Dec 23– “What Is a Classic?” by Charles Augustin Saint-Beuve (1850) translated by E. Lee

There are some classics in here.

 Dec 23– “What Is a Classic?” by Charles Augustin Saint-Beuve (1850) translated by E. Lee

Summary: A classic is a high quality influential work.

Commentary: Saint-Beuve begins by presenting a fairly standard definition of a classic, "A classic, according to the usual definition, is an old author canonised by admiration, and an authority in his particular style."

Pretty close to what you'd find in a dictionary today.

He eventually gives his own definition, most of which is in this paragraph:

A true classic, as I should like to hear it defined, is an author who has enriched the human mind, increased its treasure, and caused it to advance a step; who has discovered some moral and not equivocal truth, or revealed some eternal passion in that heart where all seemed known and discovered; who has expressed his thought, observation, or invention, in no matter what form, only provided it be broad and great, refined and sensible, sane and beautiful in itself; who has spoken to all in his own peculiar style, a style which is found to be also that of the whole world, a style new without neologism, new and old, easily contemporary with all time.

Which I think is wordy, but more accurate.

    My own definition is that classic must be three things:

1. "Good"

2. Influential

3. Old

    First, it can't be a classic if (at least some people) don't like and respect it. It might be niche, it might be a sleeper hit, it might be "low art", but people have to appreciate it. Otherwise, it won't get a chance to do the other two. Second, it has to somehow influence something. That might be people (a classic philosophical text, for example) or maybe simply the genre or medium. I don't know that Pokémon has had any revolutionary impacts on human nature, but it's influenced a lot of other video games. And finally, it has to have stood some kind of test of time. I don't mean a 100 years, but people should still be talking about it after a decade or something. Shakespeare In Love is a classic (ha!) example here. Won best picture, well received, made a bunch of money... and no one gives a crap about it today.