Classic vs Modern Literature.........

[MissyO]

So, which do you prefer? Is there any difference? We know that all the great classics were once new releases, but can you be phucked reading many new releases to find a speak of gold? And which current books do you think will make the list for posterity?

[Cat]

Classic literature. I guess they deal with different topics. I love history (anything up to the 17th and 18th century), and seeing as literature often reflects on the time it was written it fascinates me. The language used is more appealing to me as well. I love the difficult old-english words and phrases. Shakespeare, Blake. It's just great stuff.

As for new releases...eh, I don't really read them. I spend to much time reading for school so I pretty much end up reading whatever they tell me to read. Some more modern plays are really interesting, though. Harold Pinter's The Birthday Party is definitely a favourite of mine.

[darko.]

all literature sucks

[MissyO]

Originally Posted by Cat

Classic literature. I guess they deal with different topics.

See, I can't quite agree here. I love to read classics to see how little humanity has changed. Although modern literature smacks you in the face with things like love, sex, jealousy etc, its the same damn thing they were writing about, albeit much less rawly, 200 + years ago.

[Cat]

Yeah, you are right about that. But take William Blake and his poems about chimney sweepers as an example; he deals with topics that are no longer 'relevant' today. I guess the themes are the same, it's just the topics within the themes that have changed a little.

Seems like we read classics differently as well. Whenever I read it I try to picture myself in that time period, and as a contrast I try to imagine how it would've been written today. I always find quite a few major differences. I guess I just like to feel like I'm somewhere else, and that's why I prefer classic literature.

[MissyO]

Originally Posted by Cat

Yeah, you are right about that. But take William Blake and his poems about chimney sweepers as an example; he deals with topics that are no longer 'relevant' today. I guess the themes are the same, it's just the topics within the themes that have changed a little.

Seems like we read classics differently as well. Whenever I read it I try to picture myself in that time period, and as a contrast I try to imagine how it would've been written today. I always find quite a few major differences. I guess I just like to feel like I'm somewhere else, and that's why I prefer classic literature.

True. Also, its hard to imagine needing "maids" to dress and such things in these times of zips and button fly jeans. No matter how loaded you are, there's just no point.

I suppose you enjoy reading classics to escape, whereas I tend to love continuity with the past. But I do read them similarly to yourself, that's why I notice how little has changed, because with the exception of how everyday life is run and that they'd be more graphic, I don't think there'd be a great deal of difference if old Tolstoy wrote War & Peace today. Except the uniforms would be uglier.

[Ophelia]

Originally Posted by darko.

all literature sucks

I'm with darko - It's all useless cr@p.

[Ophelia]

but really - I can't pick one over the other, although I do tend to read more modern literary fiction. There are many classics I have yet to read. Yay.

[MissyO]

^ well get cracking on it then, woman! Classics are f*cking brilliant. There's a reason why a book is still popular after umpteen billion years since being released.

[Moshe..]

Someone said blake - yeah he is absolutely wonderful! You feel that tingling down your neck as your read. God it is sinister reading. And his sinister vision of england is still here in the 21st century - you just have to walk around east london.

Shame about the watercolours. My university collects them so I tried staring at them for hours and they still don't turn me on.

[Cat]

Originally Posted by MissyO

True. Also, its hard to imagine needing "maids" to dress and such things in these times of zips and button fly jeans. No matter how loaded you are, there's just no point.

I suppose you enjoy reading classics to escape, whereas I tend to love continuity with the past. But I do read them similarly to yourself, that's why I notice how little has changed, because with the exception of how everyday life is run and that they'd be more graphic, I don't think there'd be a great deal of difference if old Tolstoy wrote War & Peace today. Except the uniforms would be uglier.

Haha! So true.
Well, yeah, I suppose I do read them to escape. Also I guess I just find them magical because they tell stories of a life that seems so different from mine. The way they dressed, the way they spoke and even what they saw on an everyday basis fascinates me in a way.

Originally Posted by Moshe..

Someone said blake - yeah he is absolutely wonderful! You feel that tingling down your neck as your read. God it is sinister reading. And his sinister vision of england is still here in the 21st century - you just have to walk around east london.

Shame about the watercolours. My university collects them so I tried staring at them for hours and they still don't turn me on.

Blake is magical. Do you have any favourites? I absolutely love the Chimney Sweeper poems and Auguries of Innocence.

To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.

I haven't seen much of his painting. Only what he painted onto the pages of his poetry.

[Moshe..]

You have really good taste. Both those chimney poems from the songs of innocence and experience have an amazingly dark and bleak vision of life (the innocent one even more so than the experienced one!). You feel the chills down your neck as you read.

Have you read london? (it's also wonderful)

London


I wander through each chartered street,
Near where the chartered Thames does flow,
And mark in every face I meet,
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.

In every cry of every man,
In every infant's cry of fear,
In every voice, in every ban,
The mind-forged manacles I hear:

How the chimney-sweeper's cry
Every blackening church appals,
And the hapless soldier's sigh
Runs in blood down palace-walls.

But most, through midnight streets I hear
How the youthful harlot's curse
Blasts the new-born infant's tear,
And blights with plagues the marriage-hearse.

[Cat]

Thank you, and likewise. The Chimney Sweeper poems are truly amazing. I find the Innocence one the hardest to read because of the speaker's naivety.

You're right, London is wonderful. I have to say it is pretty hard to read as well. It's so different from, say, William Wordsworth's Composed upon Westminster Bridge even though they were written at about the same time.

"Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802"

Earth has not anything to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty:
This City now doth, like a garment, wear
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky;
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
Never did sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill;
Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
The river glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!

[Moshe..]

YOu must be amazing at english. I absolutely love wordsworth too and especially that line: "dear god! the very houses seem asleep" . Westminster bridge is so perfectly the feeling when you wake up early and drink too much coffee. I always feel so lonely when I get up before everyone else that sometimes it feels like you're the only person alive and whole world was created especially for you.

Worthsworth is best for appreciating the small pleasures in life and just the miracle of being alive and of the world. You have that feeling where everything ordinary seems magical like when you're a child. Being able to keep that while still adjusting to the mundane demands of the adult life, I think that's the great task about growing up

I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud


I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed---and gazed---but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

[MissyO]

HA! No shlt, we're twiiiinnnns!

Right when you were writing that out, I was starting a topic on Loneliness in Womens:

Late Night Loneliness

(Hey, I still gotta take care of my other baby, I mean, forum.)

[Cat]

Originally Posted by Moshe..

YOu must be amazing at english. I absolutely love wordsworth too and especially that line: "dear god! the very houses seem asleep" . Westminster bridge is so perfectly the feeling when you wake up early and drink too much coffee. I always feel so lonely when I get up before everyone else that sometimes it feels like you're the only person alive and whole world was created especially for you.

Worthsworth is best for appreciating the small pleasures in life and just the miracle of being alive and of the world. You have that feeling where everything ordinary seems magical like when you're a child. Being able to keep that while still adjusting to the mundane demands of the adult life, I think that's the great task about growing up

Haha, I'm just an English student with a love for British poetry.

I love this line: "This City now doth, like a garment, wear". That's exactly how I feel in the morning...It's like everything's covered by a thin layer of silk. Everything has yet to be touched by humans. There's a serenity and a beauty that is just indescribable. Everything's so quiet and relaxed. And then at the blink of an eye I hear traffic and it's no longer that magical.

He is pretty much the opposite of Blake in that sense, yes. I love how he sees the beauty in everything. Another one of my favourites is Johnathan Swift's A Description of the Morning:

Now hardly here and there a hackney-coach
Appearing, showed the ruddy morn's approach.
Now Betty from her master's bed had flown,
And softly stole to discompose her own;
And slipshod 'prentice from his master's door
Had pared the dirt, and sprinkled round the floor.
Now Moll had whirled her mop with dext'rous airs,
Prepared to scrub the entry and the stairs.
The youth with broomy stumps began to trace
The kennel-edge, where wheels had worn the place.
The small-coal man was heard with cadence deep,
Till drowned in shriller notes of chimney-sweep.
Duns at his lordship's gate began to meet,
And brickdust Moll had screamed through half a street.
The turnkey now his flock returning sees,
Duly let out a-nights to steal for fees.
The watchful bailiffs take their silent stands,
And schoolboys lag with satchels in their hands.

It was written almost a century before Blake's Chimney Sweeper poems, but it's still so dark and it covers the same topics; corruption, poverty, etc. I always found poetry to be such a beautiful way of expressing yourself. Even though the topics are awful and the stories being told are sad, there's just something about poetry that makes it all sound beautiful. Haha, I can't really describe it.

[Moshe..]

Yeah you’re so right. Reading great poetry, even if it’s sad or nightmarish stuff, somehow mysteriously makes you happier. I think poems are the best thing in the world apart from music. They can really feel like an exploration and adventure. It’s like discovering an underwater sea cave where someone buried lost treasure hundreds of years ago which you can still find if only you look with a pure heart. But it’s also like each poem is a cupboard where every time you read you store away different imagery and dreams, and as you go back to the same poem over the years and discuss it with friends ect, the cupboard gets richer and better stocked. It’s amazing sometimes when I look at a poem we studied years ago at school the same images (they’re like imaginary paintings) that I first made up in my head to fit the poem come back – just like remembering a dream or past life!

I haven’t read anything by swift yet, but still remember from the first time I heard ‘bright star’ by keats when I was about 12
[“The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors---“ ect ]
… exactly how I imagined (a magical gallery of paintings) a star looking down on the night-time tropical oceans and forests and mountains and polar bears on the ice caps to the ends of the earth.

[Ophelia]

Originally Posted by Moshe..

Yeah you’re so right. Reading great poetry, even if it’s sad or nightmarish stuff, somehow mysteriously makes you happier. I think poems are the best thing in the world apart from music.

[MissyO]

^ Moshe is seeming very crush worthy since he was let loose in this forum, isn't he?

[darko.]

till a manly man kicks his ass then you'll toss your damp panties at him so he has something to remember you by as you ride off into the sunset with your new bf who will beat you because that's what women want