"Men sometimes speak as if the study of the classics would at length make way for more modern and practical studies; but the adventurous student will always study the classics; in whatever language they may be written and however ancient they may be." (p.95, in my copy)
Me, in response: "Woops."
Honestly, I don't disagree with this but the idea of learning Latin from scratch, now, seems impractical. I may be screwed on this one.
"The best books are not read even by those who are called good readers...Even the college-bred and so called liberally educated men here and elswehre have really little or no acquaintance with the English classics."(p. 100)
Here he calls us out more directly. For my part anyway, he is completely accurate. I don't really know the English classics that well, and only have a vague idea of how and when they tie into the history of the western world. Reading this criticism motivates me. I feel like starting our book club (for nerds) anew, from the very beginning. What if we put together an outline of the history of western thought and literature through our book club? I'm game. What the hell else do we have to do with ourselves?
Incidentally I am starting to think Thoreau was either an insanely hardworking scholar, or had no life to speak of, or a bit of both. Did he ever marry? If not that'd explain a bit.
"Indeed, there is hardly the professor in our colleges, who, if he has mastered the difficulties of the language, has proportionally mastered the difficulties of the wit and poetry of a Greek poet." (p. 101)
Ok so now he calls out the professors.
The general idea in "reading" seems to me to be: Don't waste time on books that Thoreau thinks are garbage(didn't provide a whole lot of guidelines here), and if you are going to try and be a thinker and a scholar, then don't half ass it. Read everything (of value) !!
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Wow. Ok, I just finished "Reading" and oddly enough, you know jumped out at me the most? This:
ReplyDelete"A written word is the choicest of relics. It is something at once more intimate with us and more universal than any other work of art. It is the work of art nearest to life itself."
Coming from a writer I guess this should be taken with a grain of salt, but Thoreau is a pretty reflective guy and I have a hard time imagining him writing this without having considered it and meaning it. I can see where he's coming from, but I don't know if (think?) I can agree with him. I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on this.
But your points were obviously the major ones of the chapter so let's get to those. First, a quote attributed to Louisa May Alcott that speaks to your question about his marital status: "[his facial hair] will most assuredly deflect amorous advances and preserve the man's virtue in perpetuity." In what little reading about his life I've done, I can't find any mention of a wife. There you go.
As for reading the classics of Greek & Roman literature in their original languages, you can probably also guess where I come down on this issue. Just as well as you can guess what the response of a soon-to-be Latin teacher is to someone who tells him that he thinks it's too late for him to learn Latin. We'll be discussing this point further.
And I agree with Thoreau that one should be acquainted with the classics of one's culture - and those of other cultures as well - but this should be done thoughtfully. These books can tell us to some degree where we're coming from, but - though they might provide some helpful hints - they can't tell us where we're going (I can't help but want to tie these questions to the question of art forms above by means of Gaugin's painting "D'où venons-nous? Que sommes-nous? Où allons-nous?"). It's the task of every generation to decide that for itself and in order to be able to see the way clearly, we have to be careful not too be deep in the shadows cast by those giants of literature past.
Speaking of which, "What if we put together an outline of the history of western thought and literature through our book club?" !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Count me in.