Well, The Magus officially took over my life for about the past five days or week or something. I couldn't put it down, which is probably why I've been feeling so stressed in other areas lately. It was totally worth the pain, though. I got the whole way through as of yesterday at lunch--just for the first time, as I'm sure I'll read it at least once more in the near future. I don't want to spoil anything for anyone, so I'll try to be as vague as possible with my remarks at this point.
The very setting of The Magus is mythical. A remote island in Greece? What better place to set a modern myth? It really is about everything, and therein lies a great part of its magic. I tried to summarize it to myself after I'd finished reading it and found that I couldn't satisfactorily fit the whole book into the usual one-sentence Library of Congress-style synopsis. Even as I sit here almost 24 hours later, my mind is still boggling at how incredibly huge the story is, though it's only from the point of view of one person. Some might call that focus narrow, but such a critique misses the significance and power of the story. That one man's story has the weight of thousands of years of myth and magic and tradition and humanity and reality. Words fail; I feel as if I'm trying to draw a magnificent sunset-washed vista with a blunt brown half-crayon that a two-year-old has chewed on.
For some reason, I keep coming back to Eliot, specifically line thirteen of Burnt Norton V. "And all is always now." I think when I read, I experience a little of what Eliot was talking about. There is no concept of time when I'm reading a good book; just the story, just the "now" of imagination. Nothing else matters for a while, until I realize I'm going to be late to class and I reluctantly have to put away the book and start to ooze my way back into the quagmire of day-to-day life. But the book yet lives in my mind, still a tiny island of "now" amidst an ocean of "presently."
Showing posts with label now. Show all posts
Showing posts with label now. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 10, 2013
Monday, September 2, 2013
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.
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.
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