Life Imitates Art

Shriek to me, O Muse, shriek, for I am dull and deaf.
Of lofty thoughts and myths of aeons past, scream,
Else I, in my little ant's reality, will not hear you,
Nor understand the import of the past,
Nor see the bones beneath my feet of soaring towers
And vast empires of thought, once great,
Now built upon by other minds,
Which, standing on the shoulders of giants
Neither acknowledge the giants' existence, if they ever knew of it,
Nor the depths from which the giants triumphantly climbed
And said, "Now, look, I stand upon the mountaintop,"
And were then trampled pitilessly by modern ants,
Who, lacking knowledge of the giants' legendary travail,
Thought themselves in all ways truly giants,
Even as they diminished themselves through their own ignorance.

From my perspective as a myopic ant muddling about on the shoulders of giants, I can begin to see the landscape from which the giant has come. The scope of the literary works we read this week is breathtaking, and I know we've only scratched the surface. What particularly struck me this week was the short story, "Where are you going, where have you been?" and the way in which life sometimes so disturbingly imitates myth. Where, though, did the myth come from? Did myth imitate life at first, or is it an extrapolation of grand, sweeping themes in life that never exactly happened, but strongly influence life all the same? Is life an allegory for myth, or myth an allegory for life? Perhaps it's some combination of all these ideas. Perhaps myth and reality, so to speak, are so inextricably bound that it's often impossible to tell where one stops and the other begins. Maybe neither ever stops.

The concept in Eliot's work of everything being "now" also stood out to me, since it seemed to be echoed through every piece we read. People living in the past did not think of it as the past. It was their present. In that regard, everything really is happening right now--everything that has happened and everything that will happen is contained in a solitary moment, be it as memory or as action or as potential. As King Solomon once observed, somewhat dispiritedly, there is nothing new under the sun. That is both a comfort and a curse; it is a comfort in that everything that happens now has happened and will happen, and a curse, especially for the individualist, because nothing is novel in the truest sense of the term. But yet, there is also the new, because it is now, and it is not something we have personally experienced. In that sense, everything is somewhat paradoxically new.