reveries - literary quotes

90. Bigness

"It is the vice of a vulgar mind to be thrilled by bigness, to think that a thousand square miles are a thousand times more wonderful than one square mile . . . That is not imagination. No, it kills it. . . . Your universities? Oh, yes, you have learned men who collect . . . facts, and facts, and empires of facts. But which of them will rekindle the light within?" (E.M. Forster, Howard's End, p. 30)

→ 2:19 PM, Nov 14

7. On “The Road Not Taken”

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;	5

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,	10

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.	15

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.	20

Some of my students want to read this poem as if it is titled "The Road Less Traveled By," and interpret it as a poem mainly about choices, emphasizing especially the last line as an expression of triumph. They see it as a call to non-conformity, and misread the poem as a call to the reader to take roads that are less traveled.

But it seemt to me that such an interpretation ignores the "sigh" in line 16—the one we should make when we read the "—" in line 18. It also ignores an even better interpretation of the whole poem, one that suggests the poem is more about the stories we tell about ourselves than it is about the choices we make.

The poem contains two versions of the same event. The first version takes up the first three stanzas; it is the story the speaker tells of the event (probably) shortly after it happened. Of note, in this version of the story, the speaker goes to some lengths to make it clear the two roads are "really about the same." Both haven't been walked upon that much, for that morning they "equally lay / In leaves no step had trodden black" (11-12). The second version of the story takes of the last stanza, and is told "ages and ages hence." In it, the speaker has revised the story and states (attempts to convince himself?) that he took "the one less traveled by" (19).

Time has a way of changing the stories we tell about ourselves. Perhaps our memories are self-serving, and we tell the story about ourselves that we want to believe. But if we're self-aware, we'll make note of that "sigh" we make when we tell that version of the story, ages and ages hence.

And maybe be a little more human.

post-modern sacrament

“In the morning I walked to the bank. I went to the automatic teller machine to check my balance. I inserted my card, entered my secret code, tapped out my request. The figure on the screen roughly corresponded to my independent estimate, feebly arrived at after long searches through documents, tormented arithmetic. Waves of relief and gratitude flowed over me. The system had blessed my life. I felt its support and approval. the system hardware, the mainframe sittiing in a locked room in some distant city. What a pleasing interaction. I sensed that something of deep personal value, but not money, not that at all, had been authenticated and confirmed. A deranged person was escorted from the bank by two armed guards. The system was invisible, which made it all the more impressive, all the more disquieting to deal with. But we were in accord, at least for now. The networks, the circuits, the streams, the harmonies."

-Don DeLillo, White Noise

→ 1:15 PM, Nov 12

secret

“Yes, it is the dawn that has come. The titihoya wakes from sleep, and goes about its work of forlorn crying. The sun tips with light the mountains of Ingeli and East Griqualand. The great valley of the Umzimkulu is still in darkness, but the light will come there. Ndotsheni is still in darkness, but the light will come there also. For it is the dawn that has come, as it has come for a thousand centuries, never failing. But when that dawn will come, of our emancipation, from the fear of bondage and the bondage of fear, why, that is a secret."

-Alan Paton, Cry, the Beloved Country

→ 12:55 PM, Sep 24