Hvostov says adapted classics are better than nothing

Writer, journalist and historian Andrei Hvostov told ERR’s Vikerraadio literary programme that he once despised simplified retellings of classic works but now considers them preferable to young people not encountering humanity’s cultural heritage at all.

Hvostov recently published Books That Keep Me Awake at Night, a book about books. He said his habit of reading at night is part of his life.

“I read at night, and if I manage to fall asleep towards morning, around four o’clock, then things have gone well. I do not recommend it to anyone, but reading at night is part of my life,” Hvostov said.

The idea for the book came from publisher Epp Petrone, who spoke with literature teachers and librarians before proposing a selection of works likely to appear on school reading lists. The original list contained more than 30 books, from which Hvostov was free to choose.

“Since life experience shows that young people do not read very much anymore, and even less often read the books imposed on them at school, the plan was for me to read those books for them,” he said.

Hvostov said he hoped school libraries would acquire the book and that literature teachers would recommend it, helping to increase reading figures and print runs.

He recalled a reading club from his school days where members mainly chose books containing “sex and rock’n’roll”, including Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron. He said young people today no longer need that kind of literary assistance.

Hvostov said people often believe they know the contents of books through secondary sources and references. He cited Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote and biblical stories as examples of works whose contents have become familiar through culture and other texts, even to people who have never read the originals.

He said he had changed his mind about adapted texts, which began in the United States and were translated into Estonian in the early and mid-1990s.

“I used to despise them, but now I have changed my mind and say that half an egg is better than an entirely empty shell. If this is how cultural heritage reaches young people today, that is already very good,” Hvostov said.

He also raised the question of how to deal with episodes in classic works that are considered unsuitable for contemporary readers. Hvostov pointed to the fairy tales associated with the Brothers Grimm, saying they had been reworked to make them more acceptable to 19th-century readers.

He said the original versions were horrifying and shocking to modern audiences. In the original version of Hansel and Gretel, he noted, it was the children’s biological mother, rather than their stepmother, who sent them into the forest to die. Hvostov said such stories preserve memories of the famines and plague epidemics that devastated Europe in the Middle Ages.