Resolve.

I had a few minutes to kill before the end of my lunch break, so I popped into the Harvard Book Store - which is right across the street from the Widener Library - and browsed the new arrivals and the Classics hardcovers. At the end of the Classics aisle is a bookshelf reserved for perdiodicals and literary journals, and lo and behold, there I was able to find copies of Arion, a quarterly journal of the humanities published by Boston University, my alma mater. About ten years back Arion devoted an entire issue to the great William Arrowsmith, who had until his passing had been a vital presence at B.U., particular in the Department of Classics. I have the issue; it is one of my most beloved possessions. Since Arrowsmith died before I had arrived at B.U. to complete my degree, it was through this collection of his essays, letters, and remembrances by other faculty members and friends that I came to know the man and admire his approach to Classics and the Humanities, which I discovered was very close to my own.

This most recent issue of Arion however was remarkable for another reason - there was an article in it (which I've just photocopied but not yet read) about the projection of Graeco-Roman archetypes into Mexico by Cortes and the other Spanish Conquistadors in the early 16th Century. It looks fabulous, but made me want to punch the bookshelf nonetheless, as this was a pet idea of mine way back when I was still a student at B.U. and taking a readings course in the Classical Tradition during the Renaissance. As those of you out there may or may not know, before I fell permanently under the thrall of Latin and Greek I spent a few years trying my hand at New World archaeology, particularly that of the Aztecs. I loved studying Mexico, and even went there in the summer of 1992 to learn Nahuatl, the Aztec language that is still spoken today by over a million people, but in the end my love for the Classics won out and I left the field, although it always occurred to me that there were hidden connections between the disciplines that I might one day explore when I knew more about such things. The Classical Tradition was that missing piece of the puzzle.

When I took the readings course at B.U., I found myself stumbling on the tail end of my former life as a Mesoamericanist as Europe came to grips with the realization that there was a whole new world waiting for them in the Western Hemisphere. That the explorers and chroniclers of this startling find would naturally first try to interpret what they were seeing through the lens of Ancient wisdom is not surprising, but for some reason I ran into some resistance to this notion from my professor, who perhaps was too focused upon the Renaissance in Europe to be interested in its ramifications elsewhere. Although I did have a vested interest, at the time I let the matter go, and resolved to take it up again when time permitted, perhaps as part of a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature, as I was leaning in that direction way back then. Plenty of opportunity to work on it later.

Well, later is now, and I've been scooped. I don't even need to read the article to know that I could have written one like it. What's particularly galling is that the author in question isn't a faculty member, but a freelance scholar, which means that my trying to excuse my lack of academic output on the fact that I'm not ensconced in a university yet is just so much bunk. I'm teaching. I'm researching. I'm involved in a scholarly institution. If I don't start publishing now, then when? I have to consider this my wake-up call as far as non-fiction is concerned. Just because I have some nifty ideas kicking around my head doesn't do anyone else any bit of good. Of course I had already made a New Year's Resolution to start working on some essays and articles for submission, but it's when you see someone else finishing your sentences for you that you begin to realize that actual resolve is something more difficult to acquire than by hanging a new calendar on the wall.