's more fantastical stuff, but Browning's seems, I dunno, not that appealing. Christabel was modelled on Christina Rossetti, whose "Goblin Market" I read. Also disappointing. Curse you, AS Byatt, and your too-good pastiche! I think, though, the story gave the poems extra meaning. Ah, but Browning's real-life love story with fellow poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning is hot damn romantic.

In other other news, I discovered that XY's e-mail addy is taken from line 294*. Also hot damn romantic. I think, in fact, her real life romance with her husband is partly why she interested me in the first place. In earlier interviews, she seemed sort of - not cynical, but wary about love, and then she gets swept off her feet and now seems to be living in marital bliss. Gives one hope to know that such things actually happen to real people, yknow? Though, little is known about her husband except that he's a writer of some sort. Now that could mean that he's a writer of technical manuals, but the lack of information just increases the mystery and romance.

*Note to self, RPO is a terrific anthology - includes both Brits and Yanks. And wow, even Our Henry Lawson is included.

# posted at 10:38 pm

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