Let’s Talk About It! Great Literature on Great Themes
Eros and Eris: Love and Strife in Western Literature: Ori Z. Soltes, Georgetown University, Discussion Leader

The West End Library Friends is sponsoring a sixbook discussion series, led by Ori Z. Soltes of Georgetown University. It begins January 21 at the West End Library, and will be held 6:30-8:30pm on respective evenings.

The theme is “Eros and Eris: Love and Strife in Western Literature.” One aspect of the ubiquitous topic of love in literature is that invariably when it appears its apparent opposite, strife, shows up alongside or intertwined with it. The fifth-century BCE Greek playwright, Euripides, opined that the Greek terms, eros (love) and eris (strife) came from the same linguistic root. It turns out that his grasp of linguistics was off, but what underlay his assumption was right on. In these six sessions Western literature is the focus. Here are the books and the schedule:

Book 1, January 20— Near the Beginnings of Western Epic Poetry: Homer’s Iliad.
The discussion of this magnificent work— if you have only read the Odyssey, you are missing what is arguably a more richly laden work—will include references to Hesiod’s Theogony as well as to the Odyssey as parts of the human story and specific Trojan War context into which the Iliad fits.

Book 2, February 10— Family Strife in the Hebrew
Bible from the Patriarchal narratives to the royal annals of Saul and David. Why not? This material is as juicy and as poignant with regard to Euripides’ theme as any other! Specifically, the focus will be on Genesis 17-18, 21-22, 25, 27-28, 32-33, 37; I Samuel 15, 18-21, 24, 26-28; and II Samuel 2.

Book 3, March 3— Corneille’s The Cid
This is the consummate work of French theatre that wrestles with whether love or honor should prevail when the two come up against each other—and which kind of love should take precedence: that for a parent or that for a spouse.

Book 4, March 31— DH Lawrence, Women in Love
Ever the obsessive writer on the various ways in which love and strife interweave each other, where both general and generational relations (Sons and Lovers) are concerned, Lawrence here offers a novel that presents, as its centerpiece, the question not only of what constitutes real love, but of whether real love is only available to men.

Book 5, April 21 Elie Wiesel, Day (aka The Accident)
The third in what has come to be treated as a trilogy—along with Night and Dawn—by the eminent writer and Holocaust survivor. This brief, moving novel explores the struggle of a survivor of a strife-torn past to regain the ability to love in the present when those he has most loved have been destroyed in that past: will loving a woman push the loving memory of his mother and grandmother out of his consciousness?

Book 6, May 12— Philip Roth, The Human Stain
Love and strife are redirected to the self—how myriad are the ways in which the human penchant for simultaneous self-love and self-distain express themselves?—in this moving story of the meeting of diverse racial, religious and personal worlds, each with its own secrets.