I wasn’t ever educated in the classics or exposed to much philosophy — a fact which now feels deserving of shame, 544 pages later.
I haven’t read much relating to aesthetic beauty — see point 1 — but hearing words, passages, ancient constructions of phrase (even if esoteric, etc) being called “beautiful” was novel & strangely resonant. “Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it.”
The whole teaching structure of Julian was fascinating.
I spent the summer in Middlebury, Vermont, which is not the exact same as Bennington, Vermont, but the picture painted is still fresh in my mind.