Novelist and poet Margaret Widdemer (1884–1978) once wrote a tribute to old books. Here’s the first stanza:
The people up and down the world that talk and laugh and cry, They’re pleasant when you’re young and gay, and life is all to try, But when your heart is tired and dumb, your soul has need of ease, There’s none like the quiet folk who wait in libraries– The counselors who never change, the friends who never go, The old books, the dear books that understand and know!
The thought of reading old books is enticing, but they can also intimidate, particularly those works that have come down to us from ancient Athens and Rome. Feeling intellectually ill-suited to the task, we may hesitate to pick up the plays of Sophocles, the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, or the essays of Cicero.In the Introduction to “On the Incarnation” by Athanasius, C.S. Lewis urged readers to resist that fear and dive straight into the works of ancient writers. He makes a good case for reading Plato’s “The Republic” straight up rather than a textbook analysis about this keystone of Western politics.
