Recently I watched a video on composition [1] and I found it really good in making me appreciate cinema better. Obviously I was not blind to composition before, I certainly experienced it. But with the knowledge of this vid I could better understand _what_ I´m experiencing and why I like it.Currently I have a project of reading through all the works of Plato and studying them. Rereading Republic I find that I understand things so much better now. Knowing Plato´s ides of morality and metaphysics gives me a much better understanding of things such as religion and the Abrahamic religions that are influenced by Plato. Even though the succeding frameworks are different i can much better comprehend them by having one to compare them with. It almost feels like a waste to try and read classical literature without understanding the ideas behind them first. Why read Dante if you don´t have an understanding of Catholicism first?Nobody learns a language by first perfectly memorizing all the grammatical rules and exceptions before attempting to read text, one goes back and forth between theory and practice.What are the most important works or things that helped /lit/ understand and appreciate things better than before? Not necessarily as small as a 1 hour video, but not as large as a whole bibliography.[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BxrkyfSDrSQ
bruh>Timaeus was more popular in the Middle Ages than the Republic, as it was one of the few Platonic works available in the Latin West for centuries, while the Republic was largely lost during that time. The Timaeus was translated into Latin and became a key text, influencing thought on cosmology and natural philosophy, while the Republic was not widely studied until its rediscovery in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance.
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>>24830419I´ve heard a lot about Timaeus during my readings of the other dialogues by Plato. I´m looking forward to it as it will probably expand on many of the questions I´m having reading Republic, thought I think Republic is probably critical to read first to have a proper understanding of Plato.
>>24830409>narrator has a whistling sibilant speech impediment Pass.
So far liking the video. Thanks for posting, OP
>>24830409>What are the most important works or things that helped /lit/ understand and appreciate things better than before?The Iliad. I read and read the same scene of mindless violence repeated over and over and over again in ever more elaborate metaphor and it forced me to pay attention to the language and its rhythm rather than my previous approach of analysing events and plot twists. That's when I first felt the touch of poetry. Moby-Dick did the same thing to me but in the medium of the novel.I don't believe in approaching the beauty of language through theory, it's like music. You need to actually feel it inside you, the internal rhythm and the rise and fall of sentences. Don't over-analyse it, brute force it through repetition and reading to yourself out loud. Maybe listen to audiobooks if you're still not feeling it and try to feel the internal music https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0aTnq7NwCCcIf you do need some help after all, try reading Gass' essays, Finding a Form and Temple of Texts. He talks about some of the tricks involved in both writing and hearing the sounds present in the text.
>>24830409>It almost feels like a waste to try and read classical literature without understanding the ideas behind them first. Why read Dante if you don´t have an understanding of Catholicism first?That's exactly true. Most people who read classical literature have a good historical grounding first.
>>24832951Then what would be the most essential works to get a historical grounding?
>>24834003my diary desu (ive been around a LONG time)
