小说与文学2022theguardian.com
最伟大的文学作品是否仍未被发现？
Could the greatest works of literature be undiscovered?
导读
《卫报》这篇长文追问：文学史上最伟大的作品是否可能仍未被发现——大量古代手稿从未被编目和研究，而"经典"本身也是筛选与偶然保存的产物。对写作者而言，它提醒我们"伟大"既来自文本质量，也来自被反复阅读、引用和讨论的历史，从而重新思考自己该读什么、写什么。
可以直接用的写作要点
- 01
作品的"伟大"不只靠文本本身，还靠数百年读者的引用、批评与模仿累积而成，因此写作时可以有意识地经营那些值得被反复引用的句子和意象。
- 02
海量文本从未被人读过、研究过，说明素材与选题上存在巨大空白：主动去别人没翻过的角落找材料，本身就是一种竞争优势。
- 03
熟悉经典是读懂日常语言中无数典故和引用的前提，写作者应把经典当作随手可用的语料库，而不是学生时代的功课。
- 04
现存古代文本远比想象中稀少，所谓"传统"只是一条被筛选出来的窄缝，不必被既有正典压住，也不必假设好作品都已被写完。
HN 评论精选
"伟大"部分是社会性建构：被长期阅读、引用和讨论本身会增值作品，写作应考虑作品的可被反复引用性。
就算真发现了一位被遗忘的莎士比亚同代人的剧作集，而且这些剧作比莎士比亚的更有趣、更动人、更深刻地展现人类经验的广度与深度，我仍然认为莎士比亚的作品更"伟大"、更值得研究和阅读。让莎剧和十四行诗变得"伟大"的很大一部分原因，是它们数百年来一直是英语文学的头号作品：每个在英语国家上学的人都读过，它们塑造了我们的语言、文化以及之后的一切文学。熟悉莎士比亚是理解日常生活中无数短语和典故的必要背景，而读者能从莎剧中获得的"价值"，也被几百年来批评家和观众写下的评论所放大。
sharkjacobs查看英文原文
If a lost folio of some forgotten contemporary of Shakespeare were discovered, a collection of plays which were more entertaining, moving, and inspiring than the works of Shakespeare, plays which more convincingly depicted the range and depth of the human experience, which were more surprising and delightful and sobering, which were by some objective measure "better" plays than Shakespeare's, then I still think that Shakespeare's plays would probably be "greater" and more worthy of study and consumption A big, big part of what makes Shakespeare's plays and sonnets "great" is that they've been the foremost works of English literature for hundreds of years. They're known to everyone who attended school in an English speaking country, they've shaped and influenced our language, culture, and every work of literature which followed. Being familiar with the works of Shakespeare is necessary context for a thousand phrases and references that you'll encounter every day. And the "value" which a reader or watcher can extract from the works of Shakespeare can be enhanced by the hundreds of years of critics and audience who have already written about and engaged with his works.
被引用的只是冰山一角，主动去别人没查过的地方找材料，对研究者和写作者都有回报。
文章提到印度和佛教传统的古代手稿中，估计约有一千万件已保存但尚未被研究，有人说高达三千万，而具备相应语言能力的学者远远不够。我读博期间很为这个问题焦虑：被大量引用的论文只是冰山一角。我做过比较彻底的检索，发现本领域不少在我看来很重要、却被忽视的论文。这个问题并非无解：应该有更多研究者花时间去别人认为没人查过的地方检索文献，只要有一部分人这样做，所有人都会受益。
btrettel查看英文原文
> There’s yet another problem: the sheer volume of texts. When it comes to Indian and Buddhist traditions, for example, the number of ancient manuscripts that have survived but are yet to be studied has been estimated at around 10m, though Friedrich says he has seen estimates as high as 30m. There simply aren’t enough scholars with the right expertise, including the necessary language skills, to do the work. I was worried a lot about this during my PhD. Well-cited papers were just the "tip of the iceberg". I did some fairly thorough searches and came across quite a few papers in my field that were important in my view and unfortunately overlooked. The problem doesn't seem intractable to me. More researchers should spend some time searching the literature where they think no one else did. If a certain percentage of people did this, then I think it would benefit everyone including those who don't do particularly deep searches.
大量早期文本因战乱、火灾和偶然因素失传，现存记录只是碎片，写作者应对"已知历史"保持谦逊。
这个想法不只关乎文学，也关乎历史。我最喜欢的例子是楔形文字泥板：已出土的五十万到一百万块泥板中，被翻译过的不到一成，而它们是我们现存最早的书写记录之一。赫梯首都哈图沙失落了数千年，被发现时是一座宝库，其中包括赫梯国王与埃及法老拉美西斯二世的私人通信。尼尼微曾被洗劫，大火烧毁了图书馆，却把泥板烧硬从而保存下来。罗马建城早期被高卢人洗劫，毁掉了许多早期作品，这被认为影响了罗马的扩张，也让罗马起源更多停留在罗慕路斯与雷穆斯的传说而非史实。亚历山大大帝在权力巅峰、三十出头时神秘死去，他核心圈子写的几部一手史料全部失传，我们只能靠两百年后罗马人阿里安引用并比较三部失传史料来了解他的远征。
cletus查看英文原文
This is an idea that fascinates me and it goes beyond literature. it certainly includes history. One of my favorite examples is cuneiform tablets. Less than 10% of the 500k to 1m tablets recovered have ever been translated. These are particularly interesting because they're some of the earliest examples of surviving written records we have. The Hittite capital Hattusa (IIRC) was lost for millenia. When it was found it was a veritable treasure trove including personal correspondence between the Hittie king and the Egyptian pharoah Ramses II. Nineveh was sacked at one point. A massive fire destroyed the library but baked the clay tablets preserving them. In the early days of Rome, Rome (the city) was sacked by Gauls. This destroyed a lot of the early works of Rome. This affected Rome's expansion (eg Caesar's conquest of Gaul has been argued to be affected by the cultural significance of this sacking). I's one reason why the origins of Rome are somewhat steeped in myth and legend rather than fact such as the apocryphal tale of Romulus and Reemus. Another example are the histories of Alexander the Great. Alexander died under mysterious circumstances at the height of his power (in his early 30s). Several primary sources were written by his inner circle. None have survived. We know this because a Roman named Arrion some 2 centuries later wrote about the campaigns of Alexander citing 3 such sources (all lost) comparing what they agreed on and what they didn't. A lot was lost in the Arab sacking of the Libary of Alexandria. I somewhat agree with some other commenters in that literary significance is more... relative. Put another way: part of their cultural significance comes from them being known, studied, performed and repaeted over centuries.
所谓"古典"是被后人窄化筛选出来的极小一部分，正典的边界远比看上去随意。
这是文章所依据的论文链接。顺带一提，我们现存的古典文本其实非常少：从希腊语和拉丁语直到晚期帝国时期，全部现存文献大概只够装满一家小书店。一个人或许真能全部读完——虽然没人愿意。事实上"古拉丁语"只占这种语言全部写作量的不到百分之一，我们把它窄化成"古代"语言，很大程度上是十九世纪对"真正的拉丁语"的想象所造成的扭曲。
Jun8查看英文原文
The paper that this article is based on: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abl7655. On a tangential note: Corpus of Classical Texts that we have is really small, e.g. (http://blogicarian.blogspot.com/2019/03/argumentum-ad-ignorantiam.html): "... But the entirety of extant literature in Greek and Latin through to, say, the Late Empire is probably enough to fill a single small bookstore. It's a lot, sure. But a single person could probably read all of it. Even if you added to that all the personal correspondences unearthed in papyri and on wax tablets, and all the inscriptional material I doubt that it is impossible for a human to read all of it. I certainly wouldn't want to. I can't think of anyone who would want to, really. How many grave inscriptions would they have to read? How many tabulae in which a soldier in Britain sends for underwear or something? Still, it would be doable. Once you push the threshold of "ancient Romans" through into the very ass-end of Late Antiquity, though, it is quite plainly impossible for a single human to read it all. In fact, "Ancient Latin" represents less than one percent of all that has been written in the language. We pigeonhole this language as "ancient" because 19th century ideas about what "real" Latin is have — in a highly warped form — delimited the general sense of what Latin is, and can be, how it can be learned, and how it can be read." See also this answer in Latin SE: https://latin.stackexchange.com/questions/16669/is-this-the-entire-corpus-of-latin-up-to-200-ad.
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