[Special Feature: New Theory of Reading] <Classics for Me> Between the Classics and the Present / Shigeki Hori

2020/05/11

As I have repeatedly strayed off course, I have grown older. Lately, every time I see the cherry blossoms in full bloom, I ask myself how many more times I will welcome this season.

That said, for better or worse, I have no feeling of retirement at all. I feel strongly that I cannot leave behind a Japan that has deteriorated as it has recently for the next generation. Overlapping with that thought, I am driven by a desire to more accurately and deeply recognize the transformations in contemporary French thought, literature, and society. In the literary translation class I have taught for many years at Institut Français Tokyo (formerly Tokyo Nichifutsu Gakuin), I select ambitious works by young French novelists. The works I have personally selected and published Japanese translations for are also primarily contemporary works. In this way, the focus of my intellectual interest lies in the contemporary era. Being far from a purely academic temperament, I am not selfless in the strict sense; I want to understand the field of my own existence—the reality of the "here and now."

The problem lies in whether one can understand the "here and now" while being stuck in the "here and now." Needless to say, it is naive to think that being at the scene of an event allows one to grasp the truth. There are things one can only know by being at the scene, but there are also things one fails to notice precisely because one is there. There is a seductive expression like "sleeping with the times," but even if you "sleep with" them, what is opaque does not become transparent. Rather, an object becomes visible when one steps back a little and places distance between oneself and the object. Furthermore, unless one also distances oneself from the self that is trying to see, one will only see what one wants to see. Moreover, in order to understand, judge, and evaluate an object, one must maintain some kind of standard or criterion outside of that object. In this sense, it can generally be said that to understand the present of the human world—the "here and now"—it is necessary to capture it within history.

However, the "here and now" is not entirely and completely dominated by history. In particular, art and literature do not progress along with history in the way that science and technology do. In the first place, the concept of progress does not fit the realm of aesthetic creation. What provides effective standards and criteria there is not some kind of necessity assumed in history, but rather the masterpieces produced in the past that remain to this day—namely, the classics.

This does not refer to so-called "classical literature." In the West, "classical literature" refers to ancient Greek and Latin literature, and in Japan, it refers to literary works up to the Edo period. However, the "classics" I speak of here are works that have come to be recognized for their permanent and normative value, or in other words, value that transcends the factuality of history, rather than just historical value. Specifically, in Western literature, these are the many masterpieces beginning with Homer's "Iliad" and "Odyssey." Reading these with appreciation is a beneficial detour for correctly understanding the present of literature—the "here and now." For example, the late "masters of reading" such as G. Steiner, S. Leith, and T. Todorov traversed this detour with incredible stamina. Because the classics shared as part of a liberal arts education provide many firm references, such as forms of expression and character archetypes, their significance is great even for someone like me whose primary interest is in the contemporary era.

Furthermore, the classics have another educational effect that deserves even more attention. Paradoxically, that effect stems from the fact that classics are by no means familiar works. For example, Sophocles' "Oedipus Rex" was born in Athens in the 5th century BC. For those of us living in Japan today, it is a play that premiered on the exact opposite side of the globe about 2,500 years ago. Naturally, the character of King Oedipus is isolated from our daily world. And yet, the affection for his two daughters that this man, who gouged out his own eyes, glimpses before leaving the city of Thebes pierces straight through our hearts as well. In this way, precisely because a classic is not a work created by a familiar contemporary, it very often liberates the reader from egocentrism and leads them to the horizon of universality through "thinking by putting oneself in the place of a human existence completely different from oneself" (Kant, "Critique of Judgment").

For this reason, despite being a translator who primarily deals with contemporary literature, I have always recommended to young students that they should read well-established classics—even if they feel skeptical—rather than contemporary works which are often hit-or-miss. During the time I served at Keio SFC, I held a research seminar titled "Reading the Classics of Western Thought," where we took turns reading works by Montaigne, Descartes, Rousseau, and others. I also taught a lecture course called "Classics and the Present," where I provided commentary in a large classroom on standard masterpieces such as ancient Greek tragedies including "Antigone," Voltaire's "Candide," Balzac's "Old Goriot," Orwell's "1984," Huxley's "Brave New World," Primo Levi's "If This Is a Man," and Ionesco's "Rhinoceros."

It would be my greatest satisfaction if many of the students who, during my seminars and classes, took a leap of faith and immersed themselves in the classics, came to awaken to Immanuel Kant's so-called "enlarged thought."