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Because the past is a foreign country, the classics are an excellent guide to that country, and foreign time travel broadens your perspective, making you a cult

Because the past is a foreign country, the classics are an excellent guide to that country, and foreign time travel broadens your perspective, making you a cultural and chronological cosmopolitan instead of a hick with the stifling horizons of your own local spacetime. They embiggen us. Plus a lot of them are fun as heck to read, page turners, not at all difficult, e.g. Pride and Prejudice or The Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Count of Monte Cristo and so many others.

retrac 6y ago
A broader perspective can never hurt. And you can't get more different than by going back. I'm currently reading Sei Shounagon's The Pillow Book. The author was a woman in the Heian court in Kyoto about 1000 AD, attendant to the Empress. By tradition it is a collection of her dairy entries, letters, poetry drafts and other personal papers, not intended for distribution, at least in the form we received them. It's unclear if the whole work is even a single author's. I went in expecting not to understand parts of it. And that has been true. But I also didn't expect to laugh quite so much! At one point, she has a list of grievances over the aggravations of daily living and bad etiquette. The more irrelevant and trifling, the more hyperbolic she is. At one point I fell right right into it and I was in the scene. I have lived those very moments. And I feel her same bizarre gulf between the urge to be polite outside, and the frustration with the people being impolite on the inside. I am pretty sure I have felt some shadow of what she felt in Kyoto some thousand years ago. It is both jarring and pleasing to have that momentary connection to someone who is about as alien to me, as anyone who has left a written work could possibly be.
- billfruit 6y ago
  Hearing of that book, I'm tempted of recommending another book of almost the same time, about another empire half the world away: Anna Komenena's Alexiad.
ajarmst 6y ago
I agree on all of that, but advancing age has forced me to qualify it. I now own more books that I want to read than my expected life span and average reading speed can support. I don’t regret a single moment spent reading crap genre mind-candy. I regret every single moment spent forcing myself through a book that I wasn’t enjoying, because it was something I ‘should read’. I don’t regret starting any of them, and I’ve enjoyed the hell out of some Dickens and Shakespeare, T. S. Eliot and Tennyson. I studied Latin and Hebrew at school. I’ve read half of what Kipling wrote and everything Keri Hulme did. Hell, I used to teach the publication history of the Bible. But I’ve read four Jane Austen novels (three for credit, one for a failed shot at a Women’s Studies major) and not enjoyed a moment of the experience. Intellectually, I get the quality of the work, but it wasn’t entertaining. It wasn’t pleasant, and life is just way too short for that. Books, even technical ones, get about three chapters to make their case now, if I’m not voluntarily choosing to read it after that, I’m moving on.
- ajarmst 6y ago
  Funny aside: for my sins, I own a complete more-than-a-ventury old set of leather-bound Jane Austen works, because I was the family member who was ‘into books’. I’ve promised myself to make sure they go to someone who will enjoy them when they pass from my custody.
  - madhadron 6y ago
    I, for one, volunteer to be their new caretaker. :)
- veddox 6y ago
  I like reading „classical literature“, and I find I enjoy a lot of it more than I expected to. Often I do have to push myself, because it can take a fair bit of concentration/perseverance, but it‘s usually worth it. However, I do know the feeling you describe: sometimes, it just doesn‘t „click“. And in that case, I will eventually move on to the next book, and try not to feel guilty about it ;-) (I started „Paradise Lost“ twice. I love the absolutely epic poetry and vivid imagination, but I still ended up getting stuck both times...)
  - jrumbut 6y ago
    I'm a believer in audiobooks as a great way to experience the classics, you don't get derailed when there's a lengthy genealogy or dedication to a long dead patron. It's true to the original experience of the works too since there was much more recitation and reading aloud when copies were scarce. So many are free on librivox (or from a library): https://librivox.org/ https://librivox.org/ PS no audiobook version could redeen Paradise Lost for me either, it was my peast favorite reading in high school. To paraphrase, better to be ignorant in hell than well read in heaven if you have to trudge through Milton to get there.
- loblollyboy 6y ago
  Bump
- iujjkfjdkkdkf 6y ago
Kaibeezy 6y ago
The past is a foreign country, and yet people are basically the same, and subject to the same conceits, failings and heroism too, whether from thousands of years ago or across the street, competitors or customers. I frequently thank Thucydides for that lesson. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Peloponnesian_War https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Peloponnesian...
mgreenleaf 6y ago
It feels like going back one or two hundred years is, in some ways, even more of a cultural shift than going to another country is today. I come across gems all the time that are products of the times and deeply insightful. Which happens with interacting with other countries today too. Both are profound and in similar, but different ways.
Gatsky 6y ago
I agree. The single most important thing about any of us is that we are members of a civillisation that has run for thousands of years. Yet we constantly forget this, and the classics are a rich and vivid reminder. Another reason is that lately, reality is both more fantastical and absurd than fiction. Contemporary books come off a bit pedestrian.

retrac 6y ago

A broader perspective can never hurt. And you can't get more different than by going back. I'm currently reading Sei Shounagon's The Pillow Book. The author was a woman in the Heian court in Kyoto about 1000 AD, attendant to the Empress. By tradition it is a collection of her dairy entries, letters, poetry drafts and other personal papers, not intended for distribution, at least in the form we received them. It's unclear if the whole work is even a single author's. I went in expecting not to understand parts of it. And that has been true. But I also didn't expect to laugh quite so much! At one point, she has a list of grievances over the aggravations of daily living and bad etiquette. The more irrelevant and trifling, the more hyperbolic she is. At one point I fell right right into it and I was in the scene. I have lived those very moments. And I feel her same bizarre gulf between the urge to be polite outside, and the frustration with the people being impolite on the inside. I am pretty sure I have felt some shadow of what she felt in Kyoto some thousand years ago. It is both jarring and pleasing to have that momentary connection to someone who is about as alien to me, as anyone who has left a written work could possibly be.

billfruit 6y ago
Hearing of that book, I'm tempted of recommending another book of almost the same time, about another empire half the world away: Anna Komenena's Alexiad.

ajarmst 6y ago

I agree on all of that, but advancing age has forced me to qualify it. I now own more books that I want to read than my expected life span and average reading speed can support. I don’t regret a single moment spent reading crap genre mind-candy. I regret every single moment spent forcing myself through a book that I wasn’t enjoying, because it was something I ‘should read’. I don’t regret starting any of them, and I’ve enjoyed the hell out of some Dickens and Shakespeare, T. S. Eliot and Tennyson. I studied Latin and Hebrew at school. I’ve read half of what Kipling wrote and everything Keri Hulme did. Hell, I used to teach the publication history of the Bible. But I’ve read four Jane Austen novels (three for credit, one for a failed shot at a Women’s Studies major) and not enjoyed a moment of the experience. Intellectually, I get the quality of the work, but it wasn’t entertaining. It wasn’t pleasant, and life is just way too short for that. Books, even technical ones, get about three chapters to make their case now, if I’m not voluntarily choosing to read it after that, I’m moving on.

ajarmst 6y ago
Funny aside: for my sins, I own a complete more-than-a-ventury old set of leather-bound Jane Austen works, because I was the family member who was ‘into books’. I’ve promised myself to make sure they go to someone who will enjoy them when they pass from my custody.
- madhadron 6y ago
  I, for one, volunteer to be their new caretaker. :)
veddox 6y ago
I like reading „classical literature“, and I find I enjoy a lot of it more than I expected to. Often I do have to push myself, because it can take a fair bit of concentration/perseverance, but it‘s usually worth it. However, I do know the feeling you describe: sometimes, it just doesn‘t „click“. And in that case, I will eventually move on to the next book, and try not to feel guilty about it ;-) (I started „Paradise Lost“ twice. I love the absolutely epic poetry and vivid imagination, but I still ended up getting stuck both times...)
- jrumbut 6y ago
  I'm a believer in audiobooks as a great way to experience the classics, you don't get derailed when there's a lengthy genealogy or dedication to a long dead patron. It's true to the original experience of the works too since there was much more recitation and reading aloud when copies were scarce. So many are free on librivox (or from a library): https://librivox.org/ https://librivox.org/ PS no audiobook version could redeen Paradise Lost for me either, it was my peast favorite reading in high school. To paraphrase, better to be ignorant in hell than well read in heaven if you have to trudge through Milton to get there.
loblollyboy 6y ago
Bump
iujjkfjdkkdkf 6y ago

Kaibeezy 6y ago

The past is a foreign country, and yet people are basically the same, and subject to the same conceits, failings and heroism too, whether from thousands of years ago or across the street, competitors or customers. I frequently thank Thucydides for that lesson. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Peloponnesian_War https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Peloponnesian...

mgreenleaf 6y ago

It feels like going back one or two hundred years is, in some ways, even more of a cultural shift than going to another country is today. I come across gems all the time that are products of the times and deeply insightful. Which happens with interacting with other countries today too. Both are profound and in similar, but different ways.

Gatsky 6y ago

I agree. The single most important thing about any of us is that we are members of a civillisation that has run for thousands of years. Yet we constantly forget this, and the classics are a rich and vivid reminder. Another reason is that lately, reality is both more fantastical and absurd than fiction. Contemporary books come off a bit pedestrian.