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I think your question is nearly impossible for me to answer, but the first line to the book I am reading now, The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio, should make the list:
"It is inherently human to show pity to those who are afflicted; it is a quality that becomes any person, but most particularly is it required of those who have stood in need of consolation and have obtained it from others; now if ever there was a man who craved pity or valued it or rejoiced in it, that man was I."
Oh - I wish my german was good enough. And russian I can´t read at all.Quote:
Originally Posted by ravana
I´ll just get the english one. I´ll see if my library has it.
I wish I had time to read all of these books. All these lines makes me want to read more.
severian - the beginning of A Tale of Two Cities always seems like poetry to me. It´s just perfect.
Many years later, in front of the shooting platoon, colonel Aureliano Buendía would remember that remote afternoon when his father took him to meet the ice.
Muchos años después, frente al pelotón de fusilamiento, el coronel Aureliano Buendía había de recordar aquella tarde remota en que su padre lo llevó a conocer el hielo.
Gabriel Garcia Marquéz
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Lovely one Nemerov!!!
Thank you Nemerov! For some reason I have never wanted to read One Hundred Years of Solitude. Now I changed my mind. It is now on my to-read list.
Everyone should read "One hundred years...". One of the most magical reading experiences I've ever had.
I'm actually not that big a Marquez fan, but One Hundred ... is amazing.
And if one of you ever wants to compile a 'best last sentence' list ... keep it in mind.
Come to think of it, take the first and the last sentence and I think you've got a perfect story.
I second thatQuote:
Originally Posted by bjortan
Nemerov, we do have a topic about last sentences too, somewhere...check it out :)
TELL ME, O MUSE, of that ingenious hero who travelled far and wide
after he had sacked the famous town of Troy.
It's not a beautiful first sentence, but you asked for Favorite firsts. And with this one, you know you're in for a treat.
Vonnegut seems to be a hit. I feel obligated to offer "Listen! Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time."
....2nd that!!Quote:
Originally Posted by trismegistus
Dont rember the name but it stared: "**** Off."
Plus, lets not forget LS's "the Baudelaire orphans looks out the grimy window at the Finite Forest wondering if their lives would ever get any better."
If you've read the Meserible Mill... you'll get that Joke.
"There is a lovely road that runs from Ixopo into the hills." This opening line from Cry, the Beloved Country may not sound very intriguing at first glance. However, most people I know who have read the book (and most have read it more than once) find that the words evoke great emotion. I visited South Africa last spring, and the sentence has even more meaning to me now.
I once came across a web page that had a trivia quiz: given the
opening line of a novel, tell the title and author.
When I decided to try to write my first book,
http://toosmallforsupernova.org , I gave much thought to the
importance of famous opening lines.
I chose the simple three word sentence "I cannot sleep," which, at the
moment that I actually commenced writing, was a simple fact, for it
was 3 a.m. and I suddenly awoke and could not go back to sleep.
But that three word sentence can have another meaning, namely, that I
must not sleep. And sleep may be a euphemism for death, or it may
connote inaction or silence.
Has anyone mentioned yet that most famous opening line of Tolstoy's
Anna Karenina, "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is
unhappy in its own way?" This is a fabulous opening line,
but one might conceivably write volumes about what it really means,
or whether it is true, and if it is true, how one might
demonstrate its truth.
In the first paragraph of my book, I mention, as an example of an opening line,
the first line of Plato's Republic,
"I went down yesterday to
Piraeus." Tradition has it that Plato rewrote the first page of the
Republic fifty times. The first word in Greek, "katabenein" (I went
down), is claimed by some to be most significant, denoting the
beginning of a great descent. Indeed, the final Book of the Republic is
a mythical descent into the underworld to watch souls choose the
next life into which they shall be reborn, while the Three Fates spin
the fabric of the causal nexus of each life.
Edward Jones won a Pulitzer for his book which opens with a great
first line, “You never get over having been a child.”
Opening and ending lines may sometimes assume enormous
significance in writings whose structure is intended by the author to
connote or symbolize something of significance to the reader. Vallery
wrote an essay about one line from Pascal's Pensees (Meditations)
which he describes as "a perfect poem." My French is poor, and I am
writing all this from memory, but the line is "Le silence eternelle et de
espaces enfinite, m'fraie" ("The eternal silence and the infinite
spaces, frighten me.") Vallery claims that the form of the sentece
imitates the very thing which it tries to convey: namely, there are two
infinite entities, the silence and the space, and the "I" or self ("m'fraie) is
alienated, outside of these two immensities. It is not simply the
infinitude which frightens, but also the alienation.
At St. John's College, in Annapolis, with its four year "Great Books"
program, all students were required to spend several months in their
Sophomore year studying Bach's "St. Matthew's Passion." We learned
that the lowest note in the entire piece was on the word "Todd" (,
"death," my German is not so good either.) Also, there is a chorus
which sings "Donner und Blitzen" (thunder and lightening), at the
moment of the crucifixion, when the veil of the temple is rent in twain,
and there is a terrific hiatus or pause in the midst of the singing,
obviously symbolic of the tearing of the curtain. These are yet other examples of
form imitating content. Aristotle, in his Poetics,
I think, states that it is our human delight in imitating which lies at the heart
of the artistic endeavor.
In the beginning of Homer's Iliad, there is the famous "Catalog of
Ships" wherein Homer enumerates the ships lined up on the beach
outside of the city of Troy. It is significant that there are an ODD
number of ships, rather than an EVEN number, since only ODD
numbers may have a mid-most member, with an equal number of
members balanced on either side. The mid-most ship is that of
Odysseus. The ship moored at the extreme farthest from Troy is that
of swift-footed Achilles. The ship moored closed to Troy is that of
Ajax, an enormous but slow hulking figure who is nicknamed "The
Wall." Ajax is so enormous that the enemy seems simply to bouce off
his chest. But his enormous size makes him slow, and hence, his ship
must be closest to Troy, so that the enemy will encounter Ajax first.
Achilles is the swiftest of all the Achaeans, and can run up to meet
the advancing enemy before anyone else. Odysseus, who is situated
mid-most, is an ideal mean or balance between two extremes.
Odysseus very anatomy bespeaks his balanced nature. His legs are
very short, so he stands shorter than all other warriors, yet his torso is
very long so that, when seated in counsel, he towers above all the
rest, and his words (for he is wily) overwhelm like a snowstorm in the
deep of winter. At the end of Plato's Republic, in the underworld,
when all the souls draw lots to see who will choose first amongst the
lives in which to be reborn, it is Odysseus who draws the last lot. Yet,
each soul chooses something opposite from its former life. A cruel
tyrant chooses the life of a swan. A slave chooses to be reborn as a
tyrant, only to discover that he is fated to eat his own children. Plato
says that it makes no difference whether one chooses first or last, for
each shall choose the life which they have been in karmic fashion
conditioned to choose by their previous experiences. Odysseus, who
chooses last, finds a life neglected by all the others, the life of a
middle class citizen in a free democratic society.
"I am an American, Chicago born, Chicago that somber city; and go at things as I have taught myself-first to knock, first admitted; sometimes an innocent knock, sometimes not so innocent."
From The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow