[P]erhaps the most essential question is why the classics should be read. That’s exactly what beloved Italian writer Italo Calvino addresses in his 1991 book Why Read the Classics? (public library) — a sort of “classic” in its own right. In this collection of essays on classical literature, Calvino also produces these 14 definitions of a “classic” [a selection]:
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The classics are books which exercise a particular influence, both when they imprint themselves on our imagination as unforgettable, and when they hide in the layers of memory disguised as the individual’s or the collective unconscious.
A classic is a book which with each rereading offers as much of a sense of discovery as the first reading.
A classic is a book which even when we read it for the first time gives the sense of rereading something we have read before.
A classic is a book which has never exhausted all it has to say to its readers.
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- Classics are books which, the more we think we know them through hearsay, the more original, unexpected, and innovative we find them when we actually read them.
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- ‘Your’ classic is a book to which you cannot remain indifferent, and which helps you define yourself in relation or even in opposition to it.
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