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Index
BOOK CONTENTS INTRODUCTION HEROES AND LEGENDS • 3000BCE–1300CE
Only the gods dwell forever in sunlight • The Epic of Gilgamesh To nourish oneself on ancient virtue induces perseverance • Book of Changes, attributed to King Wen of Zhou What is this crime I am planning, O Krishna? • Mahabharata, attributed to Vyasa Sing, O goddess, the anger of Achilles • Iliad, attributed to Homer How dreadful knowledge of the truth can be when there’s no help in truth! • Oedipus the King, Sophocles The gates of hell are open night and day; smooth the descent, and easy is the way • Aeneid, Virgil Fate will unwind as it must • Beowulf So Scheherazade began… • One Thousand and One Nights Since life is but a dream, why toil to no avail? • Quan Tangshi Real things in the darkness seem no realer than dreams • The Tale of Genji, Murasaki Shikibu A man should suffer greatly for his Lord • The Song of Roland Tandaradei, sweetly sang the nightingale • “Under the Linden Tree”, Walther von der Vogelweide He who dares not follow love’s command errs greatly • Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart, Chrétien de Troyes Let another’s wound be my warning • Njal’s Saga Further reading
RENAISSANCE TO ENLIGHTENMENT • 1300–1800
I found myself within a shadowed forest • The Divine Comedy, Dante Alighieri We three will swear brotherhood and unity of aims and sentiments • Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Luo Guanzhong Turn over the leef and chese another tale • The Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer Laughter’s the property of man. Live joyfully • Gargantua and Pantagruel, François Rabelais As it did to this flower, the doom of age will blight your beauty • Les Amours de Cassandre, Pierre de Ronsard He that loves pleasure must for pleasure fall • Doctor Faustus, Christopher Marlowe Every man is the child of his own deeds • Don Quixote, Miguel de Cervantes One man in his time plays many parts • First Folio, William Shakespeare To esteem everything is to esteem nothing • The Misanthrope, Molière But at my back I always hear Time’s winged chariot hurrying near • Miscellaneous Poems, Andrew Marvell Sadly, I part from you; like a clam torn from its shell, I go, and autumn too • The Narrow Road to the Interior, Matsuo Bashō None will hinder and none be hindered on the journey to the mountain of death • The Love Suicides at Sonezaki, Chikamatsu Monzaemon I was born in the Year 1632, in the City of York, of a good family • Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe If this is the best of all possible worlds, what are the others? • Candide, Voltaire I have courage enough to walk through hell barefoot • The Robbers, Friedrich Schiller There is nothing more difficult in love than expressing in writing what one does not feel • Les Liaisons dangereuses, Pierre Choderlos de Laclos Further reading
ROMANTICISM AND THE RISE OF THE NOVEL • 1800–1855
Poetry is the breath and the finer spirit of all knowledge • Lyrical Ballads, William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge Nothing is more wonderful, nothing more fantastic than real life • Nachtstücke, E T A Hoffmann Man errs, till he has ceased to strive • Faust, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Once upon a time… • Children’s and Household Tales, Brothers Grimm For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbours, and laugh at them in our turn? • Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen Who shall conceive the horrors of my secret toil • Frankenstein, Mary Shelley All for one, one for all • The Three Musketeers, Alexandre Dumas But happiness I never aimed for, it is a stranger to my soul • Eugene Onegin, Alexander Pushkin Let your soul stand cool and composed before a million universes • Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man • Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Frederick Douglass I am no bird; and no net ensnares me • Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul! • Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë There is no folly of the beast of the Earth which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of men • Moby-Dick, Herman Melville All partings foreshadow the great final one • Bleak House, Charles Dickens Further reading
DEPICTING REAL LIFE • 1855–1900
Boredom, quiet as the spider, was spinning its web in the shadowy places of her heart • Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert I too am a child of this land; I too grew up amid this scenery • The Guarani, José de Alencar The poet is a kinsman in the clouds • Les Fleurs du mal, Charles Baudelaire Not being heard is no reason for silence • Les Misérables, Victor Hugo Curiouser and curiouser! • Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart • Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky To describe directly the life of humanity or even of a single nation, appears impossible • War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy It is a narrow mind which cannot look at a subject from various points of view • Middlemarch, George Eliot We may brave human laws, but we cannot resist natural ones • Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Jules Verne In Sweden all we do is to celebrate jubilees • The Red Room, August Strindberg She is written in a foreign tongue • The Portrait of a Lady, Henry James Human beings can be awful cruel to one another • The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain He simply wanted to go down the mine again, to suffer and to struggle • Germinal, Émile Zola The evening sun was now ugly to her, like a great inflamed wound in the sky • Tess of the d’Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it • The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde There are things old and new which must not be contemplated by men’s eyes • Dracula, Bram Stoker One of the dark places of the earth • Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad Further reading
BREAKING WITH TRADITION • 1900–1945
The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes • The Hound of the Baskervilles, Arthur Conan Doyle I am a cat. As yet I have no name. I’ve no idea where I was born • I Am a Cat, Natsume Sōseki Gregor Samsa found himself, in his bed, transformed into a monstrous vermin • Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori • Poems, Wilfred Owen Ragtime literature which flouts traditional rhythms • The Waste Land, T S Eliot The heaventree of stars hung with humid nightblue fruit • Ulysses, James Joyce When I was young I, too, had many dreams • Call to Arms, Lu Xun Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself • The Prophet, Kahlil Gibran Criticism marks the origin of progress and enlightenment • The Magic Mountain, Thomas Mann Like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars • The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald The old world must crumble. Awake, wind of dawn! • Berlin Alexanderplatz, Alfred Döblin Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board • Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston Dead men are heavier than broken hearts • The Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler It is such a secret place, the land of tears • The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry Further reading
POST-WAR WRITING • 1945–1970
BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU • Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell I’m seventeen now, and sometimes I act like I’m about thirteen • The Catcher in the Rye, J D Salinger Death is a gang-boss aus Deutschland • Poppy and Memory, Paul Celan I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me • Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul • Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov He leaves no stone unturned, and no maggot lonely • Waiting for Godot, Samuel Beckett It is impossible to touch eternity with one hand and life with the other • The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, Yukio Mishima He was beat – the root, the soul of beatific • On the Road, Jack Kerouac What is good among one people is an abomination with others • Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe Even wallpaper has a better memory than human beings • The Tin Drum, Günter Grass I think there’s just one kind of folks. Folks. • To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee Nothing is lost if one has the courage to proclaim that all is lost and we must begin anew • Hopscotch, Julio Cortázar He had decided to live forever or die in the attempt • Catch-22, Joseph Heller Everyday miracles and the living past • Death of a Naturalist, Seamus Heaney There’s got to be something wrong with us. To do what we did • In Cold Blood, Truman Capote Ending at every moment but never ending its ending • One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez Further reading
CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE • 1970–PRESENT
Our history is an aggregate of last moments • Gravity’s Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino’s new novel • If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller, Italo Calvino To understand just one life you have to swallow the world • Midnight’s Children, Salman Rushdie Freeing yourself was one thing; claiming ownership of that freed self was another • Beloved, Toni Morrison Heaven and Earth were in turmoil • Red Sorghum, Mo Yan You could not tell a story like this. A story like this you could only feel • Oscar and Lucinda, Peter Carey A historical vision, the outcome of a multicultural commitment • Omeros, Derek Walcott I felt lethal, on the verge of frenzy • American Psycho, Bret Easton Ellis Quietly they moved down the calm and sacred river • A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth It’s a very Greek idea, and a profound one. Beauty is terror • The Secret History, Donna Tartt What we see before us is just one tiny part of the world • The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Haruki Murakami Perhaps only in a world of the blind will things be what they truly are • Blindness, José Saramago English is an unfit medium for the truth of South Africa • Disgrace, J M Coetzee Every moment happens twice: inside and outside, and they are two different histories • White Teeth, Zadie Smith The best way of keeping a secret is to pretend there isn’t one • The Blind Assassin, Margaret Atwood There was something his family wanted to forget • The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen It all stems from the same nightmare, the one we created together • The Guest, Hwang Sok-yong I regret that it takes a life to learn how to live • Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Jonathan Safran Foer Further reading
GLOSSARY CONTRIBUTORS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS COPYRIGHT
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