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Timeless classics the antidote to time poverty

By Ross Farrelly - posted Monday, 7 January 2013


We also undertook to read the texts in chronological order to try to understand the impact the text would have at the time it was written – that is to say to only bring ideas which had been expressed previously to mind when trying the comprehend the text being read. This is not such an easy task. Some would say it’s impossible. Nevertheless, it’s informative to try to read a text in the absence of all ideas and views which have come after because it really helps us understand what the book meant when it was written. This is important because it helps us understand the stature of the author and his or her intention in writing the book.

This also raises another benefit of reading the classics – you gain a deeper, more rounded understanding of many commonly used words and phrases. The connotations of “Machiavellian” are quite different if you’ve read The Prince.  “Oedipus complex” takes on a new shade of meaning of you’ve read Sophocles, and “quixotic” make you grin in recognition if you’re familiar with Cervantes. I imagine you’d even get more out of the dreary reality TV show “Big Brother” if you’ve read Orwell – although that may be a bit of a stretch.

We also resolved to just read the actual text, not a commentary, explanation, interpretation or summary but to read the full text word for word and see what we made of before being influenced by the commentators. (One exception to this was the page or two in Invitation to the Classics which I found to be extremely useful in whetting the appetite to read the full work.)

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In our discussions we resolved to discuss without reference to notes, only drawing on our understanding and memory of the works. Knowing that you were going to be called upon to discuss the book vive voce focusses the attention and encourages you to build up a mental picture of the book as you read it, perhaps not in every detail, but certainly in general terms. It also heightens your awareness of memorable themes and incidents which can be discussed later.

Proceeding in this manner we have read our way through classical works by Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, Aristotle and Virgil; Christian classics by Augustine, Aquinas and Dante, Luther and Calvin; Renaissance texts by Machiavelli and Cervantes (but skipped Shakespeare as we felt we has enough of a passing acquaintance with a number of his plays) and many more besides including my personal favorites Samuel Johnson’s Essays. We even read How to Read a Book by Mortimer J. Adler (not to be confused with the satirical essay, How to Read Two Books by Erasmus G Addlepate). There have been diversions - Emerson lead us to Swedenborg which turned out to be a bit of a cul-de-sac and I took a detour via the eminently readable Stefan Zweig for a while.

Furthermore, you learn something true and lasting about the human condition. Let’s take just one example of a classic work and explore a few of the novel and important ideas expressed in it. Samuel Johnson’s  Essays contains a wealth of novel insights – just one of his essay can be summarized as:

We can’t be free from troubles but we can rise above them. Although we can never hope for total equanimity we can strive towards it. People with little to do are troubled by small things. Rest without work is not restful. To seek happiness by changing anything but one’s own disposition is fruitless. Contemplation is essential to virtue as virtue involves long term goods.

Not a bad series of insights for a single essay – and he wrote over two hundred of them! Some of the observations in Johnson’s essays have stayed with me and changed the way I lead my life. His comment that everyone, even the thief, vindicates himself and justifies the way he leads his life has fundamentally changed the way I think about how best to advise my children. His advice to be content with being discontent and relish the feeling on an unfulfilled desire as more enjoyable than its satisfaction has change the way I set and achieve goals. And it’s not just Johnson. Emerson’s moving essay, Self Reliance, despite being internally contradictory is one of the most motivational pieces of advice I have every come across.

So if you’re engulfed by emails, foundering in Facebook, bowled over by blogs and tormented by Twitter – make some space in your busy schedule for a Great Book or two, invest some time in some serious reading and reap the rewards of time well spent.

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About the Author

Ross Farrelly works for a statistical software company. His blog can be found at rossfarrelly.blogspot.com.

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