Why you should read classic works

Why read classic works?

Let’s start with some definitions.

1. Classic works are those books that you often hear people say "I am re-reading..." instead of "I am reading...".

At least that's true for those who are considered "learned"; it doesn't apply to young people because they are at an age where their exposure to the world and the classics that become part of it make Important precisely because this is their first contact.

It represents the repetition of "heavy" and is placed before the verb "read". For some people who are ashamed to admit that they have not read a certain famous book, it may represent a small amount of hypocrisy. To reassure them, it suffices to point out that no matter how widely one reads during one's formative years, there are always numerous important works that remain unread.

Anyone who has read the entire works of Herodotus and Thucydides, please raise your hand. What about Saint-Simon? And Cardinal Reis? Even the great series of novels of the nineteenth century are usually more mentioned than read. In France they started reading Balzac in school, and judging by the sales of various editions, people apparently continued to read him after their school days were over. But if a formal survey were made on Balzac's popularity in Italy, he would probably rank very low. Dickens's admirers in Italy were a small elite who, as soon as they met, began to recall various characters and fragments as if they were talking about people they knew in real life. When Michel Buteau was teaching in the United States many years ago, he was annoyed by people always asking him about Zola, because he had never read Zola, so he decided to read the entire Rugunmakar family. "series. He discovered that it was nothing like what he had imagined: it was an allegorical, mythological genealogy and celestial evolution, a system he later described in a brilliant article.

The above examples show that reading a great work for the first time when a person is fully mature is a great pleasure, which is very different from that in adolescence (as to whether there is a greater pleasure is difficult to say ). In adolescence, every reading, like every experience, adds a unique flavor and meaning; in mature age, one appreciates (or should appreciate) more details, layers, and meanings. Therefore, we might as well try other ways:

2. Classic works are books that constitute a valuable experience for those who have read and loved them; but for those who reserve this opportunity and wait to enjoy They also remain a rich experience for those who read them when their best comes.

Because the reality is that what we read when we are young is often of little value, again because of our impatience, inability to concentrate, lack of reading skills, or because of our lack of life experience. This kind of adolescent reading may (perhaps simultaneously) have a formative effect on the grounds that it gives a form or shape to our future experiences, provides a pattern for these experiences, provides a means of processing them, a wording of comparisons, a way of putting these experiences into context Methods of classification, measures of value, examples of beauty: all these continue to operate on us, even if we have almost forgotten or completely forgotten the book we read in our youth. When we reread this book in maturity, we rediscover those constants that are now part of our inner machinery, even though we can no longer recall where they came from. This kind of work has a special effect, that is, it itself may be forgotten, but it leaves its seeds in us. We can now give this definition:

3. Classic works are books that have a special impact. They either leave their mark on our imagination in a forgotten way, or they disguise themselves as individuals or collectives. The unconscious is hidden in deep memory.

For this reason, a period of one's adult life should be devoted to rediscovering the most important works we read as teenagers. Even if the books remain the same (and indeed they change as the historical perspective shifts), we must have changed, and therefore this subsequent encounter will be new.

So it is not really that important whether we use the verb "read" or the verb "stress". In fact we can say:

4. A classic work is a book that brings discovery every time it is reread as if it were the first time it was read.

5. A classic is a book that, even when we first read it, seems like we are revisiting something we have read before.

The fourth definition above can be seen as a corollary of the following definition:

6. A classic work is a book that never exhausts everything it has to say to the reader. book.

The fifth definition implies the following more complex equation:

7. Classic works are books that come to us with the special atmosphere of previous explanations. Trails left by dragging them through a culture or cultures (or just languages ??and customs).

This applies to both ancient and modern classics. If I read the Odyssey, I am reading Homer's text, but I cannot forget all that the adventures of Ulysses have meant over the centuries, and I cannot help but wonder whether these meanings were implicit in the original work. In the text, it was gradually added, transformed or expanded later. If I read Kafka, I would both approve and resist the legitimacy of the adjective "Kafkaesque," because we hear it used all the time to mean that you can say anything. If I read Turgenev's "Fathers and Sons" or Dostoevsky's "Demons" I cannot help but think about how the characters in these books continue to be reincarnated all the way down to our own time.

Reading a classic work is bound to surprise us when we compare it with what we have imagined before. This is why we always recommend reading primary texts and trying to avoid second-hand bibliographies, commentaries and other interpretations. Schools and colleges should reinforce the idea that any book that discusses another book can never say anything as good as the book in question; yet what they go to great lengths to convince students is, in fact, just the opposite. . There is a reversal of the widespread value here, namely that introductions, critical apparatuses, and bibliographies are used like smoke screens to obscure what a text has to say and can only say without intermediaries—and intermediaries always is to claim that they know more than the text itself. Therefore, we can summarize:

8. A classic work is a work that constantly creates a dust cloud of critical discourse around it, but always shakes off those particles.

A classic work does not necessarily teach us something we don’t know; sometimes we find in a classic work something we already know or always thought we already knew, but we did not expect that classic The text had already said it (or that idea had a special connection to that text). Such discoveries are also deeply satisfying surprises, as we always feel when we figure out where an idea comes from, or how it connects to a text, or who said it first. To sum up, we can draw the following definition:

9. Classic works are books that the more we hear about them and think we understand them, the more we think they understand them when we actually read them, the more we feel that they are Unique, unexpected and new.

Of course, this usually happens because the text of a classic "functions" as a classic, that is, it establishes a personal relationship with the reader. There is no point in doing this without a spark: there is no use reading the classics out of duty or reverence, we should read them simply out of love. Except in school: Whether you want to or not, school teaches you to read a number of classics among which (or by using them as a benchmark) you will later identify "your" classics. Schools have a responsibility to provide you with these tools so that you can make your own decisions; however, only those things you choose after or outside of schooling are valuable.

Only in unforced reading will you encounter the book that will become "your" book. I know a brilliant art historian, a man of great breadth, who of all the books he has read, his favorite is The Pickwick Papers, and he quotes excerpts from Dickens during any discussion. and connect every event in his life with the life of Pickwick. Gradually, in a process of complete identification, he himself, the universe and its basic principles emerged as The Pickwick Papers. If we follow this path, we will form an idea of ??a classic work that is both admirable and demanding:

10. A classic work has such a title , which is used to describe any book that represents the entire universe, a book comparable to an ancient amulet.

Such a definition brings us closer to the idea of ??the all-encompassing book, the kind of book Mallarmé dreamed of. But a classic work can also establish a powerful relationship not of identification but of opposition or opposition. All Rousseau's thoughts and actions are dear to me, but they arouse in me an irresistible urge to resist him, to criticize him, to argue with him. Of course, this has something to do with the fact that I find his personality incompatible with my temperament, but if it were that simple, I would just avoid reading him; the fact is, I can't help but think of him as one of my authors. one. So, I want to say:

11. "Your" classic work is a book that prevents you from remaining indifferent to it and helps you to be in a relationship with it and even Establish yourself against it.

I do not believe that my use of the name "classic" needs to be justified. I do not use words such as antiquity, style and authority to distinguish here. (The history of the above-mentioned meanings of this name is discussed in great detail in Franco Fortini's "Classics" entry for the third volume of the Encyclopedia Einaudi.) Based on my opinion, one The difference between this classic work may just be the certain resonance we feel from a work that, whether ancient or modern, has its own place in the continuity of a culture. We can say:

12. A classic work is a work that precedes other classic works; but those who have read other classic works first will recognize it at once in many classic works. position in the pedigree diagram.

At this point, I can no longer put aside a key issue, that is, how to coordinate the relationship between reading the classics and reading all other texts that are not classics. This question is related to other questions such as: “Why read the classics instead of reading works that give us a deeper understanding of our own time?” and “Where do we have the time and leisure to read the classics? We have been The flood of all kinds of prints about the present is inundated. ”

Thirteen, a classic work is a work that adjusts the current noise into a background lightness. Sound is indispensable for the existence of classic works.

Fourteen, a classic is a work that persists as background noise even when something incompatible with it now dominates.

The fact remains that reading classic works seems inconsistent with the pace of our lives, which cannot bear to give up large chunks of time or space to the leisure of humanists; it is also inconsistent with the pace of our culture. The elitism is inconsistent, and this elitism can never produce a catalog of classic works suitable for our times.

This was precisely the environment of Leopardi's life: living in his father's castle, he had to use his father Monaldo's formidable library to practice his study of Greek and Latin ancient books. admired him, and filled the library with all the Italian literature up to that time, and all the French literature--except for the record novels and the latest works, which were few and far between, and were created solely for the amusement of his sister ("Your Stomach"). "Da" is how he talks to Paulina about the French novelist). Leopardi even resorted to texts that were by no means "recent" to satisfy his extreme enthusiasm for scientific and historical works, reading Buffon's work on the habits of birds, Fontenelle's work on Frederic Reus's work on mummies, and Robinson's work on Columbus.

Today, it is unimaginable to be as educated in classical works as the young Leopardi was, especially since the library of his father, Count Monaldo, has collapsed. To say collapse means that there are very few ancient books left, and it also means that new books have spread into all modern literature and culture. What can be done now is for each of us to invent our ideal library of classics; and I would say half of it should consist of books that we have read and which have been of benefit to us, and the rest should be books that we intend to read and assume that they will be useful to us. Books that have helped us. We should also give some space to books of serendipity and serendipity.

I noticed that Leopardi was the only name I mentioned from Italian literature. This was the result of the collapse of that collection.

Now I should rewrite the whole article to make it clear that the classics help us understand who we are and where we have reached, and thus understand that Italian classics are indispensable for us Italians, otherwise we would not be able to compare ourselves to foreign countries classics; likewise, foreign classics are indispensable, otherwise we would not be able to compare Italian classics.

Next, I really should rewrite this article a third time, lest people believe that they read classics because they think they serve some purpose. The only reason that can be cited to please them is that reading classics is better than not reading at all.

And if anyone objects that they are not worth the trouble, I would like to cite Giolen (not a classic writer, at least not yet, but a writer who is now being translated into Italian Modern Thinker): "While the poison was being prepared, Socrates was practicing a tune on the flute. 'What's the use of it?' he was asked. 'At least I can learn this tune before I die.'"< /p>

Another: Excerpted version of "The Definition of Classics" (translated by Yiren)

1. Classics are the kind of books we often hear people say, "I'm rereading..." rather than "I'm reading...".

2. We call books that people can't put down and cherish as classics; but it's not just those who are lucky enough to read them for the first time who carefully collect and appreciate them.

3. Classics have a special influence. They are impossible to remove from the mind. They are hidden in the memory layer of the brain, disguised as collective or individual unconsciousness.

4. Every time you re-read a classic, it is like reading it for the first time, a voyage of discovery.

5. Every reading of a classic is actually a re-reading.

6． The scriptures never say anything; they have already said what they need to say.

7. Classics are passed down to us with traces of previous readings, and with their own traces left to culture, or more clearly, language and customs.

8． Classics do not necessarily teach us things we did not understand before. In the classics we sometimes find something that we already know (or think we know), but without knowing that the author first proposed it, or at least is connected to it in a special way. It is also a surprise that brings us great joy, just as we always benefit from the discovery of ancestry, kinship, and affinity.

9. By reading the classics, we feel that they are far fresher, more unexpected, and more incredible than we imagined in rumors.

10. The books we call classics have a quasi-overall form comparable to the magic weapons of antiquity. According to this definition, we are approaching the realm of "the whole book" conceived by Mallarmé.

11. A classic author is one who you cannot ignore and who helps to define your relationship with him, even if you disagree with him.

12． A classic can only be determined by weighing it with other classics; but anyone who reads other classics first and then reads it can immediately confirm its status in the genealogy.

13． Classics are something that can easily reduce current interests to background noise, but at the same time we cannot leave this background noise.

14． The classics exist alongside background noise, even when diametrically opposed interests control the situation.