Flaneur into the Classical Literary Culture

Shivani flaneurs through the layers of mindscape to seek solace in classical literature, music and art. An exclusive for Different Truths.

I love people with obscure knowledge or literary and academic insights. I love to hear their stories wondering how it all makes so much sense to them and falling into the extreme emotion for their opinions and their added parts or imagined scenarios through the course of it. Like their strange analysis on how things should have been ‘that’ instead of ‘this’ with the very obvious realisation that yes it could have been seen that way. Like knowing about their concerns about how they have been whisked away to fantasies, related to some of their favourite plays and movies.

Listening to all of it gives me so much satisfaction and fascination that a human brain is capable of building up so much, all in the head, it always sounds like giving a new life, a soul to the things that have never been thought before or maybe never been heard, fading with the growing future.

Listening to all of it gives me so much satisfaction and fascination that a human brain is capable of building up so much, all in the head, it always sounds like giving a new life, a soul to the things that have never been thought before or maybe never been heard, fading with the growing future. Like in this age of all social platforms and media that we surely need, as either an addiction or a sole purpose, we have diverted ourselves so much, not realising that the classic literature, knowledge, the culture of reading plays, analysing them, the dark academia, learning Italian and Latin just to understand the masterpieces penned down by legends like Quintus Ennius.

The culture of sitting down for a while to collect yourself in those poems and being

absorbed by the smell and the stories of the old scented leather-covered books, you might find this useless as, I know, that it is going through your head that bits of those things that I mentioned earlier. These are definitely not possible due to all of your fast-paced lives and schedules, attending on businesses, if not then rather going out with people, or watching some series that you can not seem to get over. Obviously, anybody would prefer that and so would I, but I am trying to appreciate the people, who still get absorbed in the words so much so that they don’t know what is happening in their surroundings, they imagine so much more, listening to their stories and scenarios and hearing them talk about the plays by Oscar Wilde that they read and it still breeds into them.

It is extremely great to know that this knowledge has not faded away with times. These are masterpieces. They are all so legendary. In my opinion, classic literature is the best way to see the world from a whole new level, rather feel every bit of it. Like right now, I have started reading again, a lot, poems, stories, novels, everything because I love to be consumed by these works, to dive deeper and deeper.

It is extremely great to know that this knowledge has not faded away with times. These are masterpieces. They are all so legendary. In my opinion, classic literature is the best way to see the world from a whole new level, rather feel every bit of it. Like right now, I have started reading again, a lot, poems, stories, novels, everything because I love to be consumed by these works, to dive deeper and deeper. We do try to feel what the author would have been feeling at the moment, to imagine, to endure all the characters, to learn something, to adopt a new culture, to keep the culture alive. We drown in emotions with every single book, to romanticise, adore, to feel all of what the book is trying to convey also. Second-hand books are something that should be enjoyed so much more, as they belong somewhere and the part of the last person they belonged to comes with it, all their feelings, the scent of all the places they read the book in, their last thing at night, all of it.

Just like Virginia Woolf said, “second-hand books are wild books, homeless books, they have come together in vast flocks of variegated feather, and have a charm which the domesticated volumes of the library lack.” This one quote has so much going on and this is what I meant by I love listening to people with obscure emotions and knowledge. Falling in love with the truth that, all literature in some degree, exists to reveal more powerful and passionate, a more divine world than ours.

Being driven away by the saddest endings of the book and giving it a thought, feeling extremely sad about what went through, climax, flowing through the metaphorical paragraphs, sitting on a sofa with a black coffee on the side, with Claude Debussy and Mozart playing in the background. It takes me back to the very past of centuries

Being driven away by the saddest endings of the book and giving it a thought, feeling extremely sad about what went through, climax, flowing through the metaphorical paragraphs, sitting on a sofa with a black coffee on the side, with Claude Debussy and Mozart playing in the background. It takes me back to the

very past of centuries, getting into the story as an oblivious self, late at night, naked of all emotions and fears, with the saltuarius inside of me all alive, with the nature being linked with my mentality, wearing olive green and checks. Much like having the moonlight to dissolve my spirits, keeping the coffee extremely strong to feel a vital rush, scratching Shakespeare quotes on desks, keeping leaves and flowers to be dried up in books. Or like picking wildflowers that grow from the cement, adoring and absorbing the beauty of everything, sinking into the sound of rain, going insane and penning down all of what you read.

And yes, one of my most favourite things, going to the undiscovered spots and the smallest and raw libraries to dramatically explore and read out passages from those old dusty books that no one has touched in ages, with the 75-year-old librarian glancing at you through his silver-framed glasses. The entire place has a smell as still and the sound of silence seems to be heard there. Those places have a charm and they are not just a place but an emotion, a feeling, like stuck in time, back in the past, slowed and still. It’s almost like the oceans, moving but seems still, as much as the clouds decorating the sky, as much as the museums consuming all my eager and intolerance, breathing deep into the past. It’s as still as the sun, holding all our hearts and minds together and turning it, rather growing it into something new.

The entire place has a smell as still and the sound of silence seems to be heard there. Those places have a charm and they are not just a place but an emotion, a feeling, like stuck in time, back in the past, slowed and still. It’s almost like the oceans, moving but seems still…

These things have always amazed me and will continue to for the rest of my life. There is so much more to learn, to observe, to see, to be sunken into and to be seduced by the classics written and delivered, with stories that speak and will live in these hearts like ours, forever.

Photo from the Internet