Classics and the Western Canon discussion

I hope you don't mind - I've opened this discussion site for those interested in this discussion thread. That way we won't be taking up room in the areas dedicated to Les Mis or other books. I find this a fruitful discussion but I can see how it might annoy others.

"I think that in certain great literature, fictional characters are indeed representations of an actual time period,"
- I don't deny this. In fact, I would argue that this is true of most works, not just the great. I qualify my statement with the notion that writers are influenced by their environments - geographically and historically.

" and are in many cases better representations than we can get from purely historical sources."
- In some cases they may be the ONLY representations, but that does not make them "better". I still argue that they belong to the world/universe of literature and cannot be made to represent anyone directly. If that were the case, why can't literature be used in a court of law?

"Fictional characters are in most cases not, of course, actual real people, but they tend often to be based on real lives of actual people known by the author, and when authors are writing about their own period, or a period close to their own, in many cases their characters are a better representation of real people than we can get from history."
- How does one measure this? Because of intuition? Gut feeling? If the historical record does not yield what you feel is a "better representation" then on what grounds do we rely on a writer of imaginative fiction and what grounds do we rely on YOUR saying it? What are your qualifications to determine which author has authority and which work of fiction can be used as a substitute for the historical record?

"Can purely historical sources, for example, paint as accurate a picture of the London workhouses as Dickens does?"
- First of all, yes, the historical record CAN paint a more accurate picture of the London workhouses than Dickens especially since Dickens wrote sensational melodrama - but of course better than anyone. But more importantly, let's take your statement as true. Then can the London workhouses be taken to task by what Dickens says? Or can the novels of Dickens merely lead to an investigation of London workhouses and if the evidence found is scandalous, THEN the workhouses be taken to task? A perfect example of this is Upton Sinclair's The Jungle. He described the meatpacking industry in Chicago and when Teddy Roosevelt read it, he sent inspectors to determine the truth of it and they reported that it was worse! This proves my point: I don't deny that literature can reflect our life and times - it simply cannot be used as reliable evidence. In fact, books as authentic as The Jungle are few and far between and still it could not be held as a truth statement. In fact, Sinclair was also a journalist - he was merely using the medium of fiction to reach a larger audience, and as engaging as The Jungle is, one feels that Sinclair is not allowing the story to become literature, but is using literature to tell a news story.

"Aristotle wrote in the Poetics that poetry [by which he meant literature in general:] is more truthful than history because poetry deals with universals while history is confined to particulars. That isn't, of course, true with all poetry, but IMO it is true of much great poetry."
- You are quoting out of context and are not understanding what Aristotle wrote. He said that "the poet's function is to describe, not the thing that happened, but a kind of thing that might happen." More importantly, Aristotle never said poetry was more "truthful" (unless you have a poor translation), he said that "poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are of the nature of universals, whereas those of history are singulars." This is precisely what I have been arguing - that literature is NOT set up to describe singular people and events!...but rather the universal in us. The purpose of studying literature is not to investigate truth statements about particular people, places and events - but to study what it means to be human as a universal study.

"That may be fine for a scholar, but those sources are not available to, or will not be read by, the vast majority of people who read literature of an era."
- So fictional stories are to be used as a replacement to research? Well that would explain news networks like FOX and CNN... :) (couldn't resist...you set me up too well...)

"Troy was discovered through the study not of primary sources but of literature, by Heinrich Schliemann's careful study of the Iliad. Here is a specific case where those who relied on primary sources were wrong, and those who relied on literature turned out to be right."
- First of all, Troy was not DISCOVERED through the study of literature...the search for Troy may have been INSPIRED by literature (and I have never denied literature's capacity to inspire) but the actual work of Schliemann was based on the science of archaeology. Second of all, Schliemann was not the first, nor did he find what modern archaeologists consider to be Troy.

"And I certainly think that we can judge the characters in certain fiction as representative of the beliefs, viewpoints, and lifestyles of an age with perhaps even more insight than we can those of the historical figures who get written up in the history books."
- One could argue that moral judgements can only be made against the living and not the dead. In that case, neither literature of the past nor history are subject to judgement. And the possibility that someone today might judge me - NOT on my actions, but on someone else's account of my personality and actions expressed in a work of fiction - is exactly the kind of world that great literature inspires against.

This was even more true in oral societies, whee storytelling (literature) started. There, since nothing was written down (not even names on tombstones), if a person wasn't talked about (i.e., if stories weren't told about them) they didn't exist at all after they had died. No diaries, no history books, no business records, no obituaries in the newspaper, no nothing. If you didn't talk about a person after they died, they totally ceased to exist. And the same thing for events.

So telling stories was the only way to keep memory alive.

Potential Spoiler Alert.

Well isn't that the choice Achilles must make in the Iliad? To live a long but obscure and forgotten life, or to live a short but immortal life through his great deeds in ballads?

To Be or not to Be? That is the question.

Literature to my humble point of view is a representation, like Chris stated memory makes humanity, memory is not accurate or always true, like history and like fiction and like creativity . To a certain extent.

I may have studied history and literature, and know the realties of the Victorian workhouse, but it is Dickens's representation of the grief and toil that stick in my mind at least.

I don't think anything can be fully studied merely by looking at one source; it goes against the methodology of historical review, actually. Also, personally, I have a hard time relying just on historical writings, as those are often written by the victor, in a dominant or elitist perspective.

I would never discount the value of literature for more than a means of pleasure, but of course it wouldn't be used as the sole source of historical information - fiction is by definition not real, but that does not mean it wouldn't depict real-life people/situations/environments. Blanketly discounting any source seems like cheating yourself, IMHO.

I've been reading Persian Fire The First World Empire and the Battle for the West and thinking about the way in which writing history "creates" a reality. When the ancients wrote history, they were usually interested in the supernatural causes that were clearly as important to them as the event itself. Why did the gods choose so and so? Darius apparently assassinated the legitimate ruler of Persia, but claimed that the legal ruler was actually an "imposter" in some way and he, Darius, had been fulfilling the will of the supreme god, Mazda, in eliminating him. I was, simultaneously, reading Factory Girls From Village to City in a Changing China in which the author comments on the way Chinese history in the 20th century has been discussed and rearranged by the Chinese to tell the story the authorities want people to hear. And then, I heard a Christian pastor say that only a Christian can really understand ancient history, because a Christian can see the pattern of God in the events. Weird coincidences of the same idea all in one week. So history, to most people, it seems to me, is not a collection of facts. "Making sense" of history means making it tell a coherent story.

Sorry to repost so soon, but what I'm getting at above is to remphasize Paula's point and to add that even the most "non-biased" source is going to be telling a story to some degree. It's how humans view reality, I think.

Andrea wrote: "...what I'm getting at above is to remphasize Paula's point and to add that even the most "non-biased" source is going to be telling a story to some degree. It's how huma..."

Absolutely. History is written for a variety of reasons, but the simple transmission of raw facts is seldom one of them. Generally, I think, a lot of history is intended to give members of a group a sense of who "we" are and how "we" got to be this way.

Yes, Patrice, and we can never really answer the question implied at the end of your post. Have we been led astray? Do we "really" know what happened? Or why? In an attempt to understand the history I'm reading a little better, I went back to a standard college textbook for an overview of the period in question. This textbook was first published in 1955 and had been updated several times up to 1991. It contained lots of "errors" in interpretation that the more recent books vehemently argued against. Telling a story is such a complex act, what to put in, what to emphasize as the crucial turning point of events, very interesting ideas.

I think history is written as an attempt to make some sort of coherent story, something that makes "sense" to us, out of the chaos of assorted facts and primary sources. An excellent example of this would be Barbara Tuchman's work, particularly A Distant Mirror. She uses tax roles, church documents and the like as her sources, draws her conclusions, and puts it all into a well-written chronology. She uses contemporaneous poetry to help get the, uh, "feel" of the age, but certainly doesn't rely on it for any factual information.

While I certainly think that literature sometimes can give us a good picture of an age, that is, an emotional description of its time, I think that literature is more concerned with universals. For an example of this idea, Anna Karenina explores the emotional lives of several people within the context of 19th-century Russia. The emotional development of these characters is strikingly timeless, while their partcular milieu is not.

Nice clear explanation, Gail.

Thanks, Andrea.

I just read a very short piece by Chris Bachelder that reminded me of this thread. He argues that we read literature in order to be surprised:

I’d prefer to call my daughter’s question a surprise, but not a spider-in-the-shower kind of surprise. It was literarily surprising, which is to say it had a large tonal blast radius. I was struck with delight and sorrow, simultaneous and in equal measure. Had my brain been hooked up to the kind of imaging system that is so prevalent and authoritative in our time, I’m certain that some small, desiccated region of my cognitive complex would have glowed like billowed coal. This is the region that handles poetry, metaphor. The region that is in charge of reconciling the irreconcilable, the tiny, underdeveloped region whose impossible job it is to remember the terms of human existence.

Darcy wrote: "I just read a very short piece by Chris Bachelder that reminded me of this thread. He argues that we read literature in order to be surprised:

I’d prefer to call my daughter’s question a surprise..."

Fascinating, Darcy.

Yeah, it is a really interesting short essay. I've never read any of his novels, but Bear V. Shark has been on my list for a while. Maybe I'll pick it up soon, now.

If we read in order to be surprised, why do we enjoy reading the same books over and over? We even relish the approach of our favorite scene, which we've almost memorized. No surprise there.

Roger wrote: "If we read in order to be surprised, why do we enjoy reading the same books over and over? We even relish the approach of our favorite scene, which we've almost memorized. No surprise there."

Good thought. I'm usually surprised by how much I had forgotten or by how differently I feel about a detail now, or how I see new things because of the other reading I've been doing or because life has brought me more experience.

I share this partly because I am referenced. (Blush) But, more so, because I think the writer raises a question of interest to all of us: What makes a good reader?

http://tinyurl.com/yd4mn8n

Zeke wrote: "I share this partly because I am referenced. (Blush) But, more so, because I think the writer raises a question of interest to all of us: What makes a good reader?

http://tinyurl.com/yd4mn8n"

What a fascinating conversation to get caught up into, Zeke! I would say that one thing that makes a good reader is a book by Tolstoy.

Roger wrote: "If we read in order to be surprised, why do we enjoy reading the same books over and over? "

For the same reason I still love making love to the same woman after thirty years.

Everyman wrote: "Roger wrote: "If we read in order to be surprised, why do we enjoy reading the same books over and over? "

For the same reason I still love making love to the same woman after thirty years.
"

That reminds me of what G K Chesterton said about children's stories and the sunrise. The child likes a story so much that he keeps saying "Read it again," and God keeps saying to the sun, "Do it again!"

Yeah, that's a great question, Roger. I wonder, sometimes, about how certain novelists can create such a following of readers who typically re-read their novels almost compulsively. Dickens has his fair share of such readers, but I think Austen, above all in the Western Canon, has a devoted following of readers who simply revel in the re-reading of her seven novels.

My parents named me after an Austen novel--Pride and Prejudice. My father once remarked of P & P that as many times as he's reread it, he always finds himself wondering how Austen will manage to get Darcy and Elizabeth to fall in love. Even in re-reading, when we know how things will turn out, I think there is a certain amount of Coleridge's "willing suspension of disbelief" that occurs. For me, it is not so much that I forget characters or events in the novel, as that I forget what it is like to be embedded in the fictional world of a particular novel. There's a sort of surprise that occurs, for me at any rate, as I settle back into P & P and remember what it feels like to be a part of that specific narrative. And in a great novel, I'm constantly surprised by all the bits I missed the previous two (or four, or five) times around.

I think Laurele hits it on the head with the comment that the novel stays the "same," but the reader who reads it the second time is a different person from the one who read it the first time.

And the world in which it is read is also changed; the reader in her fifties is related to the one who first read the book in her twenties, but so is her society. I just read an interesting article about Iago's apparent lack of motive. The writer notes the connection between the name and our word ego, which, of course, Shakespeare could have no premonition of.

Finally, my own point reiterated: there is added resonance because of our recall (conscious or un) of having encountered the phrases before. With each reading we absorb them more.

I also am rereading this novel after many years. My first reading was in my late teens. Then, Anna's romantic tragedy got me interested in her unique feelings, but I didn't see her as particularly a feminist. Now, on the second reading, Anna's self-absorption is still interesting, but I have also discovered the philosophical Levin, who reasons that the Russian peasant knows how to labor on the extensive tracts and the landlord must honor these habits to improve productivity and profits for all. As he figures out and implements his ideas on agrarian economy, writing a book to explain it, Levin's brother's approaching death and Levin's own irrevocable future death unsettle him to the extent he even more determinedly blankets himself with his work.
In addition to the time between readings, our paced reading schedule and close inquiry also develop a fuller appreciation of this nineteenth-century Russian novel.

Asmah wrote: "Now, on the second reading, Anna's self-absorption is still interesting, but I have also discovered the philosophical Levin ..."

I am in the same position -- as a very young man I read AK and focused almost entirely on Anna. In fact her part of the story is all that I remembered before I started reading it again. This time around I find the Anna & Vronsky story somewhat tawdry and overdone. (Like someone said in the other thread, there is the air of soap opera about it -- an extremely thoughtful and well written one, but it's still fairly sudsy.) And now I find Levin to be the most interesting character in the novel. I would guess that if you taught this book to a class of 18 year olds very few of them would show much interest in poor Konstantin.

Zeke wrote: "I think Laurele hits it on the head with the comment that the novel stays the "same," but the reader who reads it the second time is a different person from the one who read it the first time."

That's certainly part of it. But the other part is the ability, if the work of literature (this works for novels, poetry, philosophy, and maybe history) is really great, to notice more and different things each time.

I am reminded of the story, maybe apocryphal, maybe not, of the botany teacher who handed a student a leaf and told him to come back when he knew everything there was to know about that leaf. The student came back the next day, at which point the teacher said something like (don't you love how well I know this story!) "go away and don't come back for at least a year."

I have lived on this property for thirty years, but almost every time I go out I see something I hadn't noticed before. Great literature is like that. Even though I know a lot about it, each time I read it I get something more out of it.

In the Sunday Times (NY)Michael Cunningham has some thoughtful and provocative things to say about reading, writing, translating, meaning, etc.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/03/opi...

Oh, Zeke, there's only one Times. (Unless you live in the UK. Then, I grant you, there is another).

LOL. Given that the article is about translation, I figured I should be precise lest Madge call me on it.

We might also disagree on which university is the "real" Cambridge!

Can you remember what you've read? An interesting--and reassuring, if it's right--essay.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/19/boo...

I think it's easier with classics. I may forget the plot of a trashy romance novel I read the other day, but I'll never forget A Tale of Two Cities because it has been part of my cultural consciousness since my tender youth, when I saw it on Wishbone . . .

Interesting S. Rosemary. The part that struck me though was the way that the process of reading is what changes our brain--even if we don't remember it. So the question becomes (for me) whether the classics change our brains in ways that the "trashy romance novels" don't. I suspect they do, but I couldn't begin to speculate on how they do.

Still, it is reassuring that it's "o.k." to forget.

Zeke wrote: "Can you remember what you've read? An interesting--and reassuring, if it's right--essay.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/19/boo......"

To be honest, I remember the plot of every book I read. True, I may get minor details mixed up in the longer works (like War and Peace), but for the most part I can accurately recall.

Historybuff--Lucky you! :)

Patrice wrote: "Historybuff, I think I remember how old you are but why not let everyone know?? ;-)"

I'm bettin' that when he's 65, unless he stops reading for about 40 years, he won't recall the plot of every book he read. Heck, I don't even remember the titles of all of the books I read when I was in high school, let alone their plots.

I don't remember plot because plots aren't that important to me. I remember great experiences with certain books though, the grand revelations. And I tend to remember characters; not what the characters did, but who they are, what kind of people they are, and whether I like them or respect them or despise them. And for the last few years I've kept a journal where I write brief essays about the book I've just read, and I find that reading my take on the book even five years later has a remarkably refreshing effect.

Patrice wrote: "Historybuff, I think I remember how old you are but why not let everyone know?? ;-)"

I'm seventeen.

Although I think part of it is that I have a really good memory. (I'm not bragging or being arrogant, but the whole memory thing runs strongly on my dad's side.)

Haha, you may be right, Everyman. And I don't plan on ever stopping reading either.:)

I don't remember most of Anna Karenina which I've read four years ago and I'm 18. I remember most other books I've read, though. I don't think it has that much to do with age or whether the book's a classic, but with how the books we've read have touched us (I know quite a bit of poetry by heart, for example, because those poems left a deep impression on me) and how much you use your memory. My cousin (who graduates from med school next year) once told me that during exam season she tends to forget things that have nothing to do with school (i.e. addresses and telephone numbers, recipes, whether she's had lunch, etc) very easily. She said that she sometimes finds herself in the library reading and can't even recall how she got there.

I've read probably around 1,000 books in my lifetime, and I don't remember most of them --- and I'm only 39! I tend to remember the characters or certain memorable scenes (if it's fiction) or the main thesis (if it's non-fiction), but plots are quickly forgotten. That said, there are certain books that I read during high school/college that I've completely forgotten. I can't tell you anything useful about Wuthering Heights or Crime and Punishment, other than a few main characters' names. Ditto Huck Finn.

Patrice wrote: "And even nice if you could delete at will! "

Kierkegaard said "If a man can not forget, he will never amount to much." Some things you have to forget. Just make sure they are the right things, so you don't lose your car. :)

Thomas wrote: "Kierkegaard said "If a man can not forget, he will never amount to much."

Wise man. Great quote.

For me, the value of the book is not in being able to recall its details--though that is nice when it happens. It is more in the way the book changes me after I have interacted with it. It's nice to be able to quote a line from Shakespeare (though sometimes annoying to those on the receiving end), but the real pleasure came from the "explosion" in my brain when I first encountered it.

I think it is the same with music. Very few of us are gifted enough to sing a piece after one hearing. Yet most of us have the ability to be moved by it.

By the way Sandybanks, if you are like me, I think you will be surprised at how much of Huck Finn you remember when you reread it. Many of his adventures will quickly come back to mind with new resonance.

Zeke wrote: "For me, the value of the book is not in being able to recall its details--though that is nice when it happens. It is more in the way the book changes me after I have interacted with it. It's nice t..."

Zeke, I'm looking forward to rediscovering Huck Finn with all of you!

Zeke wrote: "For me, the value of the book is not in being able to recall its details--though that is nice when it happens. It is more in the way the book changes me after I have interacted with it. It's nice t..."

I agree, Zeke. I think feeling is part of the "magic" of a well-written book/poem/story.

This is something I have been thinking about a lot lately with my own writing. When I have friends read a story, I always hope that they are moved.

The best books are those that draw you in so entirely that you are no longer an observer, but the scenario is happening in your head. This is why I prefer books to movies. A film, no matter how well done, is always over there on the screen, outside of your head. But a book happens in your head...you have not just your one life, every good book gives you another life, another experience. Your real life can span only part of two centuries, one sex(usually), one set of parents, and only so many adventures. In a book you can dine with kings, you can scratch a living from the earth with peasants, you can march with the Romans and agonise with the Greeks. You can dance with Mr Darcy or wander the moors in search of Heathcliff. You can climb Mt Everest and journey to both poles. You can escape the Nazis only to find you are the sole survivor. You can explore the future or travel into the past. You can confront ideas that will let you see your country and this era through other eyes. You can see the beauty that other eyes have seen. And the hardship and the sorrow. You can take your heart and your head on many journeys and your life will be enriched. And through all this you can live a thousand lives in only one.

Jan wrote: "The best books are those that draw you in so entirely that you are no longer an observer, but the scenario is happening in your head. This is why I prefer books to movies. A film, no matter how wel..."

Jan, you truly are a poet! This was just beautifully done. It is abundantly clear to me your great love for books and reading. Well said. Bravo!

In the Agamemnon thread, talking about translations in general and Fagles's Greek translations in particular, S. Rosemary wrote: "Most other translations of classical works, I can't get out of my head and into the story. I'm always all too well aware that I'm reading something written thousands of years before I was born. I can escape into the story with Fagles, which is 90% of the point of reading in the first place. "

That raises a wonderful question not only about translation in general but about why/how to read pre-modern works in general.

When we read a classical work, to what extent should the language used keep in the back of our minds that we are indeed reading a classical work, or it the story what matters, so that if it reads exactly the way that a modern story set in ancient times would read, that's fine?

What about, for example, using idioms that wouldn't have been understood by the original audience? Let's say that the original author uses an image of doom that doesn't have much impact for a modern audience. Should the translator still translate the actual image knowing that it wouldn't have the same impact on his modern readers? Or, for example, might he translate it "he bore down on her like a tractor-trailer bearing down on Vespa"? Assume that that conveys to a modern audience the same sense of impending doom that the image used by the original author would have had for his original audience, is it better to use the modern image and convey the same impact, or use the ancient image and accept that the reader won't feel the same sense of impending doom?

That's just one very minor example of the challenge that a translator faces, but it might illustrate one of the kinds of choices that must be made.

Another example of classical feel vs. modern feel comes in, for instance, editions of older English works that modernize spelling and grammar. In Austen's day, for another minor example, the verb "eat" could be used for both the present and past tense, so Austen could write, in perfect grammar for her day, "they eat their dinners...." That, of course, sounds totally wrong to the modern ear, and in many cases will pull them up short and pull them out of the story to at least momentarily. Should an editor substitute "ate" for "eat" in that example so that the reader doesn't stumble across the grammar but reads smoothly along staying in the story?

Interesting speculations E-man. A couple of quick reactions.

1. The Michael Cunningham column I posted recently made me realize that even when we read English there are a number of ways in which we are reading a "translation."

2.In Paradise Lost I enjoyed the way Milton used the "older" English, indeed original, meaning of a word to create a pun or to destabilize the meaning of the word as his contemporaries would understand it. A good example: wanton. This originally meant wandering.

3.I do not like translations that use awkward anachronisms (like your Vespa example) but I do appreciate contemporized syntax.

4. I like the technique of Pevar and partner. As I understand it, one provides a literal Russian translation and then the other smooths it into idiomatic English.

Just my four cents.

Everyman wrote: "What about, for example, using idioms that wouldn't have been understood by the original audience? Let's say that the original author uses an image of doom that doesn't have much impact for a modern audience. "

This is one of the great things about the Fagles translation, and also what I loved about Ted Hughes' "adaptation." Lattimore in his fidelity to the meaning of the Greek often loses the tone of the language, which is at times very ominous. I think The Libation Bearers gets short shrift for this very reason -- this play is about ghosts, the angry vengeful furies who take center stage. The tone of terror is often lost, partly through translation, and partly through the loss of the stage spectacle as we read it on the page. Fagles does a wonderful job at recovering some of this lost power. He takes some poetic license while doing so, but I think Aeschylus would approve.

Because the Vellacott translation was commissioned especially for transmission on the wireless, for me it is particularly useful as I seem to be able to 'hear' the actors and I can fool myself that I can visualise the production in a Greek theatre setting.

Everyman wrote: "Another example of classical feel vs. modern feel comes in, for instance, editions of older English works that modernize spelling and grammar. In Austen's day, for another minor example, the verb "eat" could be used for both the present and past tense, so Austen could write, in perfect grammar for her day, "they eat their dinners...." That, of course, sounds totally wrong to the modern ear, and in many cases will pull them up short and pull them out of the story to at least momentarily. Should an editor substitute "ate" for "eat" in that example so that the reader doesn't stumble across the grammar but reads smoothly along staying in the story?"
I was just reading about how some modern editions of Frankenstein sometimes change the spelling "daemon" to "demon" (the Creature is called "daemon"/"demon" several times throughout the book) because back in the 19th century that's how you spelled "demon", but by doing so you miss on the second meaning of the word. So as far as I'm concerned, unless updating the spelling and punctuation is absolutely necessary (in the case of Shakespeare, for example), we should stay away from it.

At the same time, I think that trying to translate books from a certain period- say the 19th century, using 19th century English simply because that's how English was spoken/written around the time the book in question was written is often a very bad idea. My French is pretty modest, but I've come across English translations of Flaubert which are more tedious than the original because of attempts to make him sound like Victorian writers.