A friend lent me a short novel a while back that I actually just got around to finishing last night—it’s called Too Loud a Solitude, by the Czech author Bohumil Hrabal, (a name which I would love to know the correct pronunciation of). In short, the story is about a wastepaper compacter who is obsessed with the cast away pieces of literature that he finds. It’s contrived, too, as I think all narratives are, but it does slay me with these occasional truths about the way that writing gets under our skin.
One gem on the first page:
“Because when I read, I don’t really read; I pop a beautiful sentence into my mouth and suck it like a fruit drop, or I sip it like a liqueur until the thought dissolves in me like alcohol, infusing brain and heart and coursing on through the veins to the root of each blood vessel.”
Okay, okay so maybe it’s a little cute. Still, in some cases it’s true, I think, and it makes for a better way to talk about something as vast as “Shakespeare” without all the posturing and BS. In some way, the strength of a work of literature isn’t measured holistically as much as it is page by page, sentence by sentence.
My own knowledge of Shakespeare is limited in volume, I’ve seen a few performances, read a few plays, that’s a lot of why I signed up for this course.
My relationship with Shakespeare, then, is:
A stormy evening outside the duck pond,
“Love looks not with the eyes but with the mind”
some awkward moments performing in Linda Karrel’s class during my freshman year.
My twin sister’s ballet performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
