Reading “classic” novels in high school seems a waste. I’d not yet had the life experience - or introspection - required to at all grasp what the authors were saying. Classics are deemed so because they capture the human experience; I hadn’t enough years to gather experience.
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Boy do I agree! My high school had me read tons of heavy 18th/19th century classics, and I enjoyed but totally didn't "get" them. I've been working my way back through the classics in the last few years and finding myself just enraptured.
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Anna Karenina is a good example. I missed most of the thematic content as a teenager. The restless and relentless hedonic treadmill! The ironic treatment of pastoral romanticization! Then on an object level, I lacked historical background to understand lots, e.g. serf dynamics
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But maybe more deeply: I'd never been in love! Can you "get" Anna Karenina without ever having been in love?!
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I so resonate! And to the relentless hedonic treadmill - I remember discussing this as a “theme” in class and not understanding it _at all_ at the time. And now...I totally get it.
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Can a teenager grok dukkha? Dubious! I think I only started to understand once I strived so hard for years to achieve/acquire something, only then to have some new grasping sensation arise…
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