Reading classic literature was never something I liked, I always thought I was into realistic fiction or funny books, but this year I realized just because you don’t like Shakespeare doesn’t mean you hate all literature. I have read 2 books (so far): Letters to a Young Poet and The Best by Fydor Dostovsky, a collection of short stories. After reading these I gained an amazing insight into European literature.
Letters to a Young Poet became my favorite book immediately after reading it. The book is an epistolary fiction. Epistolary fiction refers to a narrative style where the story is told through a series of written documents like letters, diary entries, or emails. Letters to a Young Poet is actually a collection of 10 letters written to a young student, Franz Xaver Krappus. The letters discuss the idea of life, its meaning, and how to deal with solitude. All of these letters were written so beautifully. Reading it, I had finally realized how powerful using your words can be, whether it’s speaking, writing, or reading. A quote from the book is when Rilke says, “Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.” I love this quote because it gives an amazing insight into the book for someone who hasn’t yet read it. Life lessons or themes like these are very common and overpower the story in each of the 10 letters. The idea that our fears create the possibility of them being something that wants love, yet can’t conquer the image it holds in our minds, is something that changed the way I thought and the way I looked at my fears. My fears had been given a sudden innocence, creating a juxtaposition. I absolutely adored this idea, further enforcing the idea of sonder I already had in my head. As well as lessons of fear, Rilke talks a lot about solidarity. Letters to a Young Poet gives you a comfort in your own solitude and the fact that life, in itself, doesn’t assign you a role or rather your role is to live purely for yourself. While this book single-handedly led me to start reading real literature, it will always have a special place in my heart.
While the version of Dostovsky’s work was a collection of his best stories, I would like to focus on 2 stories. The 2 I chose to talk about are “The Honest Thief”, and “A Gentle Creature”.
To start off, “The Honest Thief” is a story from a house guest about how he befriended a drunkard. Our main character, an old soldier named Astafy, meets a drunkard, Emelyan, at a bar. Astafy invited him to his house and he ended up providing a home for him. Astafy continued to provide for Emelyan, despite the fact that Emelyn never got a job. Astafy builds a strong trust and friendship with Emelyan, which we see throughout the story. One day Astafy sees that his riding breeches are missing. To the reader, it’s obvious that Emelyan took them, but above all odds Astafy believes his word and innocence. Emelyan and Astafy get into an argument when Astafy confronts him. Astafy gets angry at Emelyan’s lies and forces him out of the house. Weeks later Emelyan returns, in critical condition, and confesses that he did steal the breeches. One reason why I like this story is because it’s so real. Astafy trusted Emelyan for so long, despite having no reason to. As a reader you’re shown the human connection between 2 people from completely different backgrounds. Astafy was a well off worker, while Emelyan was a drunk with little to no future. Aside from expanding my vocabulary I grew to love Astafy and his courage to open up Emelyan. I truly see how important relationships can be in your life, even if they have their hardships. Despite everything, Astafy was there for his friend’s last moments. In life, sometimes all you need is someone in your last moments. To overlook the good, the bad, everything. Just to live in the moment without all the baggage of being who you are. Although some might see Astafy as being ‘weak’ for trying to save Emelyan, I think that’s what made him the strongest.
Moving onto my favorite story, “A Gentle Creature” had to have been one of the most creative short stories I’ve ever read. “A Gentle Creature” is a story about a man grieving the death of his wife before the funeral occurs. I think this story is beautifully written and the idea is so unique. The narrator reminisces about how he met his wife. The man was a pawnshop owner and met his wife when she was a regular customer, he thought she was cute and shy and always treated her better than his other customers. He then learned her family was selling her off to marry an old man, who definitely would not treat her well. To ‘save’ her the narrator married her before she could get sold off. However the wife ends up with resentment towards the man, she feels like he is another man trying to take advantage of her. I love this story because we see many flaws in their relationship, and the main character. None of these characters are ‘good’ people. When reading the story you can see that the narrator does in fact marry the girl for selfish reasons, he’s in love with her. He didn’t do it because he loved her and wanted the best for her, he did it because he loved her and he wanted her. The story can be seen as a tragedy to some, but I feel like it represents a very real situation for someone living during that time. The narrator says the man trying to marry his wife is ‘fat’ and ‘old’, but in reality we find out that he and the man are very close in age. The narrator creates this false image of himself in our head, someone who’s a hero with an epic love story, and we soon learn to abolish it. In the end we learn that the wife had committed suicide. The narrator is convinced if he was there 5 minutes early he could’ve saved her life, without realizing it was his narcissistic love that drove her to this unfortunate ending.
To finish this off, in my personal experience reading literature has taught me so much. It truly became something I like to do and it opened my eyes to many more things and taught me to be more open-minded. I love to read novels like these and I’m grateful I made the choice to begin reading books like these. One great advantage is that while these books are amazing, they also help a lot in school. Books like these can help your vocabulary, state testing like MCAT or SAT, and analyzing books in school will come way easier to you. I definitely noticed an improvement in my written tests after I started reading books like these. I highly encourage you to start and I can promise you that you won’t regret it.
