It remains no doubt that the classic literary pieces such as novels, poems, plays, and stories have survived generation after generation and are yet the most read of all genres. Through the years the classics have provided us with beautiful insights into how the world today became what it is. In the times where technology has held us tight in its grip, the classics never fail to offer an escape from the harsh reality we are living in. Undoubtedly, mankind has seen the worst with the ongoing pandemic and has made us prisoners to the four walls that we are left to survive in, the classics make us take a break from the accelerated pace of life that we are going through.
Cultures, heritages, and wisdom has reached us only through the words on the pages on Aeneid, Hard Times, Middlemarch and what not! The shallowness of today’s life finds its break in the beauty of Classical literature. It sings a pleasing song to our ears, one that we do not want to stop. The meaningful plays of Shakespeare and the literal presentations in the works of Charles Dickens impart a sense to our generation, a sense of wanting to experience calmness and an ability to think deeply, in this world where likes and comments are done within a jiffy of seconds. The small seconds of happiness we get by looking at our phone screens, only to break the monotony of the day, are nothing in comparison to the concentration and reflection abilities the classics can impart us with.
At the end of a long hard day, when one wishes to join pieces of their hearts, a classic piece of work can always prove to be a rescue. Be it understanding the French Revolution or India’s struggle for freedom, or be it understanding the centuries of women’s fights against patriarchy, a classic will never fail to amuse us or touch our hearts. To discover the exotic, the spirit beneath the clothing, or the complexities of the human mind one can always pick up a classic novel or play. Finding amusement and tranquility through words becomes easier with classical poetry than it is with today’s multiple loads of quotations on Instagram.
Classical characters have made souls fall in love and experience envy, characters have shown the human tendency to put humanity over everything and characters have scarred and even befriended the hearts and they have found a small soft spot in a stranger’s heart and that is why they never fail to go out of style. Love, honor, loyalty, and honesty were first learned through the works of the greatest writers and these are qualities a pure soul strives to achieve and classical literature contributes significantly to it.
Writers in the past have created works and worlds through their words that still hold true today. Their writings, including fiction, have relevance in today’s time. A person reading about someone in the seventeenth century can relate with it immensely, simply because the writer has created something ‘timeless’. Striking a chord becomes a cup of tea with classics, why? No one knows but yet in reading them we find answers to the unsolved and this is probably why classics are still read widely. It amazes the readers that even though classical writings are in the past, they encompass a whole of the present and the future. By reading a classical piece one engages with the best works of some genius writers and that is something we humans stuck in the world of short-term thinking desperately need.