The Classical Way To Read Well

How To Read Great Literature

Reading: we all do it, to different extents, in different forms, for different purposes, and with different results. If this is true, then we are all ‘readers’ in the simplest sense, but whom among us are ‘great’ readers? Whom among us read well? If we are able to read well as opposed to poorly, by implication there must be a purpose to reading well instead of poorly, which brings us to the literature itself. Why do we read what we read, and why should we read it well? Maybe we read fantasy novels as a means for escapism; maybe reading fantasy leads to the eclipse of our own being, and maybe through it we escape our world of troubles, briefly. Maybe we devour sickly-sweet Amish Romance novels, because the romance in our own lives is twisted; maybe we seek pure and simple love through the wholesome community found in this genre. Perhaps we have learned how to read these books as best they can be read. But what about the Great Books, those tales that have been passed down for generations for the sake of their truth, beauty, and profundity? How do we read the classics well?

I’ve been on a journey to discover the answer to this question for over five years, but only recently did I finally understand the key to extracting the most wisdom and pleasure out of the greatest books of all time - and it's not about extraction, at all. We don’t read classic literature for our own sake, but for its sake. We pick up a classic and we listen, we observe, we drink in and taste and swallow and wonder, and we let ourselves grow through this process. We let ourselves be changed by that which has fallen through time, unchanged, into our hands.

For those of us who learn sharply, I’ll break down this message more succinctly, into two main points.

Point, the First

Firstly, all of us —even the enthusiasts, experts, and teachers among us— must approach the Great Books as students. Accept that in your first meeting with a work of classic literature you will only scratch its surface lightly. Free yourself from the expectation that you must understand everything about the work, that you must get it, that you must love it, and that you must have something clever to say at the end of it. Reading the classics is not about us. We do not read to offer others a certain impression of ourselves. Reading classically is about yielding and submission to the author and to the work itself. We ought to thirst to understand the author and to hear what they are telling the world. We ought to approach them without judgement or condemnation, seeking to know and understand them in their own time. We ought to devour their perspective and leave our own at the door. We must recognize our own ignorance in order to be wise, and to read wisely, we must submit.

An Impression On A Summer Night

Learning to read well is like learning to be alone without being lonely. Both are skills that I desperately need to sharpen. Here is how they are the same. I realised on a summer night, on which my husband embarked on a canoe trip with a buddy, that I avoid being alone. I also discovered that it is only when I am alone that I can truly be present with the world. Only then am I able to empty my mind of all its clutter. As I walked through the park alone that night, I listened. I heard the water and the wind and the birds and the train coming over the rusting bridge, and I listened to them. I didn’t just hear them - I listened to them. Such was only possible, I found, because I was alone, with no-one’s needs to attend to but the earth’s. My focus was entirely on the water and the wind and the birds and the train then. I felt spiritually close to them, and suddenly I was the ‘Wanderer above a Sea of Fog,’ to reference Caspar David Friedrich’s famous painting. I understood the Romantic poets and their quest to be one with the natural world. This is how we ought to read. We need to be one with the book in our hands. We need to be emptied of all that might steal our attention away from it. We ought to be in solitude with it, for true intimacy can only be found in the solitude of two. And then, we must listen to her. We don’t just hear her as our eyes gloss over her pages, but we listen to her. We are hers.

There is a difference between being alone and loneliness. Being alone is a state of affairs, a state of being, a fact. Loneliness is an emotion, and it has nothing to do with being alone. We all know that we can be surrounded by people and still be lonely. Loneliness has to do with connection, or the lack of it. In this light, I can be alone in nature, feeling the presence of God or a lost loved one, or I can be alone in a quiet place with a Great Book, and yet be less lonely than if I were at a party of acquaintances. The key is connection. Are we connected to our surroundings? Are we connected to God? And are we connected to the book in our hands? These connections make all the difference.

Point, the Second

My second point, then, is connection and return. If we experience that sublime intimacy with a person or a place, are we not drawn to return to it? Are we not even desperate to make that return? The same will happen with the Great Books, if we have listened to them properly. We will ache to pick them up again. We will treasure them on our shelves and in our hands and return to them year after year, opening them with expectation and receiving once again the joys and sorrows they have added to our consciousness. 

Read well, my friends.

“We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.”

T.S. Eliot