Piffka
 
  1  
Reply Sun 12 Jan, 2003 10:53 pm
Debacle -- I did see that was true and thought of you directly. Had earlier researched the aforesaid T.Shandy through my first series (volume May-Z) of Magill Masterplots... which says that it is, towit, "...one of the most amusing books ever written." Which you must admit, is a fine recommendation. You are so kind to keep me up-to-date with these discourses. As a matter of fact, with this research and reading regarding T. Shandy, it goes directly and right along the lines of beginning to think about possibly picking up and reading same. I think I am well on my way to a more powerful grasp of the Classics.

Now as to the originations of the digressionarial circumstancing... that is news to me... but then, I'm a little wet behind the ears and mayn't be as favored with the historical facts to which you allude. For this, I can only doff my hat, Ludmilla, and offer sincere thanks for the new and welcome information.
0 Replies
 
Dartagnan
 
  1  
Reply Sun 12 Jan, 2003 11:18 pm
For those who want to read (or re-read) The Odyssey, a recent translation by Robert Fagles is wonderfully lyric. Here's Nausicaa's farewell to Odysseus, as he's about to depart from her father's kingdom:

Farewell, my friend! And when you are at home,
home in your own land, remember me at times.
Mainly to me you owe the gift of life.

[And his reply concludes:]

Even at home I'll pray to you as a deathless goddess
all my days to come. You save my life, dear girl.
0 Replies
 
Piffka
 
  1  
Reply Mon 13 Jan, 2003 09:49 am
For anyone who wants to see this new poetic translation, here is a link:

http://mkatz.web.wesleyan.edu/cciv243/cciv243.OdysseyEight.html

Thanks, D'Artagnan for bringing this to everyone's attention! It is very good. Interesting too, to compare it to the prose version of Butler* and Chapman's rhyming verse:

"...Be cheerful, as in all the future state
Your home will show you in your better fate.
But yet, even then, let this remember'd be,
Your life's price I lent, and you owe it me."

As I, as I to a Goddess there shall vow,
To thy fair hand that did my being give,
Which I'll acknowledge every hour I live."

from Butler:
"Farewell stranger," said she, "do not forget me when you are safe at home again, for it is to me first that you owe a ransom for having saved your life."

And Ulysses said, "Nausicaa, daughter of great Alcinous, may Jove the mighty husband of Juno, grant that I may reach my home; so shall I bless you as my guardian angel all my days, for it was you who saved me."


It would be a wonder to know enough to read it in the original Greek.
0 Replies
 
Dartagnan
 
  1  
Reply Mon 13 Jan, 2003 10:37 am
Interesting to compare those translations, Piffka, thanks. I guess I prefer the more modern approach; it's helps give a contemporary feel to the character's personalities and actions, even though the events happened millennia ago!
0 Replies
 
Piffka
 
  1  
Reply Mon 13 Jan, 2003 11:01 am
I think you are right. It could be our modern sensibilities, but I prefer the newest as well. The Chapman seems forced and the Butler reminds me of the Bible, somehow.

To continue with the translations theme, here's a link to several translations of the Chinese Classic, Tao te Ching (including the original and one in German, just for Walter!). Look about halfway down the page...

http://www.edepot.com/taotext.html
0 Replies
 
fbaezer
 
  1  
Reply Tue 14 Jan, 2003 05:43 pm
Traduttore: traditore, goes the Italian saying: Translator: traitor.

I have a hunch: the translator of Don Quijote from Spanish to English must be a very boring fellow. I find that several American readers have trouble with it and I know at least one who changed her mind after reading the original version. The book is actually very amusing.

These are the Classics for me, eternal stories for everybody, books you can reread and always find something new, something unexpected; books that can be retold in many different ways:

The Odysee - Homer- The Classic of Classics. Even some of the other Classics are versions of the Odysee.

The Divine Comedy - Dante Alighieri - another very special odysee, in an etereal world. A book that founded a language.

Macbeth - William Shakespeare - Does anyone know what were Macbeth's proposals for his kingdom? Does anyone care? We're talking real politics, and real passion here.

Don Quijote de la Mancha - Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra - Yet another odysee, in a comedy turned tragedy, along with the discovery of irony as a way of writing.

Justine - Marquis De Sade -

Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Frankenstein - Mary Shelley

Children and Household Tales - Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm

Faust - Johann Wolfgang Goethe

Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoiesvky

Plus 2 Classics outside Western culture:

The 1001 Nights

I Ching

If we go into the XX Century, I have a handful of authors that have a more than fair chance of going strong for at least several decades:

Marcel Proust
James Joyce
William Faulkner
Gabriel García Márquez
Ernest Hemingway
Franz Kafka
Anthony Burguess
George Orwell
Gúnter Grass
Umberto Eco
Hermann Hesse
Jorge Luis Borges
Yukio Mishima
Milan Kundera

My bet goes for Kafka, Grass, Borges and Orwell.
0 Replies
 
Dartagnan
 
  1  
Reply Tue 14 Jan, 2003 06:08 pm
Excellent list, fbaezer, couldn't come up with one as extensive myself! One wee quibble: Only one female writer appears, Ms. Shelley. How about Charlotte Bronte, Jane Austen, George Eliot or Virginia Woolf?
0 Replies
 
fbaezer
 
  1  
Reply Tue 14 Jan, 2003 07:25 pm
The books, not the authors, were on my mind.
0 Replies
 
Piffka
 
  1  
Reply Tue 14 Jan, 2003 08:51 pm
Thanks, fbaezer! Though it would be nice, as D'artagnan says, if more women wrote classics, you are right not to add some just to be politically correct.

Whether a classic is the book or the writer is an interesting thought.

If you could only have ten volumes to read for the rest of your life... would they all come from this list?

(I'm cheating a little here, since I have a single volume which includes all Shakespeare's works!)
0 Replies
 
Walter Hinteler
 
  1  
Reply Wed 15 Jan, 2003 01:16 am
Thanks, Piffka, for the link.

I really can agree with fbaezer's 'summary'. Thanks, too!
0 Replies
 
fbaezer
 
  1  
Reply Wed 15 Jan, 2003 11:05 am
10 (fiction) books for the rest of my life?

On the list:

The Odysee
Shakespeare's Complete Works (I also have an edition)
Les Miserables}
Faust
Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu
Borges' Complete Works (got the volume)
Grass' The Tin Drum

Out of the list, and not yet read:

Elsa Morante's La Storia
Storri's "prose" Edda
Either a long book by Toni Morrison or a book I haven't read from Philip K. Dick

Plus the I Ching, "strictly for counsel"
-------

On authors or books:

In the former list I chose, for classic Classics what I think is the best book from a consistently good author, and for the XX Century I thought of authors, thinking not only about their consistent quality, but also about their fame.

As an example. I think Umberto Eco is the best living Italian writer. He has worldwide success. Almost every critic agree's, though, that the best Italian novel in the XX Century is La Conscienza di Zeno, by little known Italo Svevo. And I personally think the best Italian writer of the century was Elsa Morante (L'isola di Arturo, Menzogna e Sortilegio, Aracoeli. I haven't read yet what is considered to be her masterpiece: La Storia.
0 Replies
 
Piffka
 
  1  
Reply Wed 15 Jan, 2003 11:24 am
How interesting!

I think I'd want... 1 the Shakespeare volume,
2 the Borges volume, on fbaezer's recommendation
3 a collection of all Robt.Burns works,
4 all Millay's works,
5 the largest poetry anthology I could find,
6 the Bible,
7 a collection of Taoist writings which included the I Ching,
8 Tristram Shandy -- which Debacle promises is good
9 Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in both modern & middle English,
10 A collection of Hermann Hesse in both German & English.

That would keep me pretty busy!
0 Replies
 
Dartagnan
 
  1  
Reply Wed 15 Jan, 2003 11:39 am
Thanks for mentioning Svevo, fbaezer, he's one of my faves, too.
0 Replies
 
Piffka
 
  1  
Reply Wed 15 Jan, 2003 11:47 am
Wait a minute... I think I'd want Wind in the Willows in there. Hmmm, which to pull, which to pull?

I've never heard of Svevo before -- I've now looked him up on Powell's and realize there is a translation. Looks good!
0 Replies
 
Piffka
 
  1  
Reply Sat 18 Jan, 2003 03:14 pm
100 GREATEST BOOKS OF ALL TIME
published by the FRANKLIN LIBRARY 1974-1982

"This collection of books includes the most significant (English language or translation) novels, biographies, histories, dramas and the greatest works of poetry, philosophy and science, as chosen by a distinguished group of scholars."

Adams, Henry. The Education of Henry Adams.
Aeschylus. Oresteia.
Alighieri, Dante. The Divine Comedy.
Andersen, Hans Christian. Fairy Tales.
Aristophanes. Five Comedies.
Aristotle. Politics.
Augustine. Confessions.
Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice.
Bacon, Sir Francis. Selected Writings.
Balzac, Honore De. Pere Goriot.
Baudelaire, Charles. The Flowers of Evil.
Blake, William. Songs of Innocence and of Experience.
Boccaccio, Giovanni. The Decameron.
Bronte, Charlotte. Jane Eyre.
Bronte, Emily. Wuthering Heights.
Bunyan, John. The Pilgrims Progress.
Burton, Sir Richard F.. Tales From The Arabian Nights.
Carroll, Lewis. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
Cervantes, Miguel de Saavedra. Don Quixote de La Mancha.
Chaucer, Geoffrey. Canterbury Tales.
Chekhov, Anton. Plays.
Confucius. Analects.
Conrad, Joseph. Lord Jim.
Cooper, James Fenimore. The Last of the Mohicans.
Crane, Stephen. The Red Badge of Courage.
Darwin, Charles. The Origin of the Species.
Defoe, Daniel. Moll Flanders.
Defoe, Daniel. Robinson Crusoe.
Descartes, Rene. Philosophical Works.
Dickens, Charles. David Copperfield.
Dickens, Charles. Great Expectations.
Donne, John. Poems.
Dostoevsky, Feodor. Crime and Punishment.
Eliot, George. The Mill on the Floss.
Eliot, T.S.. Collected Poems 1909-1962.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo. Essays.
Euripedes. Plays.
Faulkner, William. The Sound and the Fury.
Fielding, Henry. Tom Jones.
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby.
Flaubert, Gustave. Madame Bovary.
Franklin, Benjamin. Autobiography.
Freud, Sigmund. Basic Works.
Frost, Robert. Poetry.
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. Faust.
Grimm, The Brothers. Favorite Household Tales.
Hamilton, Madison and Jay. The Federalist.
Hardy, Thomas. The Return of the Native.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter.
Hemingway, Ernest. A Farewell to Arms.
Homer. Illiad.
Homer. Odyssey.
Ibsen, Henrik. Plays.
James, Henry. The Ambassadors.
James, Henry. Nine Tales.
Joyce, James. Ulysses.
Kafka, Franz. The Trial.
Keats, John. Poems.
Lawrence, D.H.. Women in Love.
Machiavelli, Niccolo. The Prince.
Mann, Thomas. Five Stories.
Maupassant, Guy de. Stories.
Melville, Herman. Moby-Dick.
Montaigne, Michel de. Essays.
Mill, John Stuart. Political Writings.
Milton, John. Paradise Lost.
Moliere. Seven Plays.
O'Neill, Eugene. Four Plays.
Paine, Thomas. Political Writings.
Pascal, Blaise. Pensees.
Petronius. Sayricon.
Plato. Republic.
Plutarch. Twelve Illustrious Lives.
Poe, Edgar Allen. Tales.
Proust, Mareel. Swann's Way.
Rabelais, Francois. Gargantua and Pantagruel.
Racine, Jean. Six Tragedies.
Rousseau, Jean Jacques. Political Writings.
Shakespeare, William. Eight Comedies.
Shakespeare, William. Six Histories.
Shakespeare, William. Poems.
Shakespeare, William. Six Tragedies.
Shaw, Bernard. Three Plays.
The Tragedies of Sophocles
The Red and the Black by Stendhal
Sterne, Laurence. Tristram Shandy.
Stevenson, Robert Louis. Treasure Island.
Swift, Jonathan. Gulliver's Travels.
Thackeray, William Makepeace. Vanity Fair.
Thoreau, Henry D.. Walden.
Thucydides. The History of the Peloponnesian War,
Tolstoy, Leo. War and Peace.
Turgenev, Ivan. Fathers and Sons.
Twain, Mark. Huckleberry Finn.
Virgil. Aeneid.
Voltaire. Candide.
Whitman, Walt. Leaves of Grass.
Wordsworth, William, and Samuel Coleridge. Lyrical Ballads.
Yeats, William Butler. Selected Poems.
Zola, Emile. Nana.
0 Replies
 
LarryBS
 
  1  
Reply Mon 20 Jan, 2003 04:37 pm
GREAT BOOKS
I don't think Joyce Cary is ever listed among the "classics," but Ive wanted to read his First Trilogy for a long time and finally found it at my new library - Herself Surprised, To Be a Pilgrim, and The Horse's Mouth. Kate Chopin's Awakening is sometimes included on those lists. I recently read and loved Lewis' Babbitt and Hesse' Demian and Siddhartha. Don't forget those non-fiction classics like Graves' Goodbye To All That - one of those hope-to-read-it-soon books.

GALA - There are a lot of Great Books sites on the web, with many approaches to reading them, reading lists, study guides, concordances, etc. If you would like some links, I have tons. If you are looking for motivation, find Adler's 50-60 volume Great Books of the Western World at the library. Volume 1 is a short explanation of the whole set and has a great essay on the benefits of a liberal education. I read it once a year, when I realize that another year has gone by without my having started the Great Books of the Western World Exclamation Rolling Eyes
0 Replies
 
Debacle
 
  1  
Reply Tue 21 Jan, 2003 06:14 am
Hi Larry,

Yep, "Goodbye to All That" is one I've neglected to read, but have always meant to. I recall from years ago a chap in England raving (insofar as a Brit tends to rave -- an enthusiasm level two gradients above "blase") about it. Thanks for the reminder.

I note you live in my favorite holiday spot. We generally go down at least once a year - generally stay on Longboat or Anna Maria.

Glad to see you come aboard.
0 Replies
 
dlowan
 
  1  
Reply Tue 21 Jan, 2003 06:36 am
I love "Goodbye to All That" -I think you will, too, Deb.
0 Replies
 
larry richette
 
  1  
Reply Tue 21 Jan, 2003 11:11 am
That list of the 100 greatest books has some glaring omissions...like THE GOLDEN ASS by Apuleius, which alonmg with the SATYRICON is one of the 2 greatest novels in Latin. And unlike the SATYRICON the text has come down to us complete. It is a comic masterpiece about Lucius, a ne'er do well who winds up being transformed into an ass by witchcraft and his adventures as an animal until the Goddess Isis changes him back into a man. Bawdy, brilliant, and full of mini-stories inserted into the main narrative, including the famous tale of Amor and Psyche which is often published separately.
0 Replies
 
Piffka
 
  1  
Reply Tue 21 Jan, 2003 11:41 am
Which two would you pull out?
0 Replies
 
 

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