Translator posts his 50-page master's thesis as the preface to the book

>translator posts his 50-page master's thesis as the preface to the book

Does anyone read these fucking things? I've tried once and it was full of fucking spoilers.

Yeah, aren't commentaries shitty? Like, why would I read and learn more than I have to? I can just plow through Homer and mark him as "read" on Goodreads, I don't have to waste my time trying to understand him better!

Book?
This isn't some $80+ extremely obscure never been translated book I hope.

if you are brainchad and are an intuitive thinker picking up obvious themes precludes the need for deferrence to secondary authorities. you’re hardly communing with an author’s thought if you need to read commentary all the time. personally i think its rather vulgar to add legs on a snake in such a way

I'm pretty sure this is common with old classics. I've seen it with the Divine comedy at least

when i was in school the required texts were padded to about twice their original length with multiple essays, questions, teaching points, footnotes and translations, alternate translations, pictures, multiple introductory texts, summaries, and sometimes something like a guide to the author's other work. I remember shakespeare might have been something like three times its length with all that extra text, plus every other page contained modern english translations of the one before it and an illustration to boot.

I was really mad when they did that in the Presocratics

>these are the sorts of brainlets posting on Veeky Forums
rly makes u think

Hahaha, you ought to see my other posts

I usually read them after I finish the book if I'm still interested. The first couple times the spoilers caught me by surprise and it really pissed me off. I really don't understand why some schmuck has to suck the author's dick for 30 pages just to lead into the actual book.

>literally half of the book is an introduction to the author/to the book where they try to convince the reader that the author is totally not a racist

Thanks, Inner Traditions.

You'd be hard pressed to find an introduction that isn't worth reading. If someone has written an introduction that makes it into even a semipopular edition of a classic book, than I'm sorry but they definitely know more about it than you do. It doesn't matter how much of a "brainchad" you think you are, you reading any book worth reading for the first time and "communing with an author's thought" isn't going to lead to any new understanding better than the guy with a masters degree and 40 years of studying philosophy in the beginning of the book.

By all means, read the original text yourself first and form your own opinions, but acknowledge that you aren't going to do a better job than whoever actually made it into the preface.

I don't think anyone's saying that the know more than the translator, it's just that it's kinda out of place. People want to experience the actual book on their own before reading about other peoples thoughts on the matter. Reading a book with someone else's thoughts in your head isn't fun and it'll probably hinder your growth as a critical thinker. You wont be able to arrive at your own conclusions or formulate your own theories. Even if they are wrong it's much more beneficial to go down the wrong line of thinking on your own and then correct yourself then to have your hand holded from the start. They quite often spoil shit too which is annoying. It'd be better if they put the analytical/spoiler stuff at the end of the book instead of at the start. A one or two page preface would suffice.

if you read the introduction you are retarded

>translation includes feminist essay on which ancient thinkers were politically and socially conversative

found the retard

you wish you were me

...

Experienced this when I read Beyond Good and Evil. Quickly closed the book so to say.

Stop reading the introduction first