there ought to be a time in one’s adult life which is dedicated to rediscovering the most important readings of our youth. Even if the books remain the same (though they too change, in the light of an altered historical perspective), we certainly have changed, and this later encounter is therefore completely new.

Consequently, whether one uses the verb ‘to read’ or the verb ‘to reread’ is not really so important. We could in fact say:

4. A classic is a book which with each rereading offers as much of a sense of discovery as the first reading.

5. A classic is a book which even when we read it for the first time gives the sense of rereading something we have read before.

Definition 4 above can be considered a corollary of this one:

6. A classic is a book which has never exhausted all it has to say to its readers.

Whereas definition 5 suggests a more elaborate formulation, such as this:

7. The classics are those books which come to us bearing the aura of previous interpretations, and trailing behind them the traces they have left in the culture or cultures (or just in the languages and customs) through which they have passed.