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Books about freedom

Solomos wrote his lament for Byron in 1825, the year after the poet died at Missolonghi, and set it in a Greek that reaches back to older poetry while straining toward a new one; his Οι Ελεύθεροι Πολιορκημένοι, σχεδίασμα Β΄ returns to that same besieged town, where the will to stay free has to hold out against hunger and spring weather at once. What these poems share with Jane Eyre, whose orphan narrator insists on her own worth with a directness that still surprises, is the sense that freedom is something a person has to keep claiming, in a voice that is entirely their own.

A page that shows it

The question isn't where he'll go, but whether the ground will let him.

Ποῦ θὰ πάει; Βουνὰ καὶ λόγγοικαὶ λαγκάδια ἀϊλογοῦν.Ποῦ θὰ πάει; - Στὸ Μεσολόγγι,καὶ ἄλλοι ἂς μὴ ζηλοφθονοῦν.50.Τέτοιο χῶμα, ἀπ᾿ τὴν ἡμέρατὴ μεγάλη του Χριστοῦ,ποῦ εἶχε φέρει ἀπ᾿ τὸν αἰθέρατιμὴ ἐμᾶς καὶ δόξα Αὐτοῦ,51.εἰς ἱερὸ προσκυνητάρι,καὶ δὲ θέλει πατηθεῖἀπὸ βάρβαρο ποδάρι,πάρεξ ὅταν χαλαστεῖ.
— Εἰς τὸν θάνατον τοῦ Λόρδου Μπάιρον, Διονύσιος Σολωμός (1825)

  2. Jane Eyre

    Charlotte Brontë, 1847

    An orphan with no money, no beauty and a ferocious sense of her own worth takes a job at a strange house. A first-person voice that still feels startlingly direct.

  6. Paradise Lost

    John Milton, 1667

    A blind poet turns the fall of Adam and Eve into an epic of free will, ambition, and married love, and gives the devil its most persuasive voice.

  18. Short Fiction

    Mary Shelley, 1829

    Mary Shelley's short stories: revenge, shipwrecks, immortals and social climbers—gothic invention in miniature, with the same fierce eye for guilt and longing as Frankenstein.

A taste of the feed

  1. Looking at someone you shouldn't, knowing precisely what it will cost.

    No sooner did I see that his attention was riveted on them, and that I might gaze without being observed, than my eyes were drawn involuntarily to his face; I could not keep their lids under control: they would rise, and the irids would fix on him. I looked, and had an acute pleasure in looking,—a precious yet poignant pleasure; pure gold, with a steely point of agony: a pleasure like what the thirst-perishing man might feel who knows the well to which he has crept is poisoned, yet stoops and drinks divine draughts nevertheless.

    Jane Eyre · Charlotte Brontë

  2. Spring has never looked more beautiful—or more dangerous.

    Ο Απρίλης με τον Έρωτα χορεύουν και γελούνε, Κι’ όσ’ άνθια βγαίνουν και καρποί τόσ’ άρματα σε κλειούνε. Λευκό βουνάκι πρόβατα κινούμενο βελάζει, Και μες στη θάλασσα βαθιά ξαναπετιέται πάλι, Κι’ ολόλευκο εσύσμιξε με τ’ ουρανού τα κάλλη. Και μες στης λίμνης τα νερά, όπ’ έφθασε μ’ ασπούδα, Έπαιξε με τον ίσκιο της γαλάζια πεταλούδα, Που ευώδιασε τον ύπνο της μέσα στον άγριο κρίνο· Το σκουληκάκι βρίσκεται σ’ ώρα γλυκιά κι’ εκείνο. Μάγεμα η φύσις κι’ όνειρο στην ομορφιά και χάρη, Η μαύρη πέτρα ολόχρυση και το ξερό χορτάρι· Με χίλιες βρύσες χύνεται, με χίλιες γλώσσες κραίνει· Όποιος πεθάνη σήμερα χίλιες φορές πεθαίνει.

    Οι Ελεύθεροι Πολιορκημένοι, σχεδίασμα Β΄ · Διονύσιος Σολωμός

  3. What silence feels like when it isn't loneliness.

    This second night we run between seven and eight hours, with a current that was making over four mile an hour. We catched fish and talked, and we took a swim now and then to keep off sleepiness. It was kind of solemn, drifting down the big, still river, laying on our backs looking up at the stars, and we didn’t ever feel like talking loud, and it warn’t often that we laughed—only a little kind of a low chuckle. We had mighty good weather as a general thing, and nothing ever happened to us at all—that night, nor the next, nor the next.

    The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn · Mark Twain

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