Something to share from GOODREADS.com - Daphnis and Chloe

Ravel's ballet version

La decouverte de Chloe
(All of the pictures here, I recommend clicking and
making them full-size -- they are so beautiful)

Daphnis and Chloe by Longus

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Books like this make me lament the difference in curriculum between what I studied in school in the US and what my friend studied in Italy in Lecce. At least I'm aware that I missed out, and so I have to fill in the gaps! The way I do so is through this: the Penguin Classics list I found on Wikipedia (see below for the links).

So, Daphnis and Chloe? This is exactly one of the kinds of books that make me glad to have this list to refer to when I choose the next book to read--especially since most of them are free and I can put them immediately on my Kindle.

And as an American, how would we have had exposure to this, unless some Hollywood film company decides to make a new iteration of it? Without that kind of leverage behind it, it's not something that would ever come again onto the Bestseller list even if it is better than the majority of those books there.

Le temple de Bacchus
The Temple of Bacchus

Last week I was listening to a great episode of RADIOLAB ''Words'' about how a language spontaneously grew among the deaf community in Nicaragua, and how the second generation had 10x more subtle words for the idea of ''to think''. This had the result that the 2nd generation scored many orders of magnitude better on a test that examined their ability to have strong interpersonal empathy. I.e., their ability to think from the point of view of another person was much stronger because their ''islands of information'' in their brain had more subtle bridges that could be more fully utilized, and so they functioned at a higher level (until the 2nd gen taught the 1st gen the new words, and then the scores normalized). To me, this says a lot about the influence and evolution of literature, even the use and function of it. Furthermore, larger vocabulary literally is empowering in a very concrete way, and that applies also to the way words are used and the kind of constantly evolving complexity in the spiritual field of the different worlds created by good literature. You can become more human by reading books. In the program, the man says the 27 years when he was deaf and languageless -- not even knowing until then that objects had names that people used -- were his dark years, and once he had the growing vocabulary, he was less and less able to remember what he felt then before his first teacher opened him up, and was never able to interact in the same way with his other languageless friends because he could no longer think in a way that was intelligible to his friends.

La chasse aux oiseaux
The bird chase

So with this in mind, I open a Penguin Classic and I wonder, how far removed am I from the way this writer understands his world? And its a tricky thing, especially in this instance. Longus wrote the amazing Daphnis and Chloe 1800 years ago. Which in Greek antiquity time, is the end of Greek antiquity time. Its surprising that it doesn't feel dated. It isn't overly elaborate, but neither is it extremely simplistic. It has great humor and wisdom, a false naivete that is so charming. The writer really seems to have thought about the arc of the story, when to bring or when to pull the emotional punches. Things are mentioned that have an impact dozens of pages later, there's a good economy of words, but the author also is able to elaborate when necessary rather than rushing the story. I read it in about 3 hours, and didn't once have my attention wander. I meant to read half last night and half today but I liked it enough that I kept going until 1230 AM.

L'hiver
Winter

It's worth your time! It easily rivaled any other classical text that I've come across. I've not really read a lot from this time, but have enjoyed nearly everything that I've come across. Other Antiquities classics that I love: Xenophon's Persian Journey, the Satyricon, the Heroides by Ovid, and Edith Hamilton's Mythology. Drama, I like : The Seven Against Thebes, Aristophanes and Aeschylus. People make a great to-do about Euripides, but I read a thing about him that was pretty scathing and have stayed away from him. Plus there are many good Shakespeare plays that incorporate these characters.

The illustrations are
Marc Chagall's litographs for his illustrated version of Daphnis et Chloe.

This is the intro text on GR from the Marc Chagall version :

In 1831 Goethe called Daphnis and Chloe 'a masterpiece ... in which Understanding, Art, and Taste appear at their highest point, and beside which the good Virgil retreats somewhat into the background ... One would do well to read it every year, to be instructed by it again and again, and to receive anew the impression of its great beauty. 'Touching yet humorous, naive and at the same time highly sophisticated, Daphnis and Chloe is the story of a shepherd boy and girl who fall desperately in love yet find themselves facing great obstacles, because in their passion they behave, as the author says, even more awkwardly 'than rams and ewes.'.

One last thought (me again):

With the Greeks, Romans, even all the way up to Rabelais and Cervantes, I heard my friend observe that, ''Our 'modernity', ... We're just now remembering the things that we forgot during the Middle Ages, it's taking us this long. The Judeo-Christian-Muslim tradition kicked into overdrive, the conquerors went to Egypt/Sudan and defaced all of the relics. But thankfully these great texts were saved from the fires in the giant library at Alexandria, and among the scholars of the Middle East and now we can go back and try to remember what we once had.

A defaced relief from Egypt / Nubia (Sudan)

Daphnis and Chloe I first heard about this from Kundera's Book of Laughter and Forgetting -- this was one of the few parts I liked from his book.

The mentioned segment from Radiolab's WORDS
''New Words, New World''



And a beautiful (!!), short film accompanying the episode:



Penguin Classics Complete:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Penguin_Classics

Penguin 20th Century/ Modern Classics (what they call Novecento in Italian):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Penguin_20th_Century/Modern_Classics

This is the TIME 1923-Present list that is very nice, too.
http://www.listal.com/list/times-100-greatest-novels-1923



View all my reviews


PS --
I tell people, my dream job would be as an opera singer, but I think I was made more for ballet.

And I tell young people :
''If you're interested in girls, don't join the football team; instead, sign up for classical dance! You just pick up girls for hours a day and spin them around. And get paid to do it, and you don't have to hit anyone with your face, noone's trying to hit you with their face, no stinky locker rooms (or at least, these ones are not so bad as theirs), and even better, there's only one of you and 50 of them, instead of a team full of guys that do the sport better than you...'' xD

Because I got the feet.

''Most dancers try to be able to do that for years, and never get them.'' a former pro dancer told me last spring in Ourzazate.

Just doing what comes naturally // I could have been a contender.