G'dday. ----- Original Message ----- From: "writerdeviant" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Thursday, November 13, 2008 2:24 PM Subject: [BookCrossing] Reading the Classics
> We've all heard of the classics written by renown authors like H.G. > Wells, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Robert L. Stevenson, etc., Classics? CLASSICS? <hooting with laughter> They're all Johnny-come-latelys! Classics are classics: the plays of Plautus and Sophocles, the histories of Tacitus, Josephus, Herodotus, Thucydides and Suetonius, the epic poems of Homer (everyone must have at least heard of the Illyad and the Oddessy), and moving around a bit from the Graeco-Roman cultures to a more chthonic, Gilgamesh and the like as well. Even La Morte d'Arthur (The Death of King Arthur, a French text from previous centuries on which the whole of modern Camelot mythology is based) is suspiciously new and fresh on the page, the ink has hardly dried yet. As a teenager in the 1970s, I discovered (outside of school curriculum, just in my reading-for-pleasure) Plautus and Sophocles, imagine my delight a couple of years later when the Theban Plays of Sophocles were a set text! I had a huge head-start on the other kids - I'd read, loved and assimmilated the plays, and I had some understanding already that the violence (from killing fathers to gouging one's own eyes out) wasn't really a reflection of a more primitive time, but was more about symbolising emotional turmoil and what it means to be deeply human. I go to Plautus whenever I want a laugh - he's the direct ancestor of Douglas Adams in that way. I go to Sophocles when I want to remember the depths and complexities of humans. I go to Homer when I need to be reminded of the sweep of human events and the turn of history on small individual choices. I go to Suetonius and Tacitus when I want to be grateful for what I have and feel my grattitude slipping. I go to Josephus when I want to win doorstep arguments with Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons. And I go to every single one of them for pure, unadulterated pleasure. For decades I'd read modern historians who paraphrased Herodotus and Thucydides: last Christmas my sister-in-law gave me a book voucher which finally allowed me to bump Herodotus to the head of the queue without feeling guilty about other unread books, and I was simply enthralled and thrilled by his writing. Soon it will be the turn of Thucydides - I've been searching for him high and low, but so far have only scored an electronic copy which I flatly refuse to read, because books from two millennia or more ago HAVE to be read on at least paper, if not clay tablets, dammit! - I just can't wrap my head around reading Thycydides on a computer. Oh, and your list of modern literature seems to have forgotten the Wind in the Willows, with the absolutely fabulous chapter "The Piper at the Gates of Dawn" and The Magic Pudding, by Norman Lindsay. If you're looking for new literature. <curmudgeonly hurumph> Nisaba Merrieweather ... Other people would probably say: I wasn't myself. But Granny Weatherwax didn't have anyone else to be. (Terry Pratchett) ICQ: 361 565 370 [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://nisaba.etsy.com http://www.bookcrossing.com/mybookshelf/nisaba000 http://www.facebook.com/photos.php?id=1235918638 ------------------------------------ Have you told a friend today? http://bookcrossing.com/tellafriend Archives and email list settings: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BookCrossing Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BookCrossing/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BookCrossing/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
