What I crave after reading a classic novel

As I read these classic novels I find that I actually *crave* an underlying structure that is found in the hero journey or quest.

In Anna Karenina it was buried deeply in the development of the Anna character which is perhaps why I was frustrated reading it.

But after finishing AK I was actually looking for something like Quest of the Holy Grail, or even finishing my current Iliad reading and then the Odyssey again.

The Bible from this angle can be seen, ironically, from good systematic theology. When I read of justification and adoption and glorification and so on that is part of that ultimate hero quest. The reality of it.

I just realized something too with Berkhof. I had read him wrong many years back. I thought in his Systematic Theology he had said he disagreed with the republication of the Covenant of Works, but he wrote the re-*establishment*, and now I recognize that difference. I know that is technical stuff, but basically I'm saying that Berkhof guy is very on-the-mark.

Seeing this underlying quest structure or parts of it in novels is kind of the same as trying to see it in Shakespeare. Identifying it. Shakespeare may have written a single play on one aspect, one deep psychological aspect, of that ultimate, overall quest. Novels and plays as literary forms can only hit it like that.

For imaginative literature (including sacred literature) the Bible, Homer (including Greek myth in general), Shakespeare, and Grail Romance seem to be the basic influences. A little bit in pure folktale too, like Grimm's.

These are works you *just read.* You just read them to get the language. The higher language.

In different ways great classical music communicates the same as well. Not by itself, but certainly in its own powerful, unspeakable way. When you engage it in a cosmos sense. Each work a cosmos. Not just background sounds. Hear it. Get it in to memory.

Great, foundational subjects like war, wealth, government as well. von Clausewitz, Adam Smith, Montesquieu...perhaps the Republic...

The Work sources - Ouspensky - as the school knowledge.

History - great history, classical historians, world histories - seems to play a role of preparing one in a 'good householder' sense to get the ultimate from the other influences mentioned. History ideally gets you above the world in understanding. Out of the maze and opaque confusion and illusion. Seeing the nature of power and the nature of human nature and the ways of the world in a clear light and having it become real understanding so that you are able to exit, or transcend, that miasma of the vain splutterings and intellectual and emotional bondage of the world.