How do you answer such people?

[Honest]

Hi all:
I'm majoring in English literature, and it seems every day people ask me: "why do you waste your life reading stories?" "Why you don't read in business, history, and politics, instead?"

I tried to explain to them that all other fields are existed in Literature, and if you read a story you learn about history, politics, philosophy..etc. Besides, literature gives you all these information from a philosophical point of you. And needless to mention that reading literature doesn't prevent you from reading in other fields...

However, it seems my aforementioned answers didn't convience them.

Now let me ask you this:
Why are you wasting your life reading stories?!

[Mr Endon]

Ha! How I feel your pain. People ask me, "so, what do you study?". I say, "English literature". Almost always the answer is "oh". Which if you translate from polite English into actual English basically means, "really? Is that what you're doing with your life, reading books? You good-for-nothing college boy!" So now I basically say "English literature", and immediately add, "yeah, unemployment really can't be as bad as people make believe", or something to that effect, and thus prevent akwardness from taking over the conversation.

My answer to your question is very simple: I do it because that's what I like. And to hell with what I should do, this is what I want to do, and that's all that matters. I'd like to be a teacher, but if that doesn't work out something else will. I don't think I can express my view in any simpler way than this.

[lichtrausch]

Reading literature is enormously entertaining, it makes you a more well-rounded person, it improves your command of the language/s you read in, and from it you learn things about every imaginable aspect of life and the world.

That said, I do respect science and economics as the main forces which move civilisation forward. But literature is important too.

[loe]

If you want to learn facts read books about history, politics and so on.
If you want to understand such facts then read literature - there you can find answers of what people (who are the subject of those history books) were thinking, how they were feeling, what those facts meant to them, how they were dealing with them.

Best regards

[joao_oliveira]

I agree with all of you, but I also think that the imagination has a major role in literature. Facts and their understanding always improved people's minds and usually imagination improves people's emotions.

[kelby_lake]

To feel like you're in on some private in-joke and to an extent, to feel superior

[mystery_spell]

My response to such a question would be that I am certainly not wasting my life reading stories. Just because I enjoy reading a lot doesn't mean that I do nothing else and have no other interests. Also, you are very correct when you say that you can learn everything from reading. You can learn about history from authors who were alive and wrote during the specific time period that you are curious about. You can learn about business or anything really from reading a book.

Ask them what they would like you to spend your time doing if not reading. Ask them what the world would be without books and literature. Ask them why they believe that reading means that you are wasting your life.

[Trystan]

If you're bored of literature, you're bored of life. Because life is just one big story, after all. That's my concise answer.

[LitNetIsGreat]

I tell them I read because I'm human.

[Helga]

people always say I should become a nurse because I work in an old folk home. but people think literature is a smarter choice than what my brother is doing, he's in anthropology and people rarely know what it is

[alexar]

- it's better than working.

[amanda_isabel]

people always say I should become a nurse because I work in an old folk home. but people think literature is a smarter choice than what my brother is doing, he's in anthropology and people rarely know what it is

my teacher in anthropology (an elective) once told us about:
guy: what do you major in?
teacher: anthropology
guy: what? is that the study of... ants?


oh gosh.

well reading is fun and if we're able to make a living out of something we enjoy, then there's nothing left to be said.

[blp]

Tell them that business is a lower art and that the Greek philosopher Thales, when similarly accused of having no practical knowledge, took a year out from philosophising to make a fortune in business just to show he could do it. Tell them Kafka and Wallace Stevens worked in insurance and the latter became head of the company, writing poetry all the while. Tell them TS Eliot worked in a bank as a young man and was incredibly successful at it, quickly gaining promotions to positions of greater and greater authority before leaving to work at Faber and Faber.

Most of all, tell them unashamedly that it is an abhorrent waste of higher education to use it for narrow cookie-cutter vocational purposes that do nothing to expand your mind, a gross betrayal of an over 2000 year tradition of university education, which was designed to create cultured, well-rounded individuals with such a wealth of understanding and knowledge, such highly tuned verbal dexterity and such finely honed proble-solving skills that they could succeed at anything they turned their hands to in the outside world after graduation.

Or, if they're real meatheads and you want to keep it simple (if not necessarily true) you could just say your plan is to earn $90,000 a year as an advertising copywriter.

[Desolation]

Well, I would say that to go into business or politics, I would need to take 30 showers a day.

People seem to be trained to think that anything that is outside of the worker-ant mentality, such as art and literature, is "useless." I call these people "idiots." Literature makes you more socially aware, and is filled with useful knowledge for the real-world. Studies have also shown that people who read regularly for pleasure are much more likely to succeed in life(I forget the exact percentage, but I do remember that only about 34% of Americans do read for pleasure). And it makes you overall more intelligent.

[lrtress]

I like all the responses so far.

I'll add that I think that literature, science, economics, art, history, music....are all interdependent in ways. Why do people need to see it as either/or and all or nothing? Either you think science and history and business are practical or you're an airhead?

[MorpheusSandman]

I would say this:

"Have you ever watched Jay Leno's Jaywalking? THAT'S why I read."

[JBI]

Tell them that business is a lower art and that the Greek philosopher Thales, when similarly accused of having no practical knowledge, took a year out from philosophising to make a fortune in business just to show he could do it. Tell them Kafka and Wallace Stevens worked in insurance and the latter became head of the company, writing poetry all the while. Tell them TS Eliot worked in a bank as a young man and was incredibly successful at it, quickly gaining promotions to positions of greater and greater authority before leaving to work at Faber and Faber.

Most of all, tell them unashamedly that it is an abhorrent waste of higher education to use it for narrow cookie-cutter vocational purposes that do nothing to expand your mind, a gross betrayal of an over 2000 year tradition of university education, which was designed to create cultured, well-rounded individuals with such a wealth of understanding and knowledge, such highly tuned verbal dexterity and such finely honed proble-solving skills that they could succeed at anything they turned their hands to in the outside world after graduation.

Or, if they're real meatheads and you want to keep it simple (if not necessarily true) you could just say your plan is to earn $90,000 a year as an advertising copywriter.

You do realize that bit about Eliot is quite a fabrication; he never made enough money, and biographers (note, there has never been an authorized biography to this day) generally attribute his lack of financial success as the biggest problem to his marriage, as his wife came from a bourgeois family, and he couldn't quite provide. At any rate, Eliot came from big money, though they cut that off when he ran away to England without completing his Thesis in Philosophy, not literature. In truth, even his job at Faber just seemed to give him a steady place to work, with a decent income to survive. As a person, he seems to have been on the lazy side, with a strong urge to dramatize the "failure" of the world, yet at the same time, put little effort besides writing, rather scarcely, poems and essays. I wouldn't exactly call him lazy, but he certainly wasn't successful, and certainly had very little drive (hence why the Waste Land is ultimately plagued by an impotence, a metaphor for both his life, and the society he belonged to).

As for Kafka, he never studied literature, never liked his job, and came from a good family as well. Of course, he could have continued in the insurance company, even if he didn't get sick, though, that all would have been broken down by the 30s at any rate.

Stevens of course was a successful person, financially, though he didn't start writing poetry until late in life. In truth, he seems to have been a very private person, always keeping things within his head, that one speculates whether or not, at least in the beginnings, if his wife even knew he was writing poetry at all - it seems the poems flow straight from his consciousness, in the sense that, especially in the later works, it feels like half the poem is missing.

As writers, there have only been around an half a dozen or so in terms of Poetry in English who actually were good and became financial successes from their poetry alone. For novels, there have been more, since it ultimately is a popular form, but generally, most good novelists have relied on other means for income (Joyce being one who lived off of benefactors, Proust off his inheritance, M. Shelley off her father-in-laws rather scant charity, etc.).

Don't think, also, that academic positions are easy to come by. The amount of jobs are going down, and the amount of applicants are going up, well, at least in English departments and in the US and Canada. Teacher jobs too seem to have become saturated here, with people who have degrees in Education unable to find fulltime work.

What do you say? If nothing works out, I'll apply to law school. That's what keeps me going, though, I throw in other elements into my portfolio such as languages in the hope that perhaps that will give me a bit of an edge over the thousands of other wannabe academics, who perhaps only know English, or only know anything about English.


Generally though, if it is your first degree and you are in north America it does not matter. If you are in Europe, I wouldn't know, and outside of the "occident" I really don't know, but for North America, first degrees really matter very little. Just make sure you don't only specialize in one single thing, and that you leave doors open.

Also, just tell people, that you enjoy what you do, and that they can feel free to study what they want.


Tell them that business is a lower art and that the Greek philosopher Thales, when similarly accused of having no practical knowledge, took a year out from philosophising to make a fortune in business just to show he could do it. Tell them Kafka and Wallace Stevens worked in insurance and the latter became head of the company, writing poetry all the while. Tell them TS Eliot worked in a bank as a young man and was incredibly successful at it, quickly gaining promotions to positions of greater and greater authority before leaving to work at Faber and Faber.

Most of all, tell them unashamedly that it is an abhorrent waste of higher education to use it for narrow cookie-cutter vocational purposes that do nothing to expand your mind, a gross betrayal of an over 2000 year tradition of university education, which was designed to create cultured, well-rounded individuals with such a wealth of understanding and knowledge, such highly tuned verbal dexterity and such finely honed proble-solving skills that they could succeed at anything they turned their hands to in the outside world after graduation.

Or, if they're real meatheads and you want to keep it simple (if not necessarily true) you could just say your plan is to earn $90,000 a year as an advertising copywriter.

2000 years where? perhaps 1700 in Nanjing, or 2300 if we are counting Plato's Academy (though I hardly consider that a university). Constantinople supposedly had one in the 5th century, though it didn't really form into a full fledged university until the 9th. There were perhaps a couple more in the 10th century, but the real bulk came mid 11th until the 13th, when all the big named "Western" ones we all know came into being. Of course, Confucian codes of education predate this, but as a form of university, the system seems very unlike the "Western" concept of one.

The real sense of contemporary university is, ultimately, a 18th century phenomenon, though perhaps only really made available by the 20th century. The so called traditions, unless you are within a traditional school, hardly exist.

[The Comedian]

To the original poster:

My advice is this: Put your hands over your ears and say "I'm not listening" repeatedly until the person goes away.

[mayneverhave]

Hi all:
I'm majoring in English literature, and it seems every day people ask me: "why do you waste your life reading stories?" "Why you don't read in business, history, and politics, instead?"

I tried to explain to them that all other fields are existed in Literature, and if you read a story you learn about history, politics, philosophy..etc. Besides, literature gives you all these information from a philosophical point of you. And needless to mention that reading literature doesn't prevent you from reading in other fields...

However, it seems my aforementioned answers didn't convience them.

Now let me ask you this:
Why are you wasting your life reading stories?!

Because the study of poetry is the study of life.

[grotto]

My usual comment to a question like that where there is a tinge of superiority in their questioning is to respond with “ how is what I read a problem for you?” I no longer try and justify any thing that I do; I do it because I like to, I don’t need a publicly acceptable reason.

So why do I read stories? Because I like too!!

[amarna]

"Because it's like watching TV but without playback laughter and ringtone commercials."

[Lokasenna]

My invariable answer:

"Because its fun. True, I shall probably end up living in a box. But it will be a very happy box."

Seriously, I know loads of people who are studying "proper" courses, and by God are they miserable. If you don't enjoy what you're doing with your life, then what's the point?

That said, graduate opportunities for Arts scholars aren't too bad. I'm cunningly going to avoid the real world by staying at Uni, reading stories...

[PoeticPassions]

Because reading allows me to live more than one life...

and as Kundera once said/wrote, "If we have only one life to live, we might as well not have lived at all."

[PeterL]

Hi all:
I'm majoring in English literature, and it seems every day people ask me: "why do you waste your life reading stories?" "Why you don't read in business, history, and politics, instead?"

I tried to explain to them that all other fields are existed in Literature, and if you read a story you learn about history, politics, philosophy..etc. Besides, literature gives you all these information from a philosophical point of you. And needless to mention that reading literature doesn't prevent you from reading in other fields...

However, it seems my aforementioned answers didn't convience them.

Now let me ask you this:
Why are you wasting your life reading stories?!

The simple answer is: I was going to go into mathematics, but it was too easy, so I decided to concentrate in something that required more than being aboe to read the cookbook.

[kasie]

You do realize that bit about Eliot is quite a fabrication; he never made enough money, and biographers (note, there has never been an authorized biography to this day) generally attribute his lack of financial success as the biggest problem to his marriage, as his wife came from a bourgeois family, and he couldn't quite provide. At any rate, Eliot came from big money, though they cut that off when he ran away to England without completing his Thesis in Philosophy, not literature. In truth, even his job at Faber just seemed to give him a steady place to work, with a decent income to survive. As a person, he seems to have been on the lazy side......

By a strange coincidence, there was a programme on BBC2 only last Saturday about Eliot: one of the points made was that Eliot was a very successful banker, rising quickly through the hierarchy in the nine years he was employed in the City. He was also described as a hardworking and much valued member of the team at Faber and Faber, contributing in no small measure to their development and success as a publishing house - the evidence was presented in the form of personal reminiscences of fellow workers :D. It may seem to you that this was 'just' a steady job with a decent income but it provided him with sufficient for a more than modest life-style which is probably what he wanted and why not? And the number of years he retained the job suggests that he was far from lazy - no one keeps a job without pulling their weight, no matter how distinguished they might be in other fields. The programme makers were given access to material from his private papers that has not previously been released, so if this was a 'fabrication', it would seem to be one based on documentary evidence - and as the second Mrs Eliot is still very much alive and kicking, I doubt that the programme makers would risk too much in the way of 'fabrication'.

[blp]

Thanks for saving me the trouble, kasie. Pretty much what I would have said, only better. I saw the same show, so it's not that much of a coincidence. ;)

Funny, I was expecting any rebuttal to be about Stevens, seeing as it's sometimes said that he was a terrible insurance man. Come to think of it, he may not even have become head of the company. Can't remember. He certainly occupied a fairly senior position.

And yes, I was thinking of Plato's Academy, which is frequently described as the first University and the inspiration for later great seats of learning.

[bounty]

im reminded of an einstein poster from a long time ago "imagination is more important than knowledge."

i also know i had at least one student once who objected to my liberal arts/humanties approach to a particular subject matter (as well as to the subject matter also) and wrote on my course eval "we should not have to take classes like this, we are a scientific major." i wrote an email back to the entire class saying, "to the person who wrote that, you would do well to lock yourself away in a laboratory then and only work with test tubes, because life requires science AND art."

[JBI]

By a strange coincidence, there was a programme on BBC2 only last Saturday about Eliot: one of the points made was that Eliot was a very successful banker, rising quickly through the hierarchy in the nine years he was employed in the City. He was also described as a hardworking and much valued member of the team at Faber and Faber, contributing in no small measure to their development and success as a publishing house - the evidence was presented in the form of personal reminiscences of fellow workers :D. It may seem to you that this was 'just' a steady job with a decent income but it provided him with sufficient for a more than modest life-style which is probably what he wanted and why not? And the number of years he retained the job suggests that he was far from lazy - no one keeps a job without pulling their weight, no matter how distinguished they might be in other fields. The programme makers were given access to material from his private papers that has not previously been released, so if this was a 'fabrication', it would seem to be one based on documentary evidence - and as the second Mrs Eliot is still very much alive and kicking, I doubt that the programme makers would risk too much in the way of 'fabrication'.

What sort of documentary evidence? Like I stated above, there has never been an authorized Eliot biography, ever. Eliot himself, it can be argued, was one of the most private of people (he seems to hide himself in his poetry quite well, we can only guess where he is).

The reason his job at Faber and Faber lasted so long, was quite simply, he was penning introductions to books - he wrote hundreds of them. After 22, he became the Poet (though, not a rich one mind you). If Eliot penned a good intro, I'm sure, even if he did it scarcely, his influence would bring in a fair amount of publicity.

He came from a rich family, that much is clear. His parents sent him to study and become an intellectual for the family (before inheriting) and he was working on a thesis in France I believe, when he stumbled on French symbolism, and eventually ended up abandoning his thesis (which if I recall, was published somewhat later) and family to run off to England, where he was soon married. From then on, I have yet to find anything that shows his life as idyllic. His breakdown while writing The Waste Land seems to hint differently - I think it is safe to say he hated his job in finance, and its Prufrockian implications - and his turbulent marriage built in one of the dirtiest times in English history seems to have set something off. When 22 came around, and Pound essentially rescued the Waste Land, I don't think he was living the good life. There is a tinge of regret and impotence running through the later works as well. In East Coker V for instance, Eliot comes out and talks about how he had essentially wasted his time:



So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years—
Twenty years largely wasted, the years of l'entre deux guerres
Trying to use words, and every attempt
Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure
Because one has only learnt to get the better of words
For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which
One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture
Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate
With shabby equipment always deteriorating
In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,
Undisciplined squads of emotion. And what there is to conquer
By strength and submission, has already been discovered
Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope
To emulate—but there is no competition—
There is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions
That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.
For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.


And of course, his childhood seemed no better:

from Burnt Norton 1:



Other echoes
Inhabit the garden. Shall we follow?
Quick, said the bird, find them, find them,
Round the corner. Through the first gate,
Into our first world, shall we follow
The deception of the thrush? Into our first world.
There they were, dignified, invisible,
Moving without pressure, over the dead leaves,
In the autumn heat, through the vibrant air,
And the bird called, in response to
The unheard music hidden in the shrubbery,
And the unseen eyebeam crossed, for the roses
Had the look of flowers that are looked at.
There they were as our guests, accepted and accepting.
So we moved, and they, in a formal pattern,
Along the empty alley, into the box circle,
To look down into the drained pool.
Dry the pool, dry concrete, brown edged,
And the pool was filled with water out of sunlight,
And the lotos rose, quietly, quietly,
The surface glittered out of heart of light,
And they were behind us, reflected in the pool.
Then a cloud passed, and the pool was empty.
Go, said the bird, for the leaves were full of children,
Hidden excitedly, containing laughter.
Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind
Cannot bear very much reality.


His lonely childhood, dominated by the voices he could not quite reach over the wall in the rose garden, which he eventually was made, by his parents, to move away from, dragging him deeper into loneliness is brought about here - the happy moment, being when he could almost here the voices, almost see them is the moment of death, when time moves and the vision vanishes.

Of course, there were good moment;



PHLEBAS the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,
Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep seas swell
And the profit and loss.
A current under sea 315
Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell
He passed the stages of his age and youth
Entering the whirlpool.
Gentile or Jew
O you who turn the wheel and look to windward, 320
Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.


Of course, the water is a double edged axe. It represents the joys of sailing in his youth, but also carries a savagery to it - it is a world of adventure, yet at the same time, a world of death. Perhaps the only place, it would seem, besides the Rose Garden, and then later at the end of his life, the Church, that Eliot would seem to have found any real connection:




I

I do not know much about gods; but I think that the river
Is a strong brown god—sullen, untamed and intractable,
Patient to some degree, at first recognised as a frontier;
Useful, untrustworthy, as a conveyor of commerce;
Then only a problem confronting the builder of bridges.
The problem once solved, the brown god is almost forgotten
By the dwellers in cities—ever, however, implacable.
Keeping his seasons and rages, destroyer, reminder
Of what men choose to forget. Unhonoured, unpropitiated
By worshippers of the machine, but waiting, watching and waiting.
His rhythm was present in the nursery bedroom,
In the rank ailanthus of the April dooryard,
In the smell of grapes on the autumn table,
And the evening circle in the winter gaslight.



The river, built around the imagery of the Mississippi that was around him in his youth, quite simply offers the presence of God, within the sea of unknowing. He would seem to like the Sea, but at the same time, could not quite come to terms with it - the sea being all time, but also the act of sailing, which, in his youth was a favored pass time:



IV

Lady, whose shrine stands on the promontory,
Pray for all those who are in ships, those
Whose business has to do with fish, and
Those concerned with every lawful traffic
And those who conduct them.

Repeat a prayer also on behalf of
Women who have seen their sons or husbands
Setting forth, and not returning:
Figlia del tuo figlio,
Queen of Heaven.

Also pray for those who were in ships, and
Ended their voyage on the sand, in the sea's lips
Or in the dark throat which will not reject them
Or wherever cannot reach them the sound of the sea bell's
Perpetual angelus.


Eliot then, seems the most optimistic of pessimists. He hardly seems to like the world, but at the same time, loves it because he thinks it redeemed by its use as a testing ground for all those who wish to make it into heaven. The Seas Throat, in a sense, is quite simply hell, whereas the goal of the seamen is to make it back to the promontory - to set off for a new voyage, or to make it onto land, and reunite with the river, God.

As for financial success and woes - I am yet to see any proof that he was well off, liked any of his jobs, or ever found happiness, except at the end of his life. His job at Faber and Faber was hardly a "loved job", and it can essentially be assumed, from reading his poetry, and prose, that his love had always been reading and writing poetry, and the job at Faber merely stood as a decent income, and a place which offered him an office with a desk.

Whether the second Mrs. Eliot is alive is irrelevant, and the documents used by the BBC are also irrelevant, to an extent. Generally, these sorts of Documentary films try to dramatize and glamorize often quite mundane lives. There has never been an official biography, and Valarie Eliot will, it can be assumed, never grant that permission, as was Thomas' wish. It can be assumed then, that any real biography suffers from the fact that it really doesn't seem to have any authority.

[stlukesguild]

Because reading allows me to live more than one life...
and as Kundera once said/wrote, "If we have only one life to live, we might as well not have lived at all."

Indeed. Read Walter Pater's conclusion to The Renaissance. Pater worded the same argument more marvelously than anyone.

[kasie]

JBI - I don't have time to reply to your post at the moment but I will return to it later.

For the time being, the documentry evidence was actually shown on screen, in the form of Eliot's personally annotated scrapbooks of his private life.

And yes, it is relevant that Mrs Eliot is still alive - no television company is going to risk suits for slander (or is it libel if it's on TV?) so it behoves them to broadcast true material.

And one really should be wary of extrapolating biographical material from an author's written works.

Eliot was a Director of Faber & Faber - I'm not sure what the responsilbilities of a Company Director are under Canadian law but they are quite considerable under British law and unless that director fulfils his obligations he is liable to severe penalties: no Company will carry the responsibility of an inadequate director, no matter how prestigious.

And I'm not sure this is the place to pursue this discussion.

[kiki1982]

About Elliot:

I know nothing of him, but regarding the BBC's documentary... There was, a year ago, a documentary about Hardy because the BBC was broadcasting an adaptation of Tess. They largely blamed the darkness/sadness of his works on his unhappiness in his marriage...

They totally ignored the term Naturalism and the wider context of his books in Wold Literature... They featured a class of A-level students that relected on the 'amazing' sadness of Tess... As such, it is as if the poor man was wretched, unhappy in is marriage, locking himself in his study, and projected that in his books... When he stopped writing books, though (because they were misunderstood, in his own words), he made some lovely poetry that did not at all seem to be dark...

In that, the BBC sometimes gets carried away. It is well possible that they had their own agenda when they made their documentary about Elliot. Like they had their agenda about the workhouses when they made their programm about The Victorians.

The BBC is slowly falling off its perch...

[kelby_lake]

About Elliot:

I know nothing of him, but regarding the BBC's documentary... There was, a year ago, a documentary about Hardy because the BBC was broadcasting an adaptation of Tess. They largely blamed the darkness/sadness of his works on his unhappiness in his marriage...

They totally ignored the term Naturalism and the wider context of his books in Wold Literature... They featured a class of A-level students that relected on the 'amazing' sadness of Tess... As such, it is as if the poor man was wretched, unhappy in is marriage, locking himself in his study, and projected that in his books... When he stopped writing books, though (because they were misunderstood, in his own words), he made some lovely poetry that did not at all seem to be dark...


Hardy's poems are darkish but more...wistful. I really like his poetry actually :)

[JBI]

Hardy's poems are darkish but more...wistful. I really like his poetry actually :)

His poems are often darker than his novels are. Take, for instance, Far From the Madding Crowd, which, in in its conclusion, ends optimistically. Of course, Jude and Tess are depressing, but Neutral Tones:

We stood by a pond that winter day,
And the sun was white, as though chidden of God,
And a few leaves lay on the starving sod,
--They had fallen from an ash, and were gray.

Your eyes on me were as eyes that rove
Over tedious riddles solved years ago;
And some words played between us to and fro--
On which lost the more by our love.

The smile on your mouth was the deadest thing
Alive enough to have strength to die;
And a grin of bitterness swept thereby
Like an ominous bird a-wing....

Since then, keen lessons that love deceives,
And wrings with wrong, have shaped to me
Your face, and the God-curst sun, and a tree,
And a pond edged with grayish leaves.


Just as dark and depressing, if not darker. There are more of those too. In truth, the break apart of his first marriage, and his wife's death seems to have had an even darker effect on his writing.

[alexar]

aha, chance randomly to post my old favourite Hardy poem:

The Fallow Deer at the Lonely House

One without looks in to-night
Through the curtain-chink
From the sheet of glistening white;
One without looks in to-night
As we sit and think
By the fender-brink.

We do not discern those eyes
Watching in the snow;
Lit by lamps of rosy dyes
We do not discern those eyes
Wondering, aglow,
Fourfooted, tiptoe.



oh god, 'we do not discern those eyes'! The very best lines are the ones you can't find anything to say about. That's why 'wondering, aglow, fourfooted, tiptoe' is such a wonderful set of adjectives. What do they describe? Well they just hang there subjectless, not describing the eyes - because 'we do not discern those eyes'. Not seen or sensed, but so there.

OK I'll shut up now.

[Buh4Bee]

I don't think you should shut up. I suppose sometimes through absurdity we can see from the darkness into the light.

It is hard to tell or discern what eyes are saying by just looking into them.

[alexar]

Yes. Something about a poem about an unsensed unseen presence that nevertheless leaves us with four beautiful words describing that unsensed and unseen presence... well, it's uncanny. It's about what we don't know - something tiptoeing up from the cold outside our warm interiors, and looking at us, ready to fly away, but looking in... If there's something outside this life, maybe it's like that deer.

[Buh4Bee]

Alexar,
Thank you for sharing your poem with me. I live where it snows a lot in winter and can relate to being in a warm place and being aware of the fear that lurks in the night. Although there is usually nothing of any importance or alarm out there.

[alexar]

Alexar,
Thank you for sharing your poem with me. I live where it snows a lot in winter and can relate to being in a warm place and being aware of the fear that lurks in the night. Although there is usually nothing of any importance or alarm out there.

What, nothing scary at all? (looks around cautiously)

I mean, uncanny is ok. Doesn't have to be bad, just stuff that's there that you don't know is there. The deer in the poem is beautiful, curious, wild and ready to be scared. Also, marvellously, 'aglow'. Oh I do like that poem!

I guess he found the hoofprints in the morning leading up to the chink in the curtains.

[blp]

As for financial success and woes - I am yet to see any proof that he was well off, liked any of his jobs, or ever found happiness, except at the end of his life.

You seem to be arguing with a few absent voices yourself, now, JBI. No one here's talking about whether Eliot was happy or not, nor has anyone claimed he made a packet from working at Faber. It would be bloody surprising if he had. But the BBC documentary was very clear that he was a success at Lloyds Bank and one interviewee says he was largely taken on at Faber because he'd shown himself to have an aptitude for business – his reputation as a poet still being minor at this point.

I think we can work out Eliot's attitude to working in the City (that is, The City of London, where the banks were and mostly still are) from the passage in The Wasteland that quotes Dante to describe commuters crossing London Bridge: I had not thought death had undone so many. It seems likely that what ever financial rewards he was reaping or in line for weren't much compensation for this living death, so he left. What seems to be on record is that he did work at a bank, in a position lofty enough to afford him his own office, and did receive promotions. Whether that would have meant riches at the time, it certainly would have in time. And that seems to be what the antagonists described in the OP are working towards, which makes him an even better rebuttal of their position.

Oh, and kiki, the Eliot doc was part of a BBC season of docs on poetry, some of which were pretty good, particularly Simon Schama on John Donne and Armando Ianucci on Milton, which made me cry a little. I'd be hard-pressed to discern a commercial motive. Re passages showing the work to A-level students (Ianucci did something like this too), OK, it's now how I'd do a programme like this, but the main thing is it puts the poetry on TV, at prime time, which is kind of amazing in itself.

[Buh4Bee]

What, nothing scary at all? (looks around cautiously)

I mean, uncanny is ok. Doesn't have to be bad, just stuff that's there that you don't know is there. The deer in the poem is beautiful, curious, wild and ready to be scared. Also, marvellously, 'aglow'. Oh I do like that poem!

I guess he found the hoofprints in the morning leading up to the chink in the curtains.

Friend,
I can't disagree with you that the idea of the deer being uncanny is true. There is a sad pessimism that Hardy speaks of. Yes, the deer is there in an unnatural place, a warm window (correct me if I misinterpret the poem). It is a being of the woods, living in the cold swirling wind. But it is not allowed to go where it is warm, but it looks in curious and wondering. That is a beautiful image. Scared-it may have to run away, b/c it shouldn't be where it is. This makes us see the supernatural element, something that is not right.

Does this not make one thing about Heaven? Aren't we all beings curious of the idea that there could be a place of eternal peace, warmth? But Hardy calls the house lonely, although it is warm. This makes me wonder if there is a sad pessimistic paradox to Hardy's poem.

[kelby_lake]

His poems are often darker than his novels are. Take, for instance, Far From the Madding Crowd, which, in in its conclusion, ends optimistically. Of course, Jude and Tess are depressing, but Neutral Tones:

We stood by a pond that winter day,
And the sun was white, as though chidden of God,
And a few leaves lay on the starving sod,
--They had fallen from an ash, and were gray.

Your eyes on me were as eyes that rove
Over tedious riddles solved years ago;
And some words played between us to and fro--
On which lost the more by our love.

The smile on your mouth was the deadest thing
Alive enough to have strength to die;
And a grin of bitterness swept thereby
Like an ominous bird a-wing....

Since then, keen lessons that love deceives,
And wrings with wrong, have shaped to me
Your face, and the God-curst sun, and a tree,
And a pond edged with grayish leaves.


Just as dark and depressing, if not darker. There are more of those too. In truth, the break apart of his first marriage, and his wife's death seems to have had an even darker effect on his writing.

One of my favourite poems- we studied this in year 9.

[kiki1982]

Oh, and kiki, the Eliot doc was part of a BBC season of docs on poetry, some of which were pretty good, particularly Simon Schama on John Donne and Armando Ianucci on Milton, which made me cry a little. I'd be hard-pressed to discern a commercial motive. Re passages showing the work to A-level students (Ianucci did something like this too), OK, it's now how I'd do a programme like this, but the main thing is it puts the poetry on TV, at prime time, which is kind of amazing in itself.

I know what it was part of, I regularly watch the BBC. But, they messed up with The Victorians and they messed up with Hardy (and they seem to have messed up with his poetry as well, if I can believe what I see above). Their standard of making documentaries has dramatically gone down in favour of simplicity 'for the pime-time-public'. Admittedly Coast, How we built Britain and Planet Earth were great, but two of those were made by old cannons of the BBC: David Dimbleby and David Attenborough. Coast was better than reasonable, but at poins it was also too simplistic. A History of Scotland was exciting and interesting, but too modern in presentation, and it did not offer enough pragmatism to be a good documentary.

I am just saying I would not be surprised if they had a certain agenda. I do not know his work, but I think someone here does. I am sorry if I offend...