I am reading Greeblatt’s The Swerve, a delightfully bookish book, and broke out into a giggle fit when I came across this passage today:
On the death of Petrarch on July 19, 1374, the grieving Salutati had declared that Petrarch was a greater prose writer than Cicero and a greater poet than Virgil. By the 1390s, this praise seemed to Poggio and Niccoli ridiculous, and they pressed Salutati to repudiate it. In all the intervening centuries, no one, they argued, had bettered the great classic writers in stylistic perfection. It was impossible. Since ancient times all there had been in their view, was a long, tragic history of stylistic corruption and loss. Indifferent or ignorant, even supposedly well-educated medieval writers had forgotten how to form sentences correctly, in the proper manner of the masters of classical Latin, or to use words with elegance, accuracy, and precision with which they had once been wielded.
Puts my grousing about Kimball’s article the other day into perspective, doesn’t it?
Seems like everyone’s a critic and in no time is the literature ever as good as it used to be. Something to keep in mind as many people commented on the Kimball article post, there is no way of knowing the future and what literature will come to be seen as representing our time and culture, what books being published now will be read in 100 years or more. And really, does it matter if the book you are in the midst of now is one that is or isn’t read in the future as long as you are enjoying it now? After all, we don’t get extra credit points after we are dead for having read the novel that is being taught in all the high school English classes in 2112. At least I don’t think we do. Is there a heavenly reading scoreboard no one has told me about? Actually, if there were a scoreboard it would definitely be located in hell with demons scratching up marks with their nails on a chalkboard.
Ha! It’s funny how recurrent those thoughts really are. Also, I definitely need to pick up The Swerve.
Nymeth, I know! I suppose critics during Cicero’s time were complaining and critics during Sophocles’ time too. Oh yes, the Swerve is good fun. I didn’t expect it to be so bookish even though it’s about a book. Go figure.
Very amusing. Actually it reminds me of the movie Midnight in Paris, in which the characters were always convinced a previous era was ipso facto superior than their current one.
2112? Did I just sleep through a century?
I expect the ancient Greeks and Romans also perpetuated conversations about high art versus low art, how Petrarch was only for intellectuals and that Euripedes was just cotton candy. Things never change!
Although I do worry sometimes about my reading choices, ultimately I am all for reading what gives you pleasure–whether it will last another hundred years or maybe only this year. In any case it sounds like people will never be in agreement anyway.
rhapsodyinbooks, ha! yes! That’s exactly it! The past is always better because it’s the past and we can make of it what we want to.
Karen, no, it’s still 2012, though if you do fall asleep and wake up in a 2112 English class we get to rename you Rip Van Winkle
Litlove, oh I am sure you are right! And it is quite funny to imagine the likes of Euripides being considered cotton candy
Danielle, as the saying goes, don’t worry, be happy. Let the likes of Kimball stress out about the state of the novel while popping his blood pressure medicine. You and I, we’ll just read whatever makes us happy and not worry about it