This post continues the series begun with this essay on Penguin Little Black Classics, number 1-2.
The Penguin Little Black Classics are an excellent read. Each short book is entertaining and, at mid-50 pages, just long enough to give you something without giving you too much. In most cases, they are excerpts of larger works, though sometimes they are essays. Books three through five are The Saga of Gunnlaug Serpent-tongue, On Murder Considered as one of the Fine Arts by Thomas De Quincey, and Aphorisms on Love and Hate by Friedrich Nietzsche.
No.3, The Saga of Gunnlaug Serpent-tongue, is, as you might suspect, an Icelandic saga. Gunnlaug is a talented poet and warrior whose tongue and strong will sometimes get him into trouble. Norse sagas can be very good at portraying difficult men and the combination of skill and irksomeness that they can combine. Grettir’s Saga is another example.
Apart from the plot and characters, The Saga of Gunnlaug Serpent-tongue offers an interesting perspective from a different time and place. Gunnlaug may be a bit of a Serpent-tongue, but he is widely esteemed and rewarded for his poetry. Throughout the story we see that the best warriors are also excellent poets and are seen as such. These days we talk a lot about the division between science and the arts, but the gap between military science or physical prowess and the arts is perhaps even greater. This saga allows us to consider what reintegrating poetry and power might do for masculinity and culture generally.
No.4, On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts by Thomas De Quincey, is much like Jonathan Swift’s “Modest Proposal.” Even the essay itself includes the suggestion that this might be best taken not too seriously. The basic idea is that there is a club of gentlemen who study and appreciate murder as an art form. They rate and rank those that have occurred and consider what might make a truly excellent example of murder. This short piece of writing is an alleged speech given to the club, copied down and presented for the reader.
On Murder is entertaining in a few different ways. The ways that murder and its evaluation are presented is humorous. De Quincey also uses the piece as an opportunity to criticize quite a few philosophers, not limited to Kant and Locke. His jokes about philosophers will be appreciated by those familiar with those figures. The essay is also entertaining in the way that it presents being an aficionado, which emphasizes our ability to separate our morality and our appreciation of things—something we probably have not quite done with murder but most likely have done with other things.
No.5, Aphorisms on Love and Hate by Friedrich Nietzsche, is a collection of aphorisms and a little advocacy for the form of aphorisms generally. No.5 opens with Nietzsche complaining about the lack of appreciation for “psychological observation” and aphorisms in his time, suggesting that people no longer read enough La Rochefoucauld. Nietzsche argues that observing humans is both good and readily available entertainment and opportunity for philosophical reflection. The aphorisms in this book engage the ideas of love and hate, but also friendship, cruelty, and morality, among other things.
Nietzsche is not wrong that aphorisms do not seem as popular as they once did. In the United States, Benjamin Franklin’s work was probably the peak of American aphorisms. A number of nineteenth century authors stand out as aphorists, including Thoreau and Emerson, but the nearer we get to the present they seem to taper off. Will Rogers offered up quite a few and you might want to credit Yogi Berra, but the aphorism as a literary form and small piece of philosophical reflection seems more out of style than in.
Books 3-5 in this series certainly achieve part of what this collection is intended to showcase—chronological range. Gunnlaug the Serpent-tongue dates to the thirteenth century. Nietzsche died in 1900. Though Nietzsche and Gunnlaug were both difficult men in their own way, these books also showcase the thematic range of the series—from sagas to short sayings, from humor to philosophy, from the rise of Christianity to the decline of Christianity. You might not be able to recreate Western history from the Penguin Little Black Classics series, but you can certainly see a wide range of topics and approaches to how one ought to view and live life that have been part of the Western tradition.