Editor’s note: This week at Current is Summer Books Week. Today begins five days of book reviews and conversations from the magazine, but also, starting with the piece below, on this blog! Why do we need a books week? Put simply, a week of book-centered conversations in a world of sorrow and anxiety represents a respite of beauty, a reset, and a reminder of the joys of the intellectual life. Zena Hitz wrote eloquently about getting Lost in Thought. Join us as we do likewise, just a little bit.
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I recently purchased a complete set of the Penguin Little Black Classics books (80 books). They are short books, usually just under 60 pages, and the titles are from all around the world, in all different time periods, representing all different kinds of writing.
Penguin put the collection together in 2015 to celebrate their 80th birthday. According to them, this series: “showcases the many wonderful and varied writers in Penguin Black Classics. From India to Greece, Denmark to Iran, and not forgetting Britain, this assortment of books will transport readers back in time to the furthest corners of the globe. With a choice of fiction, poetry, essays and maxims, by the likes of Chekhov, Balzac, Ovid, Austen, Sappho and Dante, it won’t be difficult to find a book to suit your mood.
Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of the Penguin Classics list – from drama to poetry, from fiction to history, with books taken from around the world and across numerous centuries.”
My plan is to work through them and share some thoughts, as an occasional series. I will read them in order, 1-80. I hope to reflect upon individual works. I also hope to reflect upon what it is that we hope to unlock by reading broadly, across time and geography. People who are ambitious readers are after more than simply enjoyment. What is it we think we will know when we have read many books, maybe even as many as we can? Who is it we think we will be after all that reading? What is it that one can get from the Penguin Little Black Classics, in particular?
Little Black Classic No.1 is Giovanni Boccaccio, Mrs Rosie and the Priest. These 54 pages are excerpts from The Decameron, written in the fourteenth century. The four stories are “Andreuccio’s da Perugia’s Neapolitan adventures,” “Ricciardo da Chinzica loses his wife,” “Mrs Rosie and the Priest,” and “Patient Griselda.” Much like Canterbury Tales, The Decameron has all kinds of stories—many of them involving trickery, infidelity, and marriages. Each of these tales has a moral, sometimes a very explicit moral. “A fool and his money are soon parted” in Andreuccio’s adventure. But these tales are also entertaining, full of humor and plot twists and easily imaginable characters. Andreuccio manages to come out more ahead than you’d predict. These stories put the humanity of humans on full display—our earthiness, our greed, our cleverness, our innocence, and our persistence. And these stories offer some warnings about men, about women, and about society. If you read them well, you should be better equipped to laugh at the fools than to be one.
You might expect Penguin to offer their classics in chronological order, but they do not. No.2 is As kingfishers catch fire by Gerard Manley Hopkins. It includes 31 poems and some excerpts from Hopkins’s journals. If Boccaccio made us laugh at the baser side of human nature, Hopkins helps us to see the grandeur of nature itself and in it the reflection of the grandeur of God. As he writes, “The world is charged with the grandeur of God./It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;/It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil.” The excerpts from Hopkins’s journals show how much his spirit of appreciation was every day and not only in the poetry. On April 22, 1871, he wrote “But such a lovely damasking in the sky as today I never felt before.” Such a vision takes us to a higher plane.
Together the first two books in the series show us the two sides of human nature. The back of No.1 describes its contents: “Bawdy tales of pimps, cuckolds, lovers and clever women from the fourteenth-century Florentine masterpiece The Decameron.” In contrast to that earthiness is No.2, described by Penguin thus: “Considered unpublishable in his lifetime, the Victorian priest’s groundbreaking, experimental verse on nature’s glory and despair.” Here we have a priest, who sees beauty in nature and elevates our perspective. One book helps us to laugh at humans, the other to reflect on God.
Already in the first two books, the Little Black Classics also teach something about the Western tradition. The Decameron was a “masterpiece” from the beginning. Chaucer copied Griselda’s tale in The Canterbury Tales. Hopkins was “unpublishable” in his lifetime. He died in 1889 and his poems were first published in 1918. But today, people who know poetry know about Gerard Manley Hopkins. Here is the lesson. It is not always immediately apparent which books and authors will have an impact. But it is also not necessarily true that the popular will not be powerful cultural influences. People still read and enjoy The Decameron.
Both authors’ works demonstrate an ability to observe the world around them. Boccaccio’s succeeds because of his ability to portray characters with realistic behaviors and desires. He had an understanding of society and of humor. Hopkins’s poetry reflects his intense observation of the natural world around him. He had an appreciation for trees and birds and sunset and winds coupled with a detailed and intricate understanding of those things. He didn’t just sit and stare from his window, he knew about bluebell stalks and what bluebells felt like in the hand.
From these first two books alone, we can make some observations about what the series might have to teach us. First, to best understand and engage the world around us, we should see both sides of human nature and we should read books that look at the world from more than one angle. Second, to appreciate the world around us or to contribute to the literature of it ourselves, we should we walking around with open eyes. We should take it all in.