#classical lit

[soracities]

in love with these fragmented portions of a Sumerian lullaby

[the-portrait-of-seraph]

Another week I probably won't survive and the author who will get me through it.

I've been revisiting the work of Dostoevsky! It's been especially fun after reading a few biographies and bibliographies on him; I love these little things about reading!

Another book I'd like to recommend (not pictured) is The Sinner and The Saint by Kevin Birmingham! Wonderful biography and account of the murder that inspired Crime and Punishment.

Hope everyone has been doing well! Senior year of high school certainly hasn't been kind to me, but we can handle that.

[therainbowwillow]

Seeing people remain interested in literature and art created hundreds of years ago makes me so happy. There is still fanart for the Canterbury Tales. There are recent fanfictions for most of Shakespeare’s plays (hell, I’ve written some myself!) We still love these characters, flaws and all. We still see ourselves in them. That overwhelms me with joy.

[cleanbutsalty]

Jekyll isn’t feeling too good

[blue-thief]

cw: mentions of sa and csa

people who claim that no longer human is misogynistic kinda just. completely missed the entire point of women's role in the novel. like, it's far from a groundbreaking piece of feminist literature or anything, but to claim that yozo and his relationship with women is inherently disgusting is just... not 100% correct.

yozo felt as though tsuneko was the only other person in the world who felt as sad as him. yozo abandoned shizuko and shigeko because he felt like his presence in their lives was disrupting their happiness because shigeko said she wished her real dad would come back. though most of the criticism probably comes from yozo's marriage to yoshiko* because of how he referred to her as having some purity and innocence due to her virginity.

like yeah, that actually does sound genuinely gross and makes it seem as though he's infantilizing her, and if i ever saw something along those lines in literally any other context, i would be deeply concerned. but the thing is, there is a point to yozo's fascination with her innocence, as well as his "disinterest" in her after it was taken away.

yozo is fascinated with yoshiko's innocence and overly trusting nature because he is the exact opposite. he lost his innocence and his ability to trust in people, at least partially, due to the fact that he was a victim of CSA.

so, when yoshiko was SA'd, he did nothing to stop it. many people criticize him for this point exactly, but the passages following show how much emotional distress the event causes him. the last paragraph of the book is,

this year, i am twenty-seven. my hair has become much greyer. most people would take me for over forty.

and on the same page as yozo witnessing the crime against yoshiko,

my hair turned prematurely grey from that night.

the rest of the book is all about the guilt and despair yozo feels for not being able to defend yoshiko from that situation. but why did he do nothing? because after being confronted with a situation that made him feel powerless as a child made him feel powerless as an adult.

idk where i'm going with this honestly. this was just supposed to be a rant so that's why it feels so incoherent and the first paragraph isn't structured at all, but somewhere along the way, this started to take on elements of an actual well-thought analysis.

though i suppose i can say that the way no longer human was written can be summed up by the paragraph about yozo's perception of prostitution. "i could never think of prostitutes as human beings or even women" sounds HORRIBLE in literally any other context, but in the context of no longer human, it actually makes sense.

i could never think of prostitutes as human beings or even as women. they seemed more like imbeciles or lunatics. but in their arms i felt absolute security. i could sleep soundly. it was pathetic how utterly devoid of greed they really were. and perhaps they felt for me something like an affinity for their kind, these prostitutes always showed me a natural friendliness stripped of high-pressure salesmanship, for someone who might never come again. some nights i these imbecile, lunatic prostitutes with the halo of mary.

(also partially off-topic, but yozo's relationship with prostitutes early on in the book was his own way of reclaiming his sexuality)

i suppose that the point is that context matters, especially in the case of no longer human. people's criticisms of this novel just seem to simply out of poor reading comprehension (this is why i was mad that no longer human is now a "booktok" book. people on booktok just seem to have very poor reading comprehension skills overall, and i'll probably rant about that on its own some other time).

*an actual valid criticism of yozo and yoshiko's relationship would be the fact that yoshiko was only seventeen and yozo was in his twenties. then again, i don't know what the age of consent laws in japan were like at the time

[literary-prometheus]

day #5 'The whole thing' - Here it is, as promised. Hope you liked it and that we will see each other very soon over other gothic lit fanarts!

[moo-the-monster]

listening to the wuthering heights audiobook feels like listening to a 15 hour long voice note from a friend spilling all the tea on their weird landlord

[antiquitiesnprose]

I find myself in the fragile beauty of Sibyl Vane, the hysteria of art of Victoria Page, and the reckless passion of Anna Karenina.

For that I worry what might become of me.

[antitheticaldreamgirl16]

i love how in the banquet scene lady macbeth is like “my husband is going insane? ok but not in front of the guests?” like he really starts hallucinating the ghost of the guy he just murdered and she’s like “babe stop you’re making the guests nervous”

[ieatwormsandtheytasteverygood]

did an art. ignore any mistakes and call them intentional idc

[kiarazuri]

I printed out all 86 of the Orphic Hymns and the first five books of the Dionysiaca. I couldn’t get through the Iliad (i was so disappointed when I found out it isn’t the story of the whole war 💀 i wish more of the Epic Cycle survived… i wanna read the Telegony so bad) but hopefully I can get through this easier 🥰

[kunikidas-lost-glasses]

There is a Frankenstein Weekly and nobody told me???????

[the-portrait-of-seraph]

It's been a while, here's what I've been up to:

So, two words, college applications. I've been preparing for applications next semester, which means I have to take allll my APs and other things, as well as prepare for my school play. I know I should be managing my time better, but hey, it is what it is.

They dropped a new Dazai translation to the set and I couldn't resist buying it. Very very excited to start it, I'll try to finish and give a review by the end of this week! The translator isn't Keene, but I have my expectations hehe

The Dazai Set is now complete??? I don't know if New Directions will add more, but if there are others to collect, just know I will have already bought them haha

Hope all of you have been doing well!

[therainbowwillow]

The kids at summer camp have roped me into telling them “scary stories” at lunchtime. This has been going on for weeks, and I’m not gonna lie, I don’t have all that much content since horror *really* isn’t my genre.

So on the last day of camp, I ended up surrounded by all campers, demanding stories. I’m thinking *what’s a story I already know that has enough ghosts and sword fights to pass off as “scary” to an audience of elementry school kids?* The answer? Hamlet. And oh my god, I’ve never seen a more dedicated audience. I simplified the play, made it a little more kid friendly, focused more on the ghosts and sword fights than the questions of human mortality, and these kids were leaping out of their seats. (Surprise, when you frame classic lit like a ghost story, everyone loves it.)

I did voices for all the characters, had a ton of fun and finished it off by asking the kids some of those big moral questions the play asks. Who is the good guy? Our answer, nobody. This was surprising because most stories have a good guy and a bad guy, but in real life, that’s not always true. Claudius is the bad-bad guy because he killed a guy on purpose. Hamlet is also not a good guy because he killed a guy on accident. If there are no good guys and no bad guys, is it still a good story? Yes!!

We ran out of time for more long stories, so everyone got a turn to tell a story about their pets or their parents or whatever else they could come up with and it was a great time. God, I’m gonna miss those kids. Nothing like some good ‘ol Shakespearean ghost stories to finish out a summer.