It is an odd feeling to read classic literature for the first time. What I term classic literature is not necessarily an old text, but rather a work of fiction that is both old and canonical, whose plot you are intimately acquainted with even without looking upon its pages. Examples that immediately come to mind are Jane Eyre (you know that Mr. Rochester is already married to a madwoman), Madame Bovary (you know that at the end she drinks rat poison), and Anna Karenina (she throws herself in front of an oncoming train). That the examples that first came to mind all deal with women, and suicide, and adultery (I use that term loosely in the case of Jane Eyre) is a matter for another blog post.

It is an odd feeling to read classic literature because you at once do and do not know what will happen next. You have an odd sense of foreboding, in that you know exactly what will happen to the characters, even before they do. And yet you have no idea what will happen, because the words are new, and the way in which those events unfold, and with what arresting turns of phrase, is as yet unknown to you. In that sense, you are not unlike the author: you know where you are going, and yet the precise route you will take to get there remains unknown, shrouded in layers of editing.

And the sensation of reading classic literature for the first time is distinct from re-reading a text you have previously read. In that circumstance, it’s almost like you’re returning to an old friend. You caress certain words, amazed that they still hold relevance and beauty for you; you linger over certain details, certain facets of character that are only just revealing themselves to you, now that you are looking on with older and wiser (or at least more experienced) eyes.

I don’t know what I want to say about the sensation of reading classic literature, only that it is a peculiar sensation that only a few books are capable of eliciting, and that it is a not altogether unpleasant experience, especially once one is aware of it.