8 greatest literary works in history that have been irretrievably lost

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

The art of the word has existed in various forms since ancient times. Whole eras were recreated with the help of brilliant images created by writers and poets on paper. The power of the printed word works wonders for influencing our values, worldview and understanding of the foundations of the world as a whole. Literary greatness is certainly a form of immortality, but the sad truth is that even great works sometimes get lost. About eight irretrievably lost greatest works of all times and peoples, further in the review.

1. Homeric "Margita"

The author of the Iliad and the Odyssey laid the foundations of Greek literature, an epic approach to military history and tourism literature. But according to Aristotle, Homer also wrote a third epic, Margita, which did the same for the literary comedy genre. The eponymous protagonist of the epic lacked neither the courage of Achilles, nor the cunning of Odysseus. Rather, he was an idiot - as Plato put it, "he knew a lot, but everything was bad."

The greatest Greek philosophers were deeply impressed by Homer's stupid humor, but not a single fragment of the epic has survived from antiquity. Meanwhile, modern scholars doubt that all the works attributed to Homer were written by him alone. They say it is a school of poetic tradition that, centuries later, took on the image of the blind bard of antiquity.

2. Yongle Encyclopedia

Between 1403 and 1407, more than 2,000 scholars gathered in the capital of the Ming Dynasty, Nanjing, to compile the largest literary project ever created in China. Their task, dictated by the progressive emperor Yongle, was to compile a collection of all mainstream Chinese thought and writing. The end result of this immense work was a manuscript of 22,937 chapters, collected in 11,095 volumes.

The completed project proved too expensive to print, and the later Ming emperors lacked the motivation of their predecessors to publish these literary works. The original manuscript of the Yongle Encyclopedia was lost by the end of the 17th century. In 1860, most of the only handwritten copy of the work (dated 1567) was lost during the looting and burning of Beijing by Anglo-French forces during the Second Opium War. Today, only 4 percent of the original version of the encyclopedia remains.

3. Aztec and Mayan codes

Typically, trophies of conquest include the ability to erase or rewrite the entire true history of a conquered people. When the fourth emperor of the Aztecs, Itzcoatl, used a military alliance to consolidate the Aztec empire in 1426, he is said to have ordered the destruction of all previous historical records in order to better write a clean history of the origins and power of the Aztecs.

136 years later, in the Mexican region of Yucatan, a representative of other conquerors did a similar act. In 1562, Diego de Landa, leader of the Franciscan order in the Yucatan, ordered the destruction of thousands of Mayan religious and historical artifacts, including at least 27 priceless hieroglyphic manuscripts. Landa viewed his orders as a one-man inquisition to purge the Mayan people of their old religious practices. Ironically, much of the little we know about Mayan history and religion comes from a book that Landa himself wrote. He was sent home to Spain as punishment for unauthorized actions.

4. Lost (or maybe just wrongly signed) Shakespeare plays

The time-tested immortal comedies, stories and tragedies of William Shakespeare have 36 plays. All his works have left a huge mark on English literature, and the world as a whole.

Two scraps of paper 400 years ago suggest that there may have been two other Shakespeare plays that are now sadly lost to history. The list of Shakespeare's works of 1598 that existed at that time includes a comedy called "The Victory of Love". Many scholars believed that this name was simply an alternative name for "The Taming of the Shrew." But a fragment from 1603, discovered much later, includes both names. A similar mystery surrounds a play called Cardenio, which is believed to have been co-written by Shakespeare with John Fletcher. It dates from June 1613. If the play really existed, it was probably based on the side story of Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote. It appeared in an English translation a year earlier, which offers a tempting perspective of a narrative fusion of two of the greatest literary minds of its era.

5. Memories of Lord Byron

George Gordon, Lord Byron, was a typical poet of the Romantic era, writing with the same passion, emotion and adventure as he lived. In 1816, Byron fled from mounting scandal and the collapse of his marriage to spend the rest of his life traveling throughout Europe. He lived to the fullest. Tied up romances with a whole string of Italian women. Ultimately, the poet died of a fever in 1824 while assisting the Greek revolutionaries in their struggle against the Ottoman Empire.

Eight years before his death, Byron entrusted his friend Thomas Moore with an autobiography, which he scrawled on 78 folio sheets. A few days after news of Byron's demise reached England, Moore, along with respected publisher John Murray and another friend (with the approval of Byron's estranged wife), decided to destroy Byron's autobiography. They burned it in Murray's London fireplace.

The men claimed they acted to save Byron and his family from the scandal. Although Byron himself wrote to Murray about the manuscript, claiming that he "missed all love and many other of the most important things in life because I did not have to compromise with other people." Apparently, the plans of Byron's widow did not at all include the publication of a detailed account of their marriage to the great poet.

6. Continuation of Gogol's "Dead Souls"

In a grim plot twist worthy of any novel he could create, Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol destroyed the second part of what is arguably the greatest of his works. The writer was influenced by a spiritual mentor who convinced him that all his creative achievements were evil.

Dead Souls, 1842 novel. In it, Gogol describes a man who wanders the Ukrainian countryside, buying up the legal rights of deceased serfs. A kind of scam of its time for get rich quick. This work is considered one of the most important novels in Russian literature of the 19th century. After the writer destroyed the entire manuscript in the fire, he immediately regretted it and fell into deep despair. Gogol completely refused food and nine days later, on March 4, 1852, died.

7. Hemingway's luggage

In December 1922, Ernest Hemingway's first wife, Hadley, left her luggage unattended on the train for only a few seconds. When she returned, she found that her suitcase had been stolen. Everything would be fine, but there were almost all the unpublished works of her husband.

Hemingway himself rushed to Paris in an unsuccessful attempt to recover the lost works. Among them was also an almost completely finished novel based on his personal experience during the First World War. His early works were lost forever.

According to some literary critics, this prevented Hemingway's work from developing in the coming decades. In 1956, the aging writer lost his luggage again. True, this time he was more lucky: two suitcases, which he left for storage in the basement of the Paris Ritz hotel, were found. They contained notes and sketches from his experiences in Paris in the late 1920s. These recordings ultimately constituted Hemingway's posthumous memoir, The Moving Feast, published in 1964.

8. "Double Exposure" by Sylvia Plath

American poet and writer Sylvia Plath committed suicide at the age of 30. She left behind many poems and manuscripts, as well as two small children and a husband.

The last months of Plath's life were unusually productive, during which she wrote many of her best poems, including several about her disintegrating marriage. In his 1977 memoir, Sylvia's husband, Ted Hughes, reported that Plath also "printed about 130 pages of a novel tentatively titled Double Exposure."

This manuscript disappeared irrevocably around 1970. Since then, many fans of the poet have questioned Hughes' account of the missing romance. After all, he was probably autobiographical, where Hughes, with his betrayals, was hardly presented in a good light.

Besides the fact that manuscripts and books can be lost, they are also stolen. Read about one of the most high-profile robberies of this century, which was, fortunately, uncovered, read in our article how they found old books worth 4 million dollars, audaciously stolen in London 3 years ago.