Epic Reading
15 Books to Understand the Self and the Other
Always looking for interesting books to read, I put several gems on my ‘to read’ list. The list of books below offer insights about one’s own culture and the cultures of others, about one’s own life and the lives of others. In random order:
The Song of Hiawatha (1855)
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The Song of Hiawatha is a poem that submerges the reader in the lost civilization of the Native Americans or ‘Indians’. At the time, a reviewer for the New York Times wrote a harsh commentary:
“[…] embalming pleasantly enough the monstrous traditions of an uninteresting, and, one may almost say, a justly exterminated race. As a poem, it deserves no place.”
But let yourself be the judge, and learn of an extinct world that predated European civilization.
Walden; or, Life in the Woods (1854)
by David Henry Thoreau
Many students of philosophy learn to ask whether Thoreau was a coward for hiding in the woods, or a hero for abandoning an undesirable society, deciding to live in the woods all by himself? Thoreau found strength in solitude:
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”
The Secret History of the Mongol Empire (~1230)
by an unknown author
This extraordinary book was written by an unknown author shortly after the death of Genghis Khan, the greatest conqueror of all. The short time between Khan’s death and this book allows for speculation that it was written by someone who had actually known Khan personally. It takes the reader back to a time of a lost warrior culture and its brave people. The book had long been lost, only to be rediscovered in the 19th century, then translated into English for the first time.
Fragments (~500 BCE)
by Heraclitus
Heraclitus, a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher, promoted a personal philosophy which contains elements of what we now perceive as distinctly Eastern and Western philosophies. Legend has it that philosopher Heraclitus wrote a book and left it at the famous temple of Delphi where, among others, Plato allegedly had read it. Hercalitus’ work did not survive, but his words have been cited by many who presumable have read the original book. His words are known to be obscure, because Heraclitus made an effort not to be understood.
“You cannot step into the same stream twice.”
The river always changes, but so do you — you are also never the same person twice.
Bashō: The Complete Haiku (1644–1694)
by Matsuo Bashō
Bashō, a pseudonym meaning banana tree, was a Japanese poet who single-handedly popularized the haiku poem. For a long period of time, Bashō deliberately retreated from life, deciding to spend his life walking thousands of miles along Japan in solitude. At some point, he gained a following of students. Near the end of his life he would adopt the Buddhist attitude of ‘greeting the mundane world’ rather than separating himself from it.
“the rough sea / stretching out towards Sado / the Milky Way” (1689)
The Drama of the Gifted Child (1979)
by Alice Miller
Miller was a Polish-Swiss psychoanalyst, one of the first to reject outdated theories of Sigmund Freud. Her revolutionary insight that children are not born bad has since shocked the psychoanalytical world:
“Many people suffer all their lives from this oppressive feeling of guilt, the sense of not having lived up to their parents’ expectations. This feeling is stronger than any intellectual insight they might have, that it is not a child’s task or duty to satisfy his parents needs.”
Meditations (161–180 AD)
by Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius, the only Roman emperor who had rather been a philosopher, wrote his Meditations in the form of a personal diary, never intended for publication. Nonetheless, the thoughts of this great man have survived, providing insight into the directing mind of the most powerful Roman of his time.
“The best revenge is not to be like your enemy.”
The Illiad and The Odyssey (~800–700 BC)
by Homer
Both The Iliad and its sequel The Odyssey tell of the battles and events during the weeks of a quarrel between King Agamemnon of Troy and the warrior demigod Achilles. We’ve all heard about these stories, but who has really read them? The writing style is pleasantly down to earth, full of creative insult. Although Heraclitus, mentioned earlier, would go on to say of Homer, “he’s an idiot who deserves to be beaten with a stick”. But you can be the judge of that.
The Prose Edda (1220) & The Poetic Edda (1200–1300)
the prose by Snorri Sturluson, the poetry by oral tradition
These independently written books represent the earliest writings of Norse mythology, telling of the pre-Christian deities of Northern Europe and the peoples who believed in them. Norse cosmology is unique: it is the only one in which the Earth and its people came into being out of an act of aggressive destruction rather than divine creation, namely through the slaughter of the giant Ymir by the gods Odin (also Woden or Wotan) and his brothers Vili and Vé.
“Cattle die, kinsmen die, you yourself die; I know one thing which never dies: the judgment of a dead mans life.”
One Thousand and One Nights (around 1300)
by various authors
The Arabian Nights / Scheherazade is a collection of stories compiled during the so-called Islamic Golden Age. However, many stories’ origins predate Islam and are of Western- and Southern-Asian origin. There are numerous different publications that go by the same name, each adding or dropping stories, and changing the contents notably. Stories known to most Westerners include Aladdin’s Lamp, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, and Sinbad the Sailor.
Kalevala (1835)
by Elias Lönnrot
This is the story of the Finnish creation myth. The author Elias Lönnrot asked himself if he could source enough material from Finnish oral folklore to write an epic tale of the stature of an Iliad or Edda. He succeeded, and the result played an important role in the development of a Finnish national identity.
The Epic of Gilgamesh (2100–1800 BCE)
by various authors
This book is probably the oldest written epic available to humankind, and considered the world’s first great work of literature. A central theme of the book is the struggle of man and woman and the quest for eternal life:
“Life, which you look for, you will never find. For when the gods created man, they let death be his share, and life withheld in their own hands.”
Man’s Search for Meaning (1946)
by Viktor Frankl
Viktor Frankl, a Holocaust-survivor of both the Bergen-Belsen and Auschwitz camps, was a psychiatrist. During his captivity, he applied his training to analyze the souls of his fellow inmates in the concentration camps. His experience later resulted in the foundation of logo therapy, a therapy which focuses on discovering a will to meaning (“Der Wille zum Sinn”), as opposed to a Nietzschean will to power (“Der Wille zur Macht”).
“Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.”
The Song of the Nibelungs (around 1200)
by an unknown author
This is the famous Middle German mythological story of Siegfried and Brunhilde. This book was a source for Richard Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen and arguably provided the mythological landscape for J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. Either way, they both involve a magical ring, or rings, dragons and swordplay.