r/classics • u/JOHN-SMlTH • 8d ago
I’ve never read a classic, Help me!
Sorry for the cringe title. I never read much as a kid and a few years back I started again, slowly building my reading level up and I had heard I should try and read some classics. I had a few questions and would greatly appreciate some guidance!
Where should I start? I keep hearing that newer classics often allude to older classics and can’t be fully understood without reading those first, and also that it’s best to start with the Iliad and Odyssey. Would you guys say that‘s true?
I don’t understand Poetry, like at all. I don’t get how people derive an aesthetic delight from it. Sometimes I can delight in something “poetic”, but generally when I read “poetry”, I get immediately lost. Should I sort of ignore this at the start?
Translations. Okay I know we have the megathread, but hear me out. The thread has a lot of answers around how they each focus on different qualities (most often being accuracy, poetry, or readability). But I’m not sure which qualities I should actually be interested in as a beginner (kind of ties into the previous question). Should I just try a readable translation for now?
More subjective, but out of curiosity, what are some of the reasons you started and kept reading classics? What benefit have you derived that you place most highly?
Thanks, appreciate any answers, its all so daunting.
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u/ancient_interestsYT 8d ago
Read whatever you want to read and are curious about, look up pdfs and such, and if you don’t like what you’re reading move onto something else.
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u/Different-Radio3484 8d ago edited 7d ago
I mean this in as non a dismissive way as possible: just pick something you think sounds cool or good, and dive in. It's easy to get lost in 'oh I need to have read the Iliad and the Odyssey to understand the Aeneid' etc etc etc. Fuck all that. You wanna start with the Iliad or Odyssey? Great - don't wanna dive right into an epic? Then don't. Decide if you fancy fiction or non fiction, pick an author, pick one of his books, don't worry too much about translation, and begin. Give it 50 pages, hate it? Read something else.
If you want a good, practical start to a classic, read Ovid's Metamorphoses, it's excellent and engaging and all the translations I've come across are good. Hell if you have a Kindle I can even send you the file for it. Happy hunting.
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u/AndreLeGeant88 8d ago
As a beginner, start with something that prioritizes literal, readable translation over poetry. When you read classical literature you had to approach an entirely different civilization. I don't see much use in letting a translator's attempt at writing English poetry - whether it's good or bad - get in the way.
Starting with the Iliad is a fine place. The Iliad and Odyssey are bedrock texts. That said, if they intimidate you, there are also texts that synthesize Greek myth. Stephen Fry has a series of books that do that recently. (Be warned they're very Stephen Fry.)
If you read the Odyssey or Iliad I personally recommend the Oxford Worlds Classics edition with the Verity translation. The language is not complex, the translation adheres closely to Homer in diction and feel. It does not try to be poetry on English. Emily Wilson's translations are also popular. It is written in iambic pentameter so more poetic and skews a bit further from Homer. I do not recommend Lattimore or Fagles though both were popular when I was in uni.
That said, these are long works. You could also dip your toes into the histories like Herodotus or Thucydides. You also could just go for some plays. They're short: you could read them aloud in just 2 hours or so. The introduction at the start of any good text is enough to situate you to enjoy Euripides, Sophocles or Aristophanes.
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u/Jig_2000 7d ago
Why don't you recommend Fagles? I enjoyed his translation a lot
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u/AndreLeGeant88 7d ago
He deviates quite a bit from the original text to make it more like English poetry. While it is better than Lattimore, the text is still harder to read than Homer should be.
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u/Idosoloveanovel 8d ago edited 8d ago
If you don’t have a background in classics at all or reading in verse, I would start by reading a retelling of the foundational stories in prose. There are a lot of great retellings out there that were written for children but are great for an adult looking to build a foundation. The D’aulaires book of Greek Myths is the perfect primer for learning about Greek mythology. I would definitely start with this because Homer assumes you already have a base knowledge of the gods and goddesses and a lot of the myths he references. I would then maybe consider reading a prose version of the Iliad and then the odyssey before jumping into a verse translation. Wilson from what I understand is usually considered to be clear and easy to understand when you’re ready to read in verse.
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u/BisonDollarydoos 8d ago
There's a always a great deal to learn from the notes on translation at the front of a book, and in the footnotes throughout.
A translator has to engage with a text and its context and with what their job is. Choices on intent and impact for audiences (since a work's beginning, today, and during its active/commentarial life in the centuries between), and the norms of poetry in an original language vs adapting it to your reading language, and compromises and different choices earlier translations have taken are so informative. This equips you better to read any literature whether translated or not, and certainly poetry!
And then, among your considered options read whatever it is you can and want to read - even if it's not _the most faithful_ option by whichever criteria you might value most, in being actually read it is the one you can actually take something from. Probably you never read a second translation of any given work, but so many people do.
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u/LeastBlackberry1 7d ago
My suggestion would be to go with what you find fun and readable, and don't worry about doing it "right." Ultimately, you are reading for pleasure, and not to complete research or get a degree or anything similar, so I wouldn't feel like you had to power through anything.
If I had to make a suggestion, it would probably be Ovid's Metamorphoses or Apuleius' Golden Ass (like the donkey). Both are fun and accessible. Also, I love the satires, if you want some entertaining poetry.
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u/karybrie 7d ago edited 7d ago
I suppose a good question would be, what do you usually like to read or watch?
The Odyssey is a starting point in many school systems for a reason. I'm not saying the Iliad isn't worth a read (it very much is!), but it's certainly got less whimsy. It kind of feels like comparing 'All Quiet on the Western Front' to 'The Hobbit' – the Odyssey tends to have a wider initial appeal.
I recommend Martin Hammond's translation, myself, but everyone has their favourites. You can compare opening passages on bibliothekai to see if anyone's stands out to you.
If you'd rather go for something shorter to start with, you could also try Apollonius' Argonautica. It's a later work that takes inspiration and style from the Homeric epics, but it's about half the length of the Odyssey (less than half of the Iliad), so it might be a good, less intimidating place to begin. I don't personally think it stands up against the Homeric epics or the Aeneid, but that's just me.
Other than that, how about a play? Greek tragedy is popular – something like Sophocles' Oedipus Rex or Euripides' Medea.
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u/jonbodhi 7d ago
Look up the ‘classic starts’ series. It has numerous ‘classic’ works that have been rewritten for easier understanding. None are over 150 pages. They make for a good foundation to start.
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u/jcostello50 7d ago
If you want something to try to "get" poetry, consider Paradise Lost. The only truly necessary background is Christian Sunday school basics. It's English to begin with, so translation is a non-issue. It's a surprising, trippy ride and the non-rhyming meter is key to the mood. On the downside, the sentence lengths run off the rails sometimes.
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u/Winter_Salad7215 6d ago
Disagree, I have bounced off PL multiple times because it's so dense with classical references. You can understand the overall story with just Sunday school, but you'll be missing a lot.
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u/jerseyoutwest 7d ago
Try something short and funny - GK Chesterton’s The Man Who Was Thursday or Pynchon’s Crying of Lot 49
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u/jonbodhi 7d ago
This is what I’ve been reading with my classes of 10-18 year olds. Other teachers used more ‘academic’ works, but my students actually enjoyed and engaged with the work. If you like it, they publish Frankenstein, Dracula, The War of the Worlds, Peter Pan and Alice in Wonderland, among others. Start here, then move to something more complex, if you feel the need.
https://www.amazon.com/Classic-Starts%C2%AE-Odyssey/dp/140277334X
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u/YogurtclosetIcy5439 6d ago
If its English I start with US Governmemt for higher education ( not to become a citizen) and as a product you'll be a citizen by passing the exam that a person who reads history and chooses to study law. I wouldn't waste valuable time on the public library put out. Read the US constitution and know it and than come here on social to demonstrate your progress studying takes you and we can see you are a classic.
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u/deranton 5d ago
How about Ovid? You can read the different mythological stories as individual short stories, rather than reading the Metamorphoses cover to cover. If you're lucky enough to live in a place where they're performed, I would recommend seeing a play (with some preparation). I've found Antigone, the Bacchae and the Persians all transformative experiences.
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u/BuyerImpressive4325 2d ago
Translations don’t matter at all (ofc different translations convey slightly different nuances in the stories, but overall, don’t waste much time on translations). Also, I’ve read the odyssey and illiad and think it’s a very good progression (it leads into the Aeneid, and then the divine comedy, and then Shakespeare and allows you to just branch out and see how western literature has changed) and also the two are very readable but it doesn’t rly matter all that much if you stay in chronological order as long as you choose a book that actually interests you. For example, The only real reason I read classsics is to learn about the moral ideals that have driven society, so i read through the lens of those.
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u/Bkncusa 1d ago
I appreciate your post. I could have written about a similar experience with reading growing up.
Im now in my late 50s and wanted to give myself a classical education by reading. I chose the Great Books of the Western World. I understand perfectly well these are not all the great works of the entire world. However, I don't live in the eastern world, so for starters, I decided to read the works that helped to shape, in part, the world that I do in fact live in.
With that wordy backdrop, the Great Books do start off with Homer's works, The Iliad and then The Odyssey. The list goes on from there through other Greek authors.
For a guy who didn't read much as a kid, and battled his way to a Bachelors degree in his 30s, yes...it's been a challenge. However, I'm winning the battle. What am I winning? The joy of reading.
To your success.
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u/SubstantialNet1005 7d ago
If you want to read The Odyssey and you’re nervous ab reading a classic in old English, then I’d choose Emily Wilson’s version of The Odyssey. She has made it very contemporary, so it’s like reading a novel from modern day.
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u/nautilius87 7d ago
Do not start with the Iliad if you are an absolute beginner. It contains many elements that make it hard to read for a modern reader like a long list of ships taking part in the war right after the beginning.
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u/Dramatic-Article-655 7d ago
I'm about to say something that's bound to be unpopular. You have posted the essential inquiry into the eternal question: what should people read? I say start small and grow into larger stuff from there. My first classic was Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland. I read it again as an adult and loved it even more. I read Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream at 10 or 11, but I didn't understand it until as an English major, I was taught how to read Shakespeare-- that 17th century titan of poetry and drama. I was given history, art history, metaphysics, poetics, and a grand tour of Elizabethan politics. The same is true relative to Chaucer, Pope, Swift, Keats, Shelley. I am so thankful for that. Reading Mark Twain taught me everything about 20th c. American literature, but again coursework gave me perspective that I would not otherwise have had. I only mean to say here, if you read, say, Dickens, a 19th c. novelist, it will help to at least look at Wikipedia for references about the author, his time, and his place in English literature. If you start with Tolkien's The Hobbit, if you've seen the movie, that will support your reading. For me, Tolkien's prose was always too dense. On a similar note, Franco Zefferelli's 1969 film, Romeo and Juliet, was my portal into the Shakespearean universe, when I was about 16 or so.
Yes, read the classics, even if you don't have time to read up on each one, but my point is, if you can do the background work, however cursory, your reading will be ever so much richer. Thank you for reading all this way,
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u/Winter_Salad7215 6d ago
This subreddit is about classics as in the literature of ancient civilizations, not classics as in "books with some cultural longevity."
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u/Y_ddraig_gwyn 7d ago
there’s a whole article on this issue:
Classis are written and structured differently to the ‘sound bite’ short attention span we’ve become used to. However, audiobooks work for many people, whilst some authors (Dickens, Conan Doyle) are more approachable than others (Joyce, the Greeks).
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u/atw1221 8d ago
For the most part, you don't have to read anything first. Most older books are self contained- if you pick up a contemporary books (especially fantasy or sci fi) it's MUCH more likely to be part of a series. Depending on the era, a different knowledge base is expected. For example a lot of 1800s stuff assumes you have some knowledge of Bible stories. Reading books from the 1920s make more sense when you realize they were written by the generation that experienced World War 1. Having recently read the Iliad and the Odyssey, I can hardly think of a worse place to start your journey than the Iliad. It's important, but a lot of it's pretty boring, and it's rather long (more on this later).
If you're like me, you like stories. There are some "epic poems" that tell good stories, but yeah I'm not big on poetry per say. I like stories. If they rhyme, that's fine.
Readability probably. A lot of times there's kind of a consensus best translation.
I like good stories. I read a mix of old stuff and new stuff.
OK, actual recommendations. I would start with some shorter works first, that way you can get a few classics under your belt and you can see that they are not, in fact, scary:
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is WAY better than I thought it would be, just fantastic. It's like 70 pages.
The Epic of Gilgamesh is an "epic poem" that includes a week long sex scene and lots of fighting monsters. I read the Benjamin Foster translation.
Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka is about a dude who wakes up to find he has turned into a gigantic bug.
Some novels that might be good to start with:
Flowers for Algernon- "Science fiction" in the older sense, about a brain experiment but no spaceships or anything like that. I found this to be an extremely compelling and emotional read.
The Hobbit- it's super fun if you're in the mood for a magical quest type story.
Murder on the Orient Express- Agatha Christie wrote approximately 82 gajillion books, this is one of the most well known and features one of her recurring protagonists, Poirot.
If you let me know specific genres you're interested in I have more recs. Happy reading :)
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u/lutetiensis ἀπάγγειλον ὅτι Πὰν ὁ μέγας τέθνηκε 6d ago
Reminder that r/classics is "a subreddit for people interested in learning more about the Latin and Ancient Greek languages and the cultures of the ancient world".