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C. E. M. Joad quote - Jona Lendering - 01-30-2010
C. E. M. Joad was a British philosopher who became famous because he could explain important questions to a large audience. I just read an intrigueing remark, but unfortunately, it's been translated, which makes it hard to find it back. The English original may have been something like "Classical literature is good but not half as good as ours".
An interesting statement, and one I can sympathize with, especially if I'm in a pub with classicists. Does anyone recognize Joad's original words? Does anyone know the source?
Re: C. E. M. Joad quote - MARCvSVIBIvSMAvRINvS - 01-30-2010
Sadly, no...
However a pub full of classicists makes me think of the famous Epictetus oneliner,
He who drinks too much wine, will get drunk.
Just love those Stoics.....
M.VIB.M.
Re: C. E. M. Joad quote - Jona Lendering - 01-30-2010
Quote:He who drinks too much wine, will get drunk.It takes a long life of philosophical contemplation to understand how profound these words are! It reminds me of the line by Dutch writer Gerard Reve, "Imagine that there were no hangovers, than things would be even worse…"
Re: C. E. M. Joad quote - D B Campbell - 01-30-2010
Quote:Does anyone recognize Joad's original words? Does anyone know the source?I cannot claim any particular familiarity with C.E.M. Joad, but (according to Google books), the quote is:
"People say it is important to be able to read Latin and Greek prose and poetry in the original. A lot of snobbish nonsense! Classical literature is good, but it isn't half as good as ours."
(... and I fancy that Mr Joad would've called himself an English philosopher.)
Re: C. E. M. Joad quote - Jona Lendering - 01-30-2010
Quote:"People say it is important to be able to read Latin and Greek prose and poetry in the original. A lot of snobbish nonsense! Classical literature is good, but it isn't half as good as ours."Thanks! Pity that he did not explain why our literature is better. I happen to agree - several aspects of literature are not a matter of subjective taste but can be spoken about pretty objectively - but would have liked to know what Joad thought about it.
Quote:(... and I fancy that Mr Joad would've called himself an English philosopher.):roll: :wink:
Re: C. E. M. Joad quote - MARCvSVIBIvSMAvRINvS - 01-30-2010
As a well known Scottish Philosopher once said.....
Its all a wee bit o' Blether anyway........
M.VIB.M.
Re: C. E. M. Joad quote - Epictetus - 01-30-2010
That is a good quote, and I am inclined to agree. Perhaps it is true simply because literature is studied more now. Other modes of communication were emphasised more in antiquity, such as public speaking. (What would Cicero think of our orators today? :wink: )
Re: C. E. M. Joad quote - Jona Lendering - 01-30-2010
Quote:That is a good quote, and I am inclined to agree. Perhaps it is true simply because literature is studied more now.I'm taking a slightly different track. Today, everyone can read, and books are cheap. Literacy is more widespread and those who read can read more. Consequently, they can more easily recognize clichés, stock phrases, and so on. If you call that "study", we agree.
At the same time, if you prefer a narrower definition, you're also right. Writers can benefit from scholars studying literature, and better recognize -for example- shifts of perspective. No one would write, like the author of the Acts of the Apostles, part of his story in the third person singular, part in the first person plural, and return to the third singular, without decent explanation.
Or, to take another improvement: words are now chosen that suit the hero. A child in a modern book speaks childish language; not so Virgil's Ascanius.
Re: C. E. M. Joad quote - SigniferOne - 04-09-2010
Nevertheless Jona, we can pick at Virgil all we want, but who in in our last 500 years has been able to be a better poet? We can try to raise up Milton, Tasso, Ariosto to the standard, but the project is hopeless, the comparisons have already all been made and none of those authors is able to rise up to the same stature as he. The same is true of other authors, like Livy, with whose magnitude, grandeur, scope of history hardly a modern historian can stand an even close comparison; perhaps only Gibbon; certainly none of the German historians that I'm aware of, even the legendary ones like Niebuhr or Mommsen. Same applies even more to somebody like Cicero, who appeared to be a not a one-sided but a universal genius. One feels we could restart the contest between the Ancients and Moderns right here!
Re: C. E. M. Joad quote - Rumo - 04-09-2010
Quote:Nevertheless Jona, we can pick at Virgil all we want, but who in in our last 500 years has been able to be a better poet? We can try to raise up Milton, Tasso, Ariosto to the standard, but the project is hopeless, the comparisons have already all been made and none of those authors is able to rise up to the same stature as he.
Many if you ask me, but not so much in English (I guess there's a matter of language and taste: I know poems I like to hear in languages like French, Russian - even when I don't understand them completely :oops: :lol: ).
Also don't forget poetry is different in our times, just think of the emphasis on rhyme.
Re: C. E. M. Joad quote - caiusbeerquitius - 04-09-2010
Hmmm. I really wonder what makes us think about the "quality" of literature. Literature IS. Whether it is "good" or "bad", "better" or "worse" is highly subjective, since it is simply a matter of taste. One could say "I like this one better than the other one", but saying "This is better than that" is a very stupid thing to do.
It´s a bit like playing four trumps: Whoa, my Nietzsche´s "Wille zur Macht" tops your Charles Dicken´s "Oliver Twist", I have a syntax complexity value of 10, a moral message value of 10 and a Philosophy Rating of 10. Owned!
Re: C. E. M. Joad quote - SigniferOne - 04-09-2010
Quote:Hmmm. I really wonder what makes us think about the "quality" of literature. Literature IS. Whether it is "good" or "bad", "better" or "worse" is highly subjective, since it is simply a matter of taste. One could say "I like this one better than the other one", but saying "This is better than that" is a very stupid thing to do.
It´s a bit like playing four trumps: Whoa, my Nietzsche´s "Wille zur Macht" tops your Charles Dicken´s "Oliver Twist", I have a syntax complexity value of 10, a moral message value of 10 and a Philosophy Rating of 10. Owned!
Yes but the absence of such a narrow grading scale does not remove the ability to compare literatures as wholes. For instance one book can sound more dignified than another, can impress mighty emotions or be stale and listless, can deal with higher, more noble, or petty themes etc. There are certain objective criteria for measurement of literature. Now just because book A sounds more emotional and more dignified than book B does not mean that you are supposed to like it (our subjective responses may all be different). I'm just saying that this positive reaction has had a more numerical reaction among the Western public. Virgil's whole 12 books used to be memorized by heart at Latin secondary schools; I can't think of any modern poet that has met with as much numerical approval, or has been granted such distinctions.
Re: C. E. M. Joad quote - caiusbeerquitius - 04-09-2010
Quote:Virgil's whole 12 books used to be memorized by heart at Latin secondary schoolsYes, but if you pop the "cui bono" question, it may be so because of completely other reasons than its subjective quality.
Quote: For instance one book can sound more dignified than another, can impress mighty emotions or be stale and listless, can deal with higher, more noble, or petty themes etc. There are certain objective criteria for measurement of literature.But IMO none of those you listed actually belongs to the category "objective".
Re: C. E. M. Joad quote - caiusbeerquitius - 04-09-2010
Quote:I can't think of any modern poet that has met with as much numerical approval, or has been granted such distinctions.Jim Morrison?
Re: C. E. M. Joad quote - SigniferOne - 04-09-2010
Quote:Yes, but if you pop the "cui bono" question, it may be so because of completely other reasons than its subjective quality.If I can pop the "cui bono" question, then surely the the classicists and the learned elite of Europe who insisted on pedagogical memorization of Virgil could ask it too. And if they made kids memorize 12,000 lines of verbatim ancient Latin text which in truth they saw as of just regular quality, then one can posit a serious case of schizophrenia among the European literate elite for the last several centuries.
But I'm being facetious of course, there are tons of authors which mention Virgil as being better than what Europe had come up with so far. For example a 17th century French critic Rene Rapin had a famous series of comparison between Roman and Greek authors (e.g. Virgil and Homer), because he thought that nothing modern could be found in comparison. The very fact that I mentioned Ariosto, Tasso and Milton (the greatest modern epic poets), is because of precisely such a comparison in an 18th century work of criticism, to a resounding result against them.