Jonathan Geltner

husband, father, writer. Paul Claudel's Five Great Odes (Angelico Press 2020); Absolute Music: a novel (Slant Books 2022)

[Jonathan Geltner @GeltnerJonathan]

@roddreher I don’t know man, if you pay the equivalent of almost $9 apiece for 16 Stella’s I think you’ve got yourself to blame rather than macroeconomic forces. Among other problems.

[Jonathan Geltner @GeltnerJonathan]

@jdflynn In legend, the cross of Calvary is fashioned from timber that comes from seeds of the Edenic tree. In typological understanding, Christ is the second Adam and Mary the second Eve. Altogether it’s a beautiful trio of parallels: two men, two women, two trees.

[Jonathan Geltner @GeltnerJonathan]

@jdflynn Adam and Eve: As they brought creation into sin by eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, so Christ redeems creation by reigning from the tree of the cross.

[Jonathan Geltner @GeltnerJonathan]

This was great all around. Also nerve-racking for me, as I’d never before read from a work in progress. For me, the very best part was talking to some bright young students afterwards. I recommend @FavaleAbs’s first novel to all. May more follow.

[Brigid Pasulka @BrigidPasulka]

Standing room only for @FavaleAbs @GeltnerJonathan @WisebloodBooks

[Jonathan Geltner @GeltnerJonathan]

The world was better and life was better before this existed.

[Massimo @Rainmaker1973]

AI controlled Bot Farm.

[Jonathan Geltner @GeltnerJonathan]

New arrival, possibly the single greatest book purchase of my life. This is my soul: language and the land—the land of my mother tongue.

I hope you’ll continue to follow my reading and writing on s*bst*ck. This account closes on the Feast of the Assumption/Dormition (8/15/25).

[Jonathan Geltner @GeltnerJonathan]

@gailfinke @kalezelden He also shut down the Tridentine Mass in Detroit.

[Jonathan Geltner @GeltnerJonathan]

@HootenWilson Aurora Leigh is a must. I would also teach A Land by Jacquetta Hawkes and The Wandering Scholars by Helen Waddell.

[Jonathan Geltner @GeltnerJonathan]

@Kin_Loch @AntigoneJournal Well now I’m sure they just use AI or other translation tools. Probably language reqs still stand, though I’ve been out of the game for a long time now. But I expect the days of poring over dictionaries in the small hours may be behind us now.

[Jonathan Geltner @GeltnerJonathan]

@Kin_Loch @AntigoneJournal I know one that goes something like: if a person who speaks two languages is bilingual, and three languages is trilingual, what do you call someone who speaks only one? An American.

[Jonathan Geltner @GeltnerJonathan]

@Kin_Loch @AntigoneJournal What most Classics students, particularly grad students, complained about in my day wasn’t the Greek and Latin reading, it was all the other languages they had to read on top of that. That may be different now with so much scholarship published in English.

[Jonathan Geltner @GeltnerJonathan]

@Kin_Loch @AntigoneJournal It’s also important to note there are different foci in Classics: philology, history, archaeology. They don’t all read the same amount or the same sort of thing.

[Jonathan Geltner @GeltnerJonathan]

@Kin_Loch @AntigoneJournal I took cross-listed courses and did independent studies. Not everyone did. There’s a wide range of possible values in a degree. It is interesting—maybe dismal—to track changing baseline requirements. Then again, enormous reading is not necessarily in itself a virtue.

[Jonathan Geltner @GeltnerJonathan]

@Kin_Loch @AntigoneJournal It depends on what you go in search of for yourself and how much prep you come in with. It’s one thing to talk about required minimum curricula, another to address what an individual can get for him or herself with some effort and drive. Education is idiosyncratic.

[Jonathan Geltner @GeltnerJonathan]

@AntigoneJournal The most enjoyable part of my education in Classics—this too was extracurricular—was sparring with mock ups of historical Roman gear. Maybe programs could revive interest and rigor by making that mandatory—Make Classics Gladiatorial Again.

[Jonathan Geltner @GeltnerJonathan]

@AntigoneJournal I’ll also admit to struggling with some of the Greek—the tragedies and Demosthenes. I remember asking a grad student friend/mentor while I was there how long it took to get really good at Greek. He said the short answer was 8 years, and the long answer was that I never would.

[Jonathan Geltner @GeltnerJonathan]

@AntigoneJournal I wonder how much of the variation is down to changing tastes. I heard hardly a word about Roman drama at school and still know nothing about it. At the same time, I studied erotic elegy more than was maybe healthy for man of 20.

[Jonathan Geltner @GeltnerJonathan]

@AntigoneJournal Maybe now. But that’s about what I read for a Classics degree at Cincinnati 20+ years ago. I ended up with more Aristotle and less Horace than this list, also Ovid rather than Latin plays.

[Jonathan Geltner @GeltnerJonathan]

I say this with some piety: “Jews vs Rome” would make for an awesome RPG along the lines of Britannia, Pendragon or Paladin…

Anyway, looking forward to the book previewed here.

[Antigone Journal @AntigoneJournal]

"Jews vs Rome" is the title of the forthcoming book by @barrystrauss from @simonschuster. As a taster of the captivating content this exciting work has to offer, today he offers an account of the rise of Herod the Great in the fast-changing Mediterranean: https://t.co/YSMjywufb9