[Special Feature: New Theory of Reading] <Classics for Me> Between the Classics and the Present / Shigeki Hori

I have grown older while repeatedly losing my way. Lately, every time I see the cherry blossoms in full bloom, I ask myself how many more times I will welcome this season.

That said, for better or worse, I have no feeling of retirement at all. I feel strongly that I cannot leave behind a deteriorated Japan for the next generation as it is today, and overlapping with that thought, I am driven by a desire to more accurately and deeply recognize the transformations in contemporary French thought, literature, and society. In the literary translation class I have taught for many years at the Institut Français du Japon - Tokyo (formerly Tokyo Nichifutsu Gakuin), I select ambitious works by young French novelists. The works I have selected and translated into Japanese myself are also primarily contemporary works. In this way, the focus of my intellectual interest lies in the contemporary era. Being far from a pure academic temperament, I am not selfless in the strict sense; I want to understand the field of my own existence—the reality of the "here and now."

The problem lies in whether one can understand the "here and now" while being closely attached to it. Needless to say, it is naive to think that being at the scene of an event allows one to grasp the truth. There are things that cannot be known unless one is at the scene, but there are also things one fails to notice precisely because one is there. There is a seductive expression, "sleeping with the times," but "sleeping together" does not make the opaque transparent. Rather, an object becomes visible when one steps back slightly and places distance between oneself and the object. Furthermore, unless one also distances oneself from the self that is trying to see, one will only see what one wants to see. Moreover, in order to understand, judge, and evaluate an object, one must maintain some kind of standard or criterion outside of that object. In this sense, it can generally be said that to understand the present of the human world—the "here and now"—it is necessary to capture it within history.

However, the "here and now" is not entirely and completely dominated by history. In particular, art and literature do not progress along with history in the way that science and technology do. In the first place, the concept of progress does not fit the realm of aesthetic creation; what provides effective standards and criteria there is not some kind of necessity assumed in history, but nothing other than the masterpieces created in the past that remain today—namely, the classics.

This does not refer to so-called "classical literature." In the West, "classical literature" refers to ancient Greek and Latin literature, and in Japan, it refers to literary works up to the Edo period. However, the "classics" I speak of here are works that have come to be recognized for their permanent and normative value—in other words, value that transcends historical factuality—rather than just historical value. Specifically, in Western literature, these are the numerous masterpieces beginning with Homer's "Iliad" and "Odyssey." Reading these deeply is a beneficial detour for correctly understanding the present of literature—the "here and now." For example, the late "masters of reading" such as G. Steiner, S. Leys, and T. Todorov traversed this detour with incredible stamina. Because the classics shared as cultural literacy provide many firm references, such as forms of expression and character archetypes, their significance is great even for someone like me whose primary interest is directed toward the contemporary.

Furthermore, the classics have another educational effect that deserves even more attention. Paradoxically, that effect stems from the fact that the classics are by no means familiar works. For example, Sophocles' "Oedipus Rex" was born in Athens in the 5th century BC. For those of us living in Japan today, it is a play that premiered on the exact opposite side of the globe about 2,500 years ago. Naturally, the character of King Oedipus is isolated from our daily world. And yet, the affection for his two daughters that this man, who gouged out his own eyes, glimpses before leaving the city of Thebes pierces straight through our hearts as well. Because the classics are very often not works created by familiar contemporaries, they liberate the reader from egocentrism and lead them to the horizon of universality through "thinking by putting oneself in the place of a completely different human existence" (Kant, "Critique of Judgment").

For this reason, although I am a translator who mainly deals with contemporary literature, I have always recommended to young students that they should read established classics—even if they think they are being fooled—rather than contemporary works, which are often hit-or-miss. During the time I served at Keio SFC, I held a research seminar titled "Reading the Classics of Western Thought," where we took turns reading works by Montaigne, Descartes, Rousseau, and others. I also taught a lecture course called "The Classics and the Present," where I provided commentary in a large classroom on standard masterpieces such as ancient Greek tragedies like "Antigone," Voltaire's "Candide," Balzac's "Old Goriot," Orwell's "1984," Huxley's "Brave New World," Primo Levi's "If This Is a Man," and Ionesco's "Rhinoceros."

It would be my greatest satisfaction if many of the students who, during my seminars and classes, took the plunge into the classics themselves "thinking they were being fooled," had their eyes opened to Immanuel Kant's so-called "enlarged thought."