The classics are such a work that it never ends what it is about to say—Calvino
Let's start with some definitions.
Classics are books that you often hear people say, "I'm rereading..." instead of "I'm reading..."
At least for those who are seen as "erudite"; it does not apply to young people because they are at an age when they are exposed to the world and are exposed to the classics that become part of it are important precisely because it is their initial contact.
Representing a repetitive "weight", placed before the verb "read", may represent a small hypocrisy for some who are ashamed to admit that they have not read a famous book. To reassure them, it is enough to point out that no matter how widely one reads during the formative years of one's character, there will always be many important works that remain unread.
Anyone who has read all the works of Herodotus and Thucydides, raise your hand. What about Saint-Simon? And Cardinal Reis? Even the great series of novels of the nineteenth century are usually mentioned more than they have ever been read. In France, they began to read Balzac in school, and judging by the sales of various editions, it was clear that people continued to read him after their student days. But if a formal survey of Balzac's popularity had been done in Italy, he would have been ranked 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 talking about people they knew in real life. When Michel Bhutto was teaching in the United States many years ago, he was annoyed that people always asked him about Zola because he had never read Zola, so he decided to read the entire Rugunmaka family series. He found that it was exactly different from what he had imagined: it was allegorical, mythological genealogy and celestial evolution, a system he later described in a wonderful article.
The above examples show that reading a great work for the first time when a person is fully adult is a great pleasure, and this pleasure is very different from that of adolescence (it is difficult to say whether there is greater fun). In adolescence, every reading, like every experience, adds a unique flavor and meaning; at mature age, one appreciates (or should appreciate) more details, layers, and meanings. Therefore, we may wish to try other ways:
Classics are books which constitute a valuable experience for those who have read and loved them; but they are also a great experience for those who reserve this opportunity to read them when their best is at their best.
Because the reality is that what we read when we are young is often of little value, again because we are impatient, mentally incapable of concentrating, lacking reading skills, or because we lack life experience. This adolescent reading may (and perhaps at the same time) have a character-forming effect, on the grounds that it gives us a form or shape of future experiences, provides a pattern for them, provides the means to deal with them, the wording of comparisons, the methods by which they are categorized, the measures of value, the examples of beauty: all of this continues to work in us, even if we have almost forgotten or completely forgotten the book we read when we were young. When we re-read the book in our mature age, we rediscover the constant things that now form part of our internal mechanisms, even though we can no longer recall where they came from. This kind of work has a special effect, that is, it may itself be forgotten, but it leaves the seeds on us. We can now give a definition like this:
Classics are books that have a special impact on themselves, either forgetting themselves to imprint our imagination, or disguised as individual or collective unconsciouses hidden in deep memory.
For this reason, there should be a period of time in one's adult life to rediscover the most important works we read as teenagers. Even if these books remain the same (in fact, they have changed with the historical perspective), we must have changed, so this subsequent contact is completely new.
So, it doesn't really matter if we use the verb "read" or the verb "reread." In fact we can say:
A classic is a book that brings discovery every time it is reread as if it were the first reading.
A classic is a book that, even when we first read it, it seems to be revisiting something we have read before.
The fourth definition above can be regarded as a corollary of the following definition:
A classic is a book that never exhausts everything it has to say to the reader.
The fifth definition implies the following more complex equations:
Classics are books that come to us with a special atmosphere of previous interpretations, dragging behind them the footprints they leave behind as they pass through cultures or cultures (or just multiple languages and customs).
This applies to both ancient and modern classics. If I were to read the Odyssey, I would be reading Homer's text, but I cannot forget everything that Ulysses' adventures have meant over the centuries, and I cannot but wonder whether these meanings are implicit in the original text, or whether they have been gradually added, deformed, or expanded later. If I read Kafka, I would approve and resist the legitimacy of the adjective "Kafka-esque", because we always hear it used to refer to anything that can be said. If I read Turgenev's Father and Son or Dostoevsky's The Devil I cannot but wonder how the characters in these books continue to reincarnate all the way to our time.
Reading a classic work is bound to surprise us when we compare it to what we had previously imagined. That's why we always recommend reading first-hand texts again and again, trying to avoid second-hand bibliographies, reviews, and other explanations. Both secondary schools and universities should reinforce the idea that any book that discusses another can never say anything better than the book under discussion; yet they do their utmost to convince students that, in fact, the opposite is true. There is a reversal of the values that are very popular here, that is, the introduction, the criticism machine, and the bibliography are used like smoke screens, obscuring what the text must say and can only say without an intermediary—and the middleman always claims that they know more than the text itself. Therefore, we can summarize:
A classic work is a work that constantly creates a dust and fog of critical discourse around it, but always shakes away those particles.
A classic doesn't have to teach something we don't know; sometimes we find something in a classic that we already know or always think we already know, but we don't expect that the classic text has already said it (or that the idea has a special connection with that text). This discovery is also a very satisfying surprise, for example when we figure out the source of an idea, or its connection to a certain text, or who said it first, we always feel this way. In summary, we can come up with the following definition:
Classics are books like these, and the more hearsay we think we understand, the more we actually read them, the more we feel that they are unique, unexpected, and novel.
Of course, this usually happens because the text of a classic work "plays" the role of a classic work, that is, it establishes a personal relationship with the reader. Without a spark, this practice makes no sense: it is useless to read the classics out of duty or respect, we should only read them just because we love them. Except in school: whether you like it or not, the school will teach you to read some classics, and in these works (or by using them as a benchmark) you will later identify "your" classics. It is the school's responsibility to provide you with these tools so that you can make your own decisions; but only those things you choose after or outside of schooling are valuable.
It is only in non-mandatory reading that you will come across books that will become "yours" books. I know a brilliant art historian, an extremely knowledgeable man, who of all the books he has read, who loves Pickwick's Tale the Most, who, during any discussion, quotes fragments from Dickens's book and relates every event of his life to Pickwick's life. Gradually, he himself, the universe, and its basic principles were all presented in the form of Pickwick's Tales in a process of complete identification. If we go down this path, we will form an idea of a classic work that is both admirable and extremely demanding:
A classic work is a name that is used to describe any book that represents the entire universe, a book comparable to the ancient amulet.
Such a definition brings us closer to the idea of that all-encompassing book, the kind of book That Malamé dreamed of. But a classic can also establish a powerful relationship that is not an identity but an opposition or opposition. All of Rousseau's thoughts and actions were very intimate to me, but they evoked in me an irrepressible sense of urgency to resist him, to criticize him, to argue with him. Of course, this has to do with the fact that I find his personality incompatible with my disposition, but if it were that simple, I would just avoid reading him; the truth is that I cannot but regard him as one of my authors. So, I would say:
The "your" classic is a book that makes you unable to turn a blind eye to it, and it helps you to establish yourself in your relationship with it and even in the process of opposing it.
I don't believe in the need to justify my use of the name "classic", which I don't need to distinguish between ancient, stylistic, and authoritative. (The history of the above meanings of the name is elaborated in great detail in the "classic" entry written by Franco Fortini for the third volume of the Inodia.) In my opinion, the difference between a classic work may simply be a certain resonance that we feel from a work, whether ancient or modern, but has its own place in a cultural continuity. We can say:
A classic is a work that predates the other classics; but those who have read the other classics before them immediately recognize its place in the genealogical charts of the many classics.
At this point, I can no longer set aside the crucial question of how to reconcile the relationship between reading the classics and reading everything else that is not classic. The question is related to other questions, such as: "Why read the classics instead of those that give us a deeper understanding of our time?" And "Where do we have the time and leisure to read the classics?" We have been overwhelmed by the flood of all kinds of print materials that are now. ”
Thirteen, a classic work is such a work, it adjusts the current noise into a background light tone, and this background light sound is indispensable for the existence of the classic work.
Fourteen, a classic work is such a work, even if it is now dominant, it also insists on being a background noise.
The fact remains that reading the classics seems to be at odds with the pace of our lives, which cannot bear to cede large periods of time or space to the laid-back of the humanists; and with the elitism of our culture, which can never draw up a catalogue of classics to suit our time.
This was precisely the environment in which Leopardi lived: living in his father's castle, he had to use his father's formidable library of Monaldo to practice his cult of Greek and Latin antiquities, and added to the library all Italian literature up to that time, as well as all French literature—except for record novels and newly published works, which were very few and were entirely for his sister's amusement ("your Stendhal" was the phrase he used when he talked to Paulina about the French novelist). Leopardi even took up texts that were by no means "new" to satisfy his extreme enthusiasm for scientific and historical writings, reading Buffon's writings on the habits of birds, Fontenell's writings on frederick Lewis's mummies, and Robinson's writings about Columbus.
Today, it is inconceivable to be as influenced by classical works as the young Leopardi did, especially since the library of his father, Count Monaldo, had collapsed. To say that the collapse is to say that there are few ancient books left, and it also means that new books have spread to all modern literature and culture. What can be done now is for each of us to invent our ideal classical library; and I would say that half of them should include books that we have read and that have benefited us, and the others that we intend to read and assume will be of benefit to us. We should also give up some of our space to the Book of Accidents and the Book of Serendipitous Discoveries.
I noticed that Leopardi was the only name I mentioned from Italian literature. This is the result of that library collapse. Now I should rewrite the whole article so that it makes it clear that the classics help us to understand who we are and where we have arrived, and thus to understand that the Italian classics are indispensable to us Italians, otherwise we cannot compare foreign classics; likewise, foreign classics are indispensable, otherwise we cannot compare Italian classics.
Then, I really should rewrite this article for the third time, lest people believe that the reason for reading the classic is that they think it has some purpose. The only reason that can be cited to please them is that it is better to read the classics than not to read them.
And if anyone objected that they were not worth the effort, I would like to quote Gioren (not a classic writer, at least not yet a classic writer, but a modern thinker who is now being translated into Italian): "While the poison is being prepared, Socrates is practicing a tune with the flute. What's the use of that? Someone asked him. At least I can learn this tune before I die. ’”
This article was translated by Huang Canran.