Classics make a comeback in the digital age

It is a season of classics – as Homer’s ‘The Odyssey’ made international headlines through the latest film adaptation by Christopher Nolan, another fan of European classics, Anne Carson has just won the Nobel Prize for Literature.
The Canadian, in addition to being a formidable poet, is also known for her translation of Greek plays into English, themselves 'an oeuvre of their own'. Asked in an earlier interview to name her favourite author, she named Homer.
In an aside, famous author Jeffrey Archer passed away last week. One of his most famous novels, ‘Kane and Abel’, is also based on a well-known story found in classical and religious texts.
In a world of video games and virtual reality, the revival of the classics is an interesting phenomenon. Some of the reasons are heartening, although not all.
In a famous essay written in 1981, Italian writer Italo Calvino says that “a classic is a book which has never exhausted all that it has to say”. At the same time, he also maintains that when we first read a classic, it feels we have already read it before.
This is because a classic is based on universal actions, feelings and emotions which we come across time and again in our own lives.
Classics are seen to be timeless because concepts like power, mortality, jealousy and love remain forces that move our world. It gives us a sense of perspective when we realise that people felt and acted the same way thousands of years ago.
From epics like the Sumerian ‘Gilgamesh’, ‘Mahabharata’ from India, or the Greek ‘Odyssey’, classics across the world address issues that we can see in every generation and civilisational cycle.
In a world that is disenchanting, these classics remind us that this time too shall pass. Power is fleeting and the good do finally win, however tenuous that victory may be.
These are messages that are being shared on social media across multiple platforms. The fascination with Roman history keeps getting rejuvenated with every excavation in Pompeii that offers glimpses of life in 79 CE. Add to that the increasing number of books, podcasts, guest interviews and documentaries outlining these past worlds.
Shared platforms like BookTok, BookTube, and other smaller forums on Instagram offer readers a sense of community and reading classics together. This makes the task of reading less overwhelming. Reading groups also share bite-sized readings of daunting texts in manageable timelines.
Adaptations have, of course, greatly expanded readership as well.
Films, fan fiction and video games based on classics have raised interest in times and places that are distant from us. This has also led to a new readership that is discovering classics for the first time away from classrooms.
A commonly held belief is also that, because we are already aware of the plot, classics allow us time to dwell on the smaller intricacies of writing – images, word choices, the rhythm of writing. It takes us to another time when reading was pleasurable for its own sake and not a box that needed ticking off.
Of course, the counterargument to classics is equally valid and needs discussion. Epics seem dated when placed against the mirror of the present. Women characters are often unidimensional; there is glorification of violence, and the morality is often questionable and not sufficiently complex.
But that is precisely the value of the classics. They must lead to disrupted reading, to examine their world and compare it to ours, to point to what is missing, misplaced or just wrong. These discussions help to evaluate classical literature with contemporary eyes and hold a mirror to the present.