[Special Feature: New Theory of Reading] <Classics for Me> A Treasure House of Human Wisdom / Michio Fujitani

2020/05/11

The modern world is overflowing with a vast amount of information, where it is difficult to distinguish truth from falsehood. Looking at the internet, it is truly a sea of inexhaustible information. The biggest problem with information overload is that truth and genuine good books are hidden. This is because bad money drives out good. In this sea of information, modern people are in a state where they do not know what to rely on. At such a time, the most reliable guidepost is the "Classics."

Because hundreds or thousands of years have sifted through them, there is no mistake. You can encounter good books most efficiently. This is the first reason I recommend the classics. The second reason is that "books that are immediately useful soon become useless" (Shinzo Koizumi, "On Reading"). Books that sell by riding the current trends stop being read once those trends pass. Who remembers the bestsellers from 20 or 30 years ago? The literary giant Goethe mentions the names of bestseller authors of his time in "Conversations with Eckermann," but there is not a single author or work among them that we know today. Books selling in bookstores now will attract no one's interest in ten years. However, the classics are different. You want to pull them off the shelf and read them every ten years. And every time you read them, there are new discoveries.

What is the difference between classics and modern books? Modern books are easy to understand. Since they are set in the present, they require no background knowledge or study. On the other hand, because classics are from an older era, they require effort to focus on the past and a bit of empathy. However, if you can clear that hurdle, they grant an incredible amount of wisdom. This is because whether it was 2,000 years ago or in a highly information-oriented society dominated by AI, individual life remains basically the same.

Just because we are in the modern age doesn't mean the time required to read Homer's "Iliad" becomes shorter. Humans, just as in the past, are born, fall in love, grow old (get sick), and die. In every era, there are dreams and hopes, frustrations and failures, partings and encounters. These basic characteristics never change as long as we are human. The various personal troubles we face are basically the same as those faced by the tens of billions of humans who have lived before us. By knowing the classics, we can connect to that vast wisdom. Our troubles are not new; they are merely experiences that many people of the past have already gone through.

There is no need to follow in the same ruts as the people of old. Rather, modern problems stem from repeating the same mistakes by not learning from the wisdom of the ancients. Playing games does not expand one's experience or knowledge, but by experiencing countless lives through reading, the life of one person is transformed into the lives of ten thousand. Could there be any greater treasure than this?

Classics consist only of good books. This is because, unlike modern books, classics are works that have been crafted by countless poets and writers. Let me introduce an example. Everyone knows the title of Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet." However, this is not a creative work written by Shakespeare alone. The oldest version dates back to Masuccio Salernitano's "Mariotto and Ganozza," published in Naples in 1476. Next, Luigi da Porto adapted this plot and published it in Venice in 1530 under the title "A Newly Discovered Story of Two Noble Lovers and Their Piteous Death." Incorporating the story of "Pyramus and Thisbe" from Ovid's "Metamorphoses" and elements of Boccaccio, the plot and characters became quite close to Shakespeare's later work. The setting also moved from Siena to Verona, and the lovers' names became "Romeus and Giulietta."

The two are the children of the feuding Montecchi and Cappelletti families, but this was the result of Da Porto misreading line 106 of Canto VI of the Purgatorio in Dante's "Divine Comedy," which mentions the "Montecchi and Cappelletti," as the two families being in constant conflict. I will omit the details, but subsequently, while six authors were rewriting this story, it was translated into French and then into English, and finally, Shakespeare finished it in the form it has today. In modern times, this would be impossible due to copyright issues, but because classics have no copyright, they pass through the hands of many writers, unnecessary branches are pruned away, and they are refined each time. Therefore, classics always possess a perfected beauty.

Greek mythology was similarly rewritten and refined by countless poets for 800 years until it was completed by Ovid's "Metamorphoses." Because countless writers added their own experience and wisdom to the work each time, it has truly become a storehouse of wisdom. As for Dante's "Divine Comedy," it incorporates the best parts of all previous literature, philosophy, and the Bible, resulting in the most organic and perfected thing humanity has ever created. This is the difference between classics and modern works, and it would be a waste not to use this precious heritage.