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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   3611 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 30, 2023

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What's a reasonable base/canon of Western literature to be familiar with to call oneself "educated" like a man from the early 20th century? I want to read in chronological order the great works and ideas of western civilization and am hoping Mottizens can help me fill in some gaps. I'm mainly interested in literature but of course there is room for philosophical works as well. Obviously this can be a really wide range of works, but I'm looking for the absolute indisputable foundation, things you cannot skip at all.

What I have so far (very basic in rough chronological order):

Iliad/Odyssey by Homer

Dialogues by Plato

Metamorphoses by Ovid

The Bible (King James version for the literary value?)

Beowulf (already read this one)

Summa Theologica by Aquinas? (Not sure how foundational this is)

Canterbury Tales by Chaucer

Divine Comedy by Dante

Shakespeare's Works

Paradise Lost by Milton

Don Quixote by Cervantes

Moby-Dick by Melville

In Search of Lost Time by Proust

Thoughts? Please help me fill in some gaps!

I discovered this list the other day, you may find it useful:

https://www.booksoftitans.com/great-books/

Start with the Greeks. Continue with the Romans. The rest is just gravy.

I'm only partially memeing with the above advice, but here are some big lists that I would recommend picking and choosing from at least initially as they are genuinely lifetime reading lists. Fadiman and Major Bloom

As for your list so far, a few recommendations on translations + some resources:

Fagles for the Iliad/Odyssey/Aeneid (throwing this in here to round out the epic poetry)

A guide to Plato: https://www.plato-dialogues.org/plato.htm (DO NOT read the Republic first; common mistake. If you've never read him try the Trial and Death sequence of dialogues first: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Phædo)

I would recommend the New Oxford Annotated Bible if you're approaching it from a literary/historical angle. Incredible notes.

For Dante, Ciardi is a good translation that keeps the terza rima format of the original and has extensive notes. That said, there are a lot to pick from, some comparisons here.

And a couple of cool websites to accompany you on your journey with Dante and Virgil: https://danteworlds.laits.utexas.edu/ https://digitaldante.columbia.edu/

Hello fellow /lit/erati. I think you might want to upload that Dante infographic in higher resolution unless it’s just me.

Exposed! Found and added a higher quality upload.

The Summa is a big 'un and unless you seriously mean to delve into mediaeval logic and theology, better to just look up particular queries in it (e.g. what did Aquinas say about X?)

All the thumbs up about The Divine Comedy, especially if you mean to stick with all three volumes and not drop out after Inferno. I would personally recommend the Hollander translation, which is about twenty years old now, but all available on Kindle on Amazon.

You might throw in a little poetry by Wordsworth and Tennyson and Browning as well; generally The Idylls of the King for Tennyson as his take on the Arthurian legend. Browning has long poems but also lots of short ones which might be easier to read at a go.

And because I love the sound of the words, even though I can't speak Italian (modern or mediaeval) or Occitan, but just mangle them aloud in a bad French accent, here's a bit from the Divine Comedy:

"Tan m'abellis vostre cortes deman,

qu'ieu no me puesc ni voill a vos cobrire.

Ieu sui Arnaut, que plor e vau cantan;

consiros vei la passada folor,

e vei jausen lo joi qu'esper, denan.

Ara vos prec, per aquella valor

que vos guida al som de l'escalina,

sovenha vos a temps de ma dolor!"

Poi s'ascose nel foco che li affina.

'Your courteous question pleases me so much

I neither can nor would conceal myself from You.

'I am Arnaut, weeping and singing as I make my way.

I see with grief past follies and I see,

rejoicing, the joy I hope is coming.

'Now I pray You, by that power

which guides You to the summit of the stairs,

to remember, when the time is fit, my pain.'

Then he vanished in the fire that refines them.

The Summa is a big 'un and unless you seriously mean to delve into mediaeval logic and theology, better to just look up particular queries in it (e.g. what did Aquinas say about X?)

On the other hand, a good introduction to Thomism would help clear up a lot of the confusion a modern person would have going into Aquinas. Edward Feser is a good contemporary Catholic philosopher whose books are very illuminating.

For a broader book on medieval thought, Etienne Gilson's Reason and Revelation in the Middle Ages is tough to beat.

Can someone please explain to me the point of reading translated poetry? It’s terrible. It straight-up doesn’t work. The aesthetic form is gone, and what’s left reads as clunky for no reason as a result.

Since I don't have those languages, I can't read them in the originals. So it's English translations or remain ignorant. The Sayers translation is very good on the problems of trying to turn terza rima into English rhyme, she's good on the technicalities (the resulting translation may not be the best poetry but hey, I can't write poetry either).

I agree that if you can read in the original, there are all kinds of nuances you get that are missing from translation, especially if you compare the original with the translation and see the word choices and why the translator picked this not that, but it's really 'half a loaf is better than no bread'.

Learning all the languages of the world on a level that enables one to appreciate poetry is kinda hard. For that reason, people choose to use translations, while realizing that they are not the same as the original, they still can be enjoyed. Sure, the Iliad is best in its original Greek. But if you don't understand ancient Greek, you can still appreciate it in a good translation. There's no reason to be a snob about it and declare that anything short of genuine performance by a genuine rhapsode is not even worth trying.

I found the Iliad at least engaging in Greek and grindingly boring in English. On the other hand, I found Beowulf quite engaging in modern English, so maybe it’s translation quality+how close the languages are.

Of course, the quality of the translation hinges on the quality of the translator, among other things. There are two schools for translation - one says "stick to the original as close as possible not matter what", other says "get the inspiration from the original and try to achieve the same result by whatever means you find necessary". I have seen both ways have pretty strong successes and dismal failures, and sometimes a strong translator completely overtook over the author and made a good work - but very different from the original. When I can read the original, I usually would prefer it, but since I'm not learning Greek anytime soon, I'll take as good a translation as I can get, maybe even multiple ones. Sometimes taking a half-dozen of translations and comparing how they dealt with a certain piece is even more fun than just reading it once.

You can get rhyming translations that try to maintain the spirit of the poem while making it amenable to English ears.

I don't buy it. The aesthetics of a good poem go much deeper than rhyme.

I've seen the breakdowns of poetic translations by their authors, and the rabbit hole goes much deeper than just getting the words right and making them rhyme. Yes, there are self-centered translators, usually well-known poets themselves, that just freestyle, but that's basically counts as reading a new poem by them and not a faithful translation.

The ones I'm speaking about actually break down the poem to identify all the tools the author used and reproduce them in the translation. Enjambment and an accompanying caesura? Alliteration? Metric deviations? Internal rhymes? All of this is examined, analyzed and reproduced so the translation has the same effect on the reader as

Of course, the further you get from your own language family, the harder it gets. How do you translate a kireji in a haiku?

It's a whole new poem if the translation is decent, and if you do not know the language of the original, why not?

Of his dialogues, I'd put Plato's Republic as the most foundational one.

Historian Will Durant had a list for this. It includes some secondary sources and some of it is outdated (you can skip Kellogg imo), but it's a good starting point.

http://www.greaterbooks.com/durant.html

That's a whole shelf of doorstoppers you've got right there. I think I've read only a few of them:

  • Moby-Dick (and it feels like it's the odd one out), everything else I can only claim partial credit for:
  • Iliad (War Nerd's version)
  • The New Testament (thanks Gideon), gave up on the Old one somewhere around the 25% mark
  • Don Quixote (it was in the children's library, no idea why, got bored to death, maybe I should revisit it as an adult)

If you want more doorstoppers, Les Misérables by Victor Hugo and War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy. I've read both, but I prefer writers that can get on with it. Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazov and Crime and Punishment are recommended.

If you want something like The Canterbury Tales, The Decameron is probably a better pick, the former being more of an Anglo-specific work. Or just go all the way back to The Golden Ass.

I will reaffirm reading War Nerd's version of the Iliad. The novel format communicates the humor, frustrations, and desires very clearly for anyone who isn't already intimately familiar with a more formal translation. It is simply fun to read.

For Don Quixote, the translation is very important (moreso than Dostoevsky, I’d argue, although obviously you wouldn’t have read that in English). Assuming you’re reading Don Quixote in English, did you read Grossman’s? I’d say it’s by far the best.

It was obviously in Russian, as I was a child when I last tried to read it.

My assumption was wrong!

Right off the bat, random order, sticking to stuff I have read:

Gilgamesh is a must, before the Old Testament. It all starts here, and one of my ideas of why you read the Canon is to be able to trace themes and ideas through history. Might as well start at the beginning. Pairs well with the Old Testament, it's one of the few contemporary works left to us.

Aristotle's Ethics, this and the Summa I wouldn't hesitate to use primarily excepts used in philosophy classes. It's like a million pages and bone-dry boring otherwise.

Augustine between the Bible and Aquinas. Paul and Augustine are the bridge between the Greeks and the Old Testament.

Morte D'Arthur, the Alexander Romance and Tristan and Isolde before moving on to Dante Shakespeare and Cervantes, helps to set the scene and they're easy reads. Otherwise the Canon tends to get a little too barren during the dark ages.

Herodotus, Thucydides, Plutarch; inserted between Homer and Plato. Gives you the territory of the historical moments you're talking about.

De Bello Gallico is one of the few great literary works that are first-person written by first-tier world historic personages.

The nineteenth century Germans. Kant, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche are all essential reading.

If you're going to read Shakespeare, you owe it to yourself to listen to audio performances or watch filmed performances. You can't make them dead letters on a page.

Joyce and Hemingway are both essential. Hemingway's short stories are very readable and capture the essence of his larger works, Joyce you have to go with Ulysses, ideally after the Odyssey.

Opera: Mozarts Don Giovanni and The Magic Flute, Carmen and La Boheme, Wagner's Ring Cycle; then pick up musical theater at selections of Gilbert and Sullivan through Cole Porter to Hair Westside Story Cabaret, Rent, and (sigh) Hamilton. Watch or at least listen to these, don't read them.

The early psychologists are a must. Freud, Jung, Frankl. Reading anything after Freud or Marx without understanding Freud or Marx puts one in the same position as reading canon western works without knowing your Bible or your Homer.

Beyond that, I do think it is worth your time to explore some other traditions as part of your curriculum once you are grounded in the Western Canon. The Quran, Avicenna, Confucius and Mencius, the Sutras, the great Hindu epics. All throw new light or alternative interpretations on our own history.

The natural rights / social contract classics (Leviathan, Second Treatise, and The Social Contract), On Liberty, and The Wealth of Nations.

Whatever you decide to read, I highly recommend taking notes. I find I forget everything I read unless I really take the time to summarize and write things down.

Missing some Russian and French classics (And so am I, I'm trying to read them also); Dostoyevsky/Pushkin, Dumas. Dostoyevsky is especially interesting IMO.

I was gonna say Cervantes but you got em there already; I think Don Quixote is important as fuck in a literary sense.

King James is a political as fuck translation, and is worth reading in that context IMO.

I recommend taking a look at the Saint John's College reading list (https://www.sjc.edu/academic-programs/undergraduate/great-books-reading-list)

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