What Makes a Classic?

At this point in this course, you should be familiar enough with the short canon to begin to think about curating your own collection of classics. A good example of this is the list of classics put together by Italo Calvino as part of a collection of his essays called, "Why Read the Classics?" The book's jacket describes Calvino and his book this way:

"Italo Calvino was not only a prolific master of fiction, he was also an uncanny reader of literature, a keen critic of astonishing range. 'Why Read the Classics?' is the most comprehensive collection of Calvino's literary criticism available in English, accounting for the enduring importance to our lives of crucial writers of the Western canon. Here—spanning more than two millennia, from antiquity to postmodernism—are thirty-six immediately relevant, elegantly written, accessible ruminations on the writers, poets, and scientists who meant most to Calvino at different stages of his life. Following the title essay, which explores fourteen definitions of 'the classic,' Calvino offers writings that are at once critical appraisals and personal appreciations of, among others, Homer, Xenophon, Ovid, Pliny, Nezami, Ariosto, Cardano, Galileo, Defoe, Voltaire, Diderot, Ortes, Stendhal, Balzac, Dickens, Flaubert, Tolstoy, Twain, Henry James, Stevenson, Conrad, Pasternak, Gadda, Montale, Hemingway, Ponge, Borges, and Queneau. At a time when the Western canon and the very notion of 'literary greatness' have come under increasing disparagement by the vanguard of so-called multiculturalism, 'Why Read the Classics?' gives us an inspiring corrective."

Calvino's fourteen definitions of a classic may help you pick and choose the authors and texts in your own personal canon of literature. Here's a short summary of the definitions that Calvino applies to the term:

• 1. A text that is often reread by people who consider themselves well-read, but may not have been read by younger people or those who have not yet encountered it.
• 2. A text that is treasured by those who have read and loved it, but also by those who have the luck to read it for the first time in the best conditions to enjoy it.
• 3. A text that exerts a unique influence on a person, both when it is remembered and when it is hidden in the folds of memory.
• 4. A text where every rereading is as much a voyage of discovery as the first reading.
• 5. A text so much a part of culture that every reading is in fact a rereading.
• 6. A text that is always revealing new things to its readers, even when they read it multiple times.
• 7. A text that has come down to us bearing the traces of previous readings, and bringing with it the traces it has left on culture, language, and customs.
• 8. A text that allows us to discover something we already knew, but didn't realize the author said first.
• 9. A text that the reader finds to be new, fresh and unexpected upon reading, even though the reader thought they knew it from hearing it talked about.
• 10. A text that presents a universe of ideas that one can freely engage with, whether through agreement or disagreement.
• 11. A text with an author that you cannot feel indifferent to and who helps you define yourself in relation to his or her ideas, even if through dispute.
• 12. A text that has a place in the family tree of great ideas, and is recognized as such by its readers.
• 13. A text that puts the concerns of the present moment into perspective, making them seem less important in comparison to the timeless ideas and insights presented in the book.
• 14. A text that persists as a soundtrack in the background of life, even when the most incompatible, momentary, and modern concerns require your immediate attention.

Keep in mind, these are just summary definitions, which Calvino describes more poetically and in more detail in his essay "Why Read the Classics?" which is of the same name as his book "Why Read the Classics?"

Start a personal literary canon:

Have you read any texts that fulfill some or all of Calvino's definitions? If so, then add them to your personal literary canon.