Classical Lit Teacher Reacts to Hi Ren by Ren (Hamlet, Milton & More!)

Описание: Original video:    • Ren - Hi Ren (Official Music Video)  

In this video, I react for the very first time to Hi Ren by Ren — and what struck me immediately is how much this performance echoes the greatest works of classical literature, poetry, and drama.

As a teacher of literature, I couldn’t help but hear Shakespeare, Milton, and even Homer in the raw intensity of Ren’s inner dialogue. This isn’t just a song — it’s a modern psychomachia (battle for the soul) in the tradition of the Western canon.

📖 If you want to see how I bring these same insights into my own work, check out my new book: https://troubadour.studio/iliad
— a modern, young adult verse translation of Homer’s Iliad, designed to make one of the world’s greatest epics accessible to first-time readers.

Literary References I Make in This Reaction

Homer’s Iliad – the heroic struggle and inner conflict of Achilles

Shakespeare’s Hamlet – soliloquies and the battle within the self

Milton’s Paradise Lost – Satan’s proud, defiant voice

Goethe’s Faust (Mephistopheles) – “I am the spirit that negates”

Dostoevsky’s The Double – the doppelgänger and inner enemy

Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself – “I am large, I contain multitudes”

Aeschylus’ Agamemnon – wisdom through suffering, the yoke of fate

Tennyson’s In Memoriam – “Men may rise on stepping-stones of their dead selves to higher things”

Yeats’ The Second Coming – “Turning and turning in the widening gyre”

Virgil’s Aeneid – “Perhaps someday it will be pleasing to remember even this” (Forsan et haec olim meminisse juvabit)

Biblical references – Genesis (the snake in Eden), the Book of Job, Psalms

Harold Bloom’s Anxiety of Influence – the need for artists to “kill their fathers” to create something new

Through these connections, Hi Ren becomes more than a viral track — it’s part of an ancient dialogue about suffering, temptation, hope, and the eternal dance between light and darkness.

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#HiRen #RenReaction #LiteratureTeacher #Hamlet #ParadiseLost #Iliad #Shakespeare #Milton #Faust #WesternCanon #MusicReaction #RapAnalysis