[Rob Wright]

Thanks Nemo, I'll check out that translation. I tried the Jerusalem Bible, but missed the music there as well.

My mother led a course in Greek Classical Drama and afterwards handed off the books she had used to me. I fell in love with Aeschylus and Sophocles. Some of the translations I found the most moving— Ted Hughes (sorry everyone) — were, I understand, the least accurate. And some — Anne Carson — were obscure and unmemorable, but they all had an energy that I just lapped up.

I don't think I would have found them as profound in my twenties, or indeed if I had been forced to read them. Homer, I have always liked, but the tragedians are another matter. Now I return to them when I need a little kick.

I'm going to try A.E. Stalling's translation of "Lucretius," and maybe even move on to the Latin dramatists. We'll see how that goes.

Great thread.

RobW

[Mary McLean]

Janice, thanks, I love those Dickens novels too. Some day I'll re-read them (I havent read Tale of Two Cities since I was 11, so I'm sure lots of it went over my head), but I wanted to tackle some of my gaps first. I'll think about Brothers Karamazov too. I liked Crime and Punishment, but never read any more.

[Curtis Gale Weeks]

I spent an entire year reading almost nothing but Montaigne, and it wasn't too long ago. I had read him so much that I could pick up his complete essays, open the book to anywhere, read a few words, and I knew everything that was on that page. I have the Donald Frame translation, which I would highly recommend. I've read it so much that the spine split in half, so now when I want to pick up Montaigne I actually have two "books" to choose from! (Planning to buy a new copy eventually...)

As for Shakespeare, I think there's nothing wrong reading his plays while young, if you'll return to them. They can be enjoyed without full understanding (and there may be some question whether he can be fully understood at any age), but if someone asked me, who planned to read the plays and check them off as "done", i.e., who only planned to read each once, I'd say wait until older.

Nietzsche's similar, because he's a little difficult to understand at any age but a more well-formed maturity (after more experience of the world, a more-developed personal philosophy) will help. But my reasoning behind the advice on Nietzsche is a little different, too, because it seems that some unbalanced young men who read Nietzsche go over the deep end—in a bad way. Jared Lee Loughner, who shot Rep. Giffords in Tucson, for instance. They seem to find some justification for extreme nihilistic violence in Nietzsche, which is a misreading of N.

Back to Shakespeare.

My own admission of guilt is that I still have not read Antony and Cleopatra (and a few others) but am always planning to read it. Coriolanus is another that I haven't made my way around to.

I've read criticism of Shakespeare, and long before I started reading the plays. The extremely high praise of Falstaff (Harold Bloom's especially) did not match my experience of Falstaff, who I thought was rather boring and not as transcendent as others thought. My suspicion is that Falstaff really needs to be seen live in a performance, which I have never done. Either that, or I still misread him.

Hamlet: This was one of those cases where, in my youth, I scoffed at the high praise heaped onto Hamlet (although I'd never read it.) Similar to the way, having read many of S.'s sonnets, I scoffed at the idea that the plays were better than the sonnets. But when I eventually made my way around to Hamlet, I discovered that it was even better than all the praise for it claimed it to be. I don't know that I would call Hamlet my "favorite," however. For me, I often have the odd experience of preferring a play, a poem, a movie to one that I know is technically better.

Back to the main theme of this thread: Goethe is another writer I've never read and very much think that I should read. I downloaded his complete works onto my Kindle sometime in the last few months but haven't managed to begin reading it, yet.

[Gail White]

Originally Posted by Curtis Gale Weeks

I've read criticism of Shakespeare, and long before I started reading the plays. The extremely high praise of Falstaff (Harold Bloom's especially) did not match my experience of Falstaff, who I thought was rather boring and not as transcendent as others thought. My suspicion is that Falstaff really needs to be seen live in a performance, which I have never done. Either that, or I still misread him.

Curtis, you can watch Orson Welles in "Chimes at Midnight" on Youtube.
This is a cut-and-paste version of the Henry IV plays and no doubt loathed by purists, but Welles was one hell of a Falstaff.

[annie nance]

Wow, what a great thread!

I know I'm way late to this party, but I have to concur with Nemo on Faulkner's As I Lay Dying. Such an amazing book!

Is it bad that I never read Beowulf, and passed Junior English anyway?

[Shaun J. Russell]

Originally Posted by annie nance

Wow, what a great thread!

Is it bad that I never read Beowulf, and passed Junior English anyway?

Not bad at all. I'd read a couple different versions of Beowulf (one translation I can't recall in high school, and the David Wright translation a few years ago), but never found it overly special. Beyond providing some important literary archetypes, it hasn't exactly been essential reading. However, the Heaney translation is (in my opinion) worth all of the acclaim it receives. I read it last year, and the story jumps off the page like never before, and his wording of the litotes is fantastic.

[R. Nemo Hill]

Goethe's Faust is another one I've read several times.

Nemo

[Janice D. Soderling]

Nemo, there you have pointed to another huge gap in my knowledge.

I have a little stack awaiting me--glaring at me now and then--which consists of Christopher Marlowe's Dr. Faustus, Thomas Mann's Doktor Faustus, Goethe's Faust and Georg Lukás' Goethes Faust (the latter three in Swedish.

2014 is the year I will, I WILL, read them all.

[Curtis Gale Weeks]

Thanks Gail, I will check that out. I tried searching for it on Netflix, but it's "not available to stream" unfortunately, and Amazon Prime also doesn't have it for streaming it seems.

[John Whitworth]

Orson Welles's Falstaff is terrific and the plays need cutting about. The opening sequence is sheer genius. I got somebody to give it me for Christmas. I also got Laurence Fishburne's Othello, which is the best I've seen. The only trouble is I can never watch the middle of that play. It is too distressing. But he dies magnificently.

Kenneth Branagh's pretty good too. Many Iagos are too obviously wicked but Branagh's a good egg, or at least he appears to be so.