And there definitely are loathsome books and revolting writers but perhaps it's best to adopt the old school inspector's motto of mol mus urrain dhuit is cron nas lugha dhuit. De do bheachd Ennison. You catch more flies with mil than with fionn-ghearr.
I'm currently reading to some of S.Beckett's poems and find them very difficult!
I wouldn't say War and Peace is a difficult text. It's boring, but it's not difficult. I read and finished it because I honestly thought I'd love it.
What I consider difficult text is The Divine Comedy, or Shakespeare, some versions of Quijote, of which I have three, one of them in Spanish. Perhaps also anything having to do with war... Les Mis, A tale of two Cities to me was like reading Sanskrit. I just have a mental block about it.
As for War and Peace I have not seriously taken in consideration the possibility of reading it as of yet, so I don't know.Originally Posted by LaMaga
But Dante's Comedy, Shakespeare's plays(of which I've only read four) and the Quijote don't seem so difficult to me! It depends on hoy wou define "difficult": of course they are gigantic works and raise too many questions for one to summarize them - especially shakespeare - but they are at least very readable.
Don Quijote is a very fluent reading, and a very funny one. What's to be said difficult are the themes Cervantes decided to deal with, and Cervantes' authorial's position. Whereas one always feels comfortable with Dante's "own" beliefs - indipendently if you share them to some degree or not -, one cannot say for sure what Cervantes really thought about his characters and how it differs from what he wanted the reader to believe in.
And for Shakespeare the problem becomes much bigger.
Anyway, although all three are not easy reading, they can still be readen to various degrees, making them universally appreciable, which cannot be said of the likes of Joyce, eg.
I would instead say the works of the three of them are inexhaustible sources of analysis and are some of the most definitive piece of art ever created by men, but they're still approachable by everyone with enough competence.
Of course there's a difference if you are Auerbach or an inexpert reader, so that, for example, a genius like Samuel Beckett spent his life reading Dante's Comedy, but still..
Last edited by Corona; 12-12-2012 at 05:05 AM.
You might try some of Cacian's, they make Beckett look like A.A. Milne.
I got a feeling about political correctness. I hate it. It causes us to lie silently instead of saying what we think. Hal Holbrook
"L'art de la statistique est de tirer des conclusions erronèes a partir de chiffres exacts."
Napoléon Bonaparte
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