Some people may regard the classics as things like Plato or the Odyssey, but I am thinking about 19th century and some 18th century books here.

Australia has its own classics and I have mentioned some in other threads, authors such as Henry Handel Richardson, Miles Franklin, Kylie Tennant. And America has its classics, Mark Twain, Henry James etc. And there are translations of French classics like Balzac & Zola. I like Balzac in particular.

But I still prefer the English classics and one author, apart from Dickens of course, stands out for me and that's Trollope. And from his unbelievable production line I like the Barsetshire series best.
I'm listening to one now, Dr Thorne. I've got the books and read them, but listening is good too.

What I like about the classics is they show you that people essentially don't change much over time. The rules of society might change but really people's behaviour doesn't. There is continuity which has probably been there for hundreds if not thousands of years.
I don't think schools devote enough time to classics. They're difficult and the curriculum is full of bits of everything. And there is the cult of Shakespeare which I think is carried to extremes.
To my mind, kids would derive more understanding from a Dickens or Trollope novel than they would from Shakespeare, which they can't understand anyway.

I just don't think the quality of teaching is there. They are looking at the technicalities of literature rather than its soul.

The only "classic" authors I have read lately have been James Joyce and Lewis Grassic Gibbon.  Slightly later than the other names mentioned earlier.

John Smith wrote on Mar 31^st, 2016 at 10:24pm:


Somehow I don't think so.

Wolseley wrote on Apr 1^st, 2016 at 12:46am:


in that case I'm out!

bogarde73 wrote on Apr 1^st, 2016 at 9:35am:


author ... wrote the "Reacher' series .. you probably know best know the movie "Jack Reacher - One Shot'


I was joking when I asked if he's considered a classic

No, well you have to understand I'm a hyperbolist by inclination. But I do think Shakespeare has been pushed down the throats of kids too much generation after generation. And it's so time-consuming because it's so difficult to read.
I've read all the history plays (which are the only ones that really interest me) as an adult and I know I could never have appreciated them as a high school kid.
So that's why I say the cult of Shakespeare.

I did say that, as classics, I myself was talking about 18-19th century and I did say other people could say something else.

bogarde73 wrote on Apr 4^th, 2016 at 4:12pm:


I have read a number of short extracts over the years from Roman works but the only pre 18th century text I can recall reading in its entirety (if you exclude some of Shakespeare's plays) is Eusebius's History of the Church, which was originally written in the late 290s, although the translation I read was a revised version from about 20 years later.

I never read The Travels, but I believe it contains the Yahoos.

I have read Gulliver's Travels, The Canterbury Tales, and The Tempest (and Beowulf, but this isn't a 18th-19th century book). I didn't find them anywhere near as interesting as the Greek or Roman texts.

cods wrote on Apr 8^th, 2016 at 10:57am:



it's all depends on what the parents do. My 6 yr old is reading 3rd class material (8 yr old). His teacher has asked for a teachers aide because she doesn't want him to get bored and so that he can continue to read at his level while the rest of the class reads at their level.  Right now, while I'm typing this, he's in the lounge, TV off (he turned it off) reading a book on basic mechanics (a 'how things work' book) while my nearly 4 yr old is sitting next to him reading about the solar system. Although I think with the 4 yr old he works more from memory more than actual reading.

We have always read at least 2 and up to 5 books to them, every day since they were about 3 months of age. We were shocked when talking to a mum of a kid in his class once when she mentioned that she had only ever read her son ONE book 3 or 4 times. She should be charged with child negligence in my opinion.

My kids have no ipads, iphones, tablets or any of that crap ... plenty of time for that later. I hope that if I can get them interested enough now, they'll keep it up later.  Ohh, the best bits (in my opinion) they both prefer knowledge books to story books. And the six year old retains a lot of what he reads. He's not just going through the motions

Postmodern Trendoid III wrote on Apr 8^th, 2016 at 7:23pm:



Beowulf was a chore.

Annie Anthrax wrote on Apr 10^th, 2016 at 6:31pm:


Yes. Not only is the old English hard to read but stories about 'dragons' just doesn't do it for me.

John Smith wrote on Apr 8^th, 2016 at 8:47pm:


Does my heart good to see there is still hope left in the world.

I did read Don Quixote & Canterbury Tales but they would have been modern English translations I'm sue and in any case they are gone from the memory now.

For Sprint I will add my favourite Russian novel is probably And Quiet Flows the Don. What a sweeping epic of the Cossack experience before and after WWI.
And also another Aussie author worthy of note is Ruth Park.

I've read a few of those.
Some are very good.

'Moby Dick' was good.

'Down and Out in Paris and London' was gritty

"Animal Farm' was futuristic. Written simply, very deep.

'Lolita' was one of the more beautifully written books I have read. Despite the topic.

The most notorious and thoughtlessly repeated remark in English about translation is the chestnut attributed to Robert Frost: “Poetry is what is lost in translation.” Though Frost’s authority on the subject is dubious, his remark—like the Italian phrase traduttore traditore (“translator betrayer”)—lends epigrammatic zing to the old notion that the translation of poetry is an impossible task. Arthur Schopenhauer, ever the pessimist, declared that “Poetry cannot be translated.” The great Peruvian poet Cesar Vallejo said simply that “everyone knows that poetry is untranslatable.” And Roman Jakobson, the Russian linguist, argued that “poetry is by definition untranslatable.”

Such claims—many other philosophers, poets, and linguists have made similar ones—are so prevalent in part because they contain a kernel of truth. To the degree that the essence of poetry is embodied in its actual words and their particular sounds, poetry certainly does get lost in translation: all the original words and their sounds disappear. As the noted linguist Steve Martin remarked after a visit to Paris: “Chapeau means hat. Oeuf means egg. It’s like those French have a different word for everything.” Martin’s joke gets at the serious difference between originals and translations that Vallejo, for example, had in mind: poetry is untranslatable, he explained, because “translated into other synonymous but never identical words, it’s no longer the same.”




I agree with Frost - although some translations are better than the original.

Jovial Monk wrote on Jul 10^th, 2025 at 2:49pm:

What does?