It's all Greek to me

Today I read Friends, Lovers, Chocolate by Alexander McCall Smith, in its entirety. The first volume of that series (The Sunday Philosophy Club) I found rather tedious, in that the main character is constantly agonizing over moral questions (she's a moral philosopher, and apparently this renders her perpetually vulnerable to the question of "ought"). I nearly didn't continue with the series, but this second volume put to rest my fear of boredom. Isabel Dalhousie does indeed continue to worry about moral questions, but with much more verve and less abstraction. I also found the plot more interesting.

I did like this quote, very much:

"The sentiment sounded trite, but then didn't most good sentiments sound trite? It was hard to make goodness--and good people--sound interesting. Yet the good were worthy of note, of course, because they battled and that battle was a great story, whereas the evil were evil because of moral laziness, or weakness, and that was ultimately a dull and uninteresting affair."

I've long wondered why (especially in fiction) good people were rendered so boring(ly). In some cases, of course, the author simply doesn't understand the internal complexity of goodness. In other cases, though, I suspect it's sheer laziness. It's easy to make a wicked person "interesting", because the conflict is obvious and external: who might they harm next? what might they do? But often the good are only fighting their own weaker natures.

A good character can fight an external battle and hold interest, though, such as Atticus Finch. (An easy example--but can I think of another? This bears more thought.)

The other quote of the day is from The Greeks, by H.D.F. Kitto. (Not nearly finished with that, as it takes much more concentration to get through.) Kitto was English, a classics scholar, and writing in the 1950s; thus the tone and context for the quote. He is discussing the clarity of the ancient Greek language:

"It is the nature of the Greek language to be exact, subtle and clear. The imprecision and lack of immediate perspicuity into which English occasionally deviates and from which German occasionally emerges, is quite foreign to Greek."

"From which German occasionally emerges." HA! I am reminded of the Sherlock Holmes adventure, "A Scandal in Bohemia." Holmes receives a message from a potential client, but he notes its syntactical peculiarities to Watson:

"Do you note the peculiar construction of the sentence--'This account of you we have from all quarters received.' A Frenchman or Russian could not have written that. It is the German who is so uncourteous to his verbs."

In reproducing these quotes, I mean no disrespect to the German language; I don't know it at all. But I find it amusing that speakers of English (a notoriously difficult language for non-native speakers) could be so dismissive of a language not all that different from their own.

Of course, Englishmen are not all free from blame, in Kitto's eyes. The footnote to the above quote reads:

"When I say 'English' I do not mean the English of administrators, politicians, and important people who write letters to The Times. Imprecision would be the chief quality of this language, but for its weary pomposity and its childish delight in foolish metaphors."

Ouch.