a classic is a work of artart
all art is quite useless. – wilde
the greeks spoke of art as mimesis, mimicking nature. The German idealists (kant and friedrich schiller) saw art as a form of play.
art is... (e.g. a bookbook
books may well be the only true magic. – alice hoffman
any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. – arthur c. clarke
books are some of the most advanced techn...) that belongs to a canoncanon
a canon (greek for ruler or measuring stick) is a technology that solves the problem of scoping the attention of a reading audience to a subset of edited, compiled, or anthologized work.... A classic is revealed by age, esteem, effect, and complexity.
brenzel
| Criterion/Desideratum | Benefit |
|---|---|
| Addresses permanent & universal human concerns | A perenially relevant book is one you can always return to. |
| Game-changer | It doesn't just repeat information you knew. This book is the first time anyone seriously articulated X, Y, or Z. |
| Influences other works | You can discover more classics just by reading them. They form a natural progression. |
| Respected by experts | Not necessarily a sign of correctness, rather it indicates there is knowledge in this book you should know because it captures what people were thinking at the time. |
| Challenging yet rewarding | A classic will reward you for even a minimal amout of time put in, and it will force you to improve your reading skills. |
calvino
In Why Read the Classics? Calvino provides a few definitions.
1. The classics are those books about which you usually hear people saying: ‘I’m rereading…’, never ‘I’m reading….’ 2. The Classics are those books which constitute a treasured experience for those who have read and loved them; but they remain just as rich an experience for those who reserve the chance to read them for when they are in the best condition to enjoy them. 3. The classics are books which exercise a particular influence, both when they imprint themselves on our imagination as unforgettable, and when they hide in the layers of memory disguised as the individual’s or the collective unconscious. 4. A classic is a book which with each rereading offers as much of a sense of discovery as the first reading. 5. A classic is a book which even when we read it for the first time gives the sense of rereading something we have read before. 6. A classic is a book which has never exhausted all it has to say to its readers. 7. The classics are those books which come to us bearing the aura of previous interpretations, and trailing behind them the traces they have left in the culture or cultures (or just in the languages and customs) through which they have passed. 8. A classic is a work which constantly generates a pulviscular cloud of critical discourse around it, but which always shakes the particles off. 9. Classics are books which, the more we think we know them through hearsay, the more original, unexpected, and innovative we find them when we actually read them. 10. A classic is the term given to any book which comes to represent the whole universe, a book on a par with ancient talismans. 11. ‘Your’ classic is a book to which you cannot remain indifferent, and which helps you define yourself in relation or even in opposition to it. 12. A classic is a work that comes before other classics; but those who have read other classics first immediately recognize its place in the genealogy of classic works. 13. A classic is a work which relegates the noise of the present to a background hum, which at the same time the classics cannot exist without. 14. A classic is a work which persists as a background noise even when a present that is totally incompatible with it holds sway.
Notice that a recurring theme is how people come back to a classic because it supplies them endlessly renewable (pointing at an evolving transformative experiencetransformative experience
transformative experience is a book and concept developed by philosopher l.a. paul. It asks the question, when you are presented with the opportunity to transform into x, where x is a state of ...).
eliot
In "What is a Classic?" addressed to the virgilvirgil
virgil was a roman poet who wrote aeneid. his influences include homer, lucretius, and callimachus.
society in 1944, t.s. eliott.s. eliot
dante and shakespeare divide the world between them. there is no third.
thomas stearns eliot (1888-1965) was a writer of poems, plays, and literary critic. he was born in st. l... says that Virgil is obviously a classical poet. But, he says, a classic can be only be known in hindsight. For him, 'classic' means maturity. There is the universal classic and the classic in its languagelanguage
language is a system and activity of speech or text to communicate information. generally, we think of it as a human activity.
steven pinker breaks down language in terms of a lang... or in its timetime
time lays out a sequence of events.
The physicist, like newton, looks at time through the metaphor of Space.
The account of time in phenomenology is different from that of b....
A classic can only occur when a civilisation is mature; when a language and a literatureliterature
Literature is a type of art associated with Writing and language.
are mature; and it must be the work of a mature mind.
And he continues:
A mature literature, therefore, has a history behind it: a history, that is not merely a chronicle, an accumulation of manuscripts and writings of this kind and that, but an ordered though unconscious progress of a language to realise its own potentialites within its own limitations.
He wants to make a difference between the maturity of a period and the maturity of the work or the author.