Classics...

[fajrdrako]

When you reread a classic you do not see more in the book than you did before; you see more in you than there was before. - Clifton Fadiman (1904 - 1999)

I like that quote, but I'm not sure whether I can believe it. All the classics of my life¹ - which I tend to think of as turning points, every one - my discoveries of Shakespeare, Dickens, Dunnett, Bronte, Emma Goldman, Tolkien, Shelley - all read within a few years, in my teens - all of them made me what I have been ever since. And rereading them - it doesn't change that, it just accentuates it. When I read a book now that has that much impact, it isn't usually that it brings me new ideas, but that it gives me a new perspective on ideas I already hold.

I have always wondered whether those books shaped my life and attitudes, or if they articulated ideas and thoughts I already had in unclear form, and I responded to them. I've always suspected the latter.

And this quote from Fadiman isn't so much meaningful as amusing, because it brought Captain Jack Harkness to mind:

Experience teaches you that the man who looks you straight in
the eye, particularly if he adds a firm handshake, is hiding something.

~ ~ ~

¹ Do I dare cite Marvel comics as classics of my life?

Comments

[puritybrown.livejournal.com]

I would put it differently: the fact that there is something new in yourself allows you to see the classic differently when you reread it.

With a really rich text, we don't see everything about it on the first reading, and part of the reason for that can sometimes be that we're not in the right place -- haven't matured enough, haven't learned enough. "The older we get the farther we see", as the song has it. I know that there are books and poems I struggled with when I was younger that I can really appreciate now, and others that I enjoyed at the time, but can now appreciate on multiple levels.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I certainly do see more on each reread of a classic, but I think of it as part of the same psychological process by which I see more each time I watch a TV show or movie: one notices new details, or ascribes new meaning to them. And I suppose some part of that must be from thing I have learned or ways I have changed since the previous time, but it's hard to judge how much that's true. My central perceptions don't seem to change much. Does that mean I'm hidebound, or that I'm consistent? Perhaps a bit of both.