Words from the Wise and Otherwise, Part Nine
Dear Reader,
I’ll continue my artful dodge of writing about reading poetry, not least because perhaps more how-to books exist for that genre of reading than any other. But I will also continue to share enjoyable bits and pieces on that genre from those more inclined to hold forth on the subject:
Every lover of poetry is aware of the large share which the mere sound of the words contributes to its beauty. This is true even when we abstract from rhythm, which we shall neglect for the time being, and think only of euphony, alliteration, assonance, and rime. There is a joy truly surprising in the mere repetition of vowels and consonants.
Dewitt H. Parker. The Principles of Aesthetics. 1920.
I like this next quote because it stands almost as an opposite to the one before. And while it’s almost more suited to a piece on reading books on writing, it hints at something that some readers (that is, me) often experience: the fact that there are too many mediocre words, too many mediocre thoughts, too many mediocre pieces. While some reflection that glut of mediocrity might be forthcoming—I don’t consider it a novelty of our age—I think this little excerpt will offer an excellent taste:
Musicians know the value of chords; painters know the value of colors; writers are often so blind to the value of words that they are content with a bare expression of their thoughts, disdaining the “labor of the file,” and confident that the phrase first seized is for them the phrase of inspiration. They exaggerate the importance of what they have to say, lacking which we should be none the poorer, and underrate the importance of saying it in such fashion that we may welcome its very moderate significance.
Agnes Repplier. “Words.” 1893.
For Repplier, there’s an exaggeration of importance among writers, and for our next writer, the schoolmaster is fit companion for those writers as the schoolmaster desires a "chronic agony" and gluttony, and the described gluttony can certainly be fed only by an excess of self-important writers:
To read well is to make an impalpable snatch at whatever item takes your eye, and run. The schoolmaster has a contradictory theory. He would have us in a chronic agony of inquisitiveness, and with minds gluttonously receptive, not of the little we need (which it is the ideal end and aim of a university education, according to Newman, to perceive and to assimilate) but of the much not meant for us.
Louise Imogen Guiney. “A bitter complaint of the ungentle reader.” 1894.
Continuing in today’s theme of writers and readers, this next quote is especially useful to those who wish to read as a writer:
Would a writer know how to behave himself with relation to posterity, let him consider in old books what he finds that he is glad to know, and what omissions he most laments.
Jonathan Swift. “Thoughts on Various Subjects.” 1740.
Last, this reflection on re-reading catches an element that my own piece didn’t capture quite so well:
No doubt it has happened to many of you to pick up in a happy moment some book or pamphlet or copy of verse which just says the word you have unconsciously been listening for, almost craving to speak for yourself, and so sends you off hot-foot on the trail. And if you have had that experience, it may also have happened to you that, after ranging, you returned on the track 'like faithful hound returning,' in gratitude, or to refresh the scent; and that, picking up the book again, you found it no such wonderful book after all, or that some of the magic had faded by process of the change in yourself which itself had originated. But the word was spoken.
Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch. On The Art of Reading. 1920.
To those happy moments,
Kreigh
P.S. There are several recent additions to the theme of reading, especially from different angles. There’s a book on secret libraries amidst Syria’s civil war, highlighted in this NPR piece. Beyond that, though, there’s the new magazine Oh Reader, “Oh Reader is not so much about books themselves (although we do love them—fiercely); it’s more about the lives of those who read them…Oh Reader is a magazine about reading, for and by readers. It looks deep into the art of reading—why we do it, how it affects us, who we are when we read, and how we’re all connected through words.” That’s basically on my beat.
While I should perhaps write for them, I might better suggest that you all subscribe to them instead. Once done, I can retire knowing that between them and The Point’s “Reading Room” (and maybe adding in Foxed Quarterly) that your interest in reading should be well-satiated. Those three outlets more than encompass anything I produce here. If you subscribe to them, let me know what you think!
P.P.S. I absolutely adore this quote, especially because John Kennedy Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces is a sort of answer, satirist responding to satirist:
When a true genius appears in the world you may know him by this sign; that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.
Jonathan Swift. “Thoughts on Various Subjects.” 1740.
Doesn’t fit the piece or our theme, but too delicious to leave unshared.