One of the dearest lines I heard about reading classics, was that reading a classic is like opening a door where upon entering a great conversation is taking place, one that had been continuing on for years. And you are all the more welcome, a new idea, a fresh face, to express your opinions and ideas. And you still want to have the fight all over again of “why did the ancient mariner killed the albatross” and if everything has been said and done, why should you care? Why participate?
The beauty of having these conversations is the unfolding and expanding of worldviews. You are not in dialogue with the author but the character they have built, the ideology of the character. All these classics leave you feeling shifted, a little unsettled and discomforted, and when you interact with other people, you get to know their own un-settlements, and you might not reach a hundred percent satisfaction, but a lot of stuff gets hashed out and you are left with newer questions.
The reaction of Gregor Samsa’s family from Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka when he turned into a cockroach is completely detestable, unhumanly, but would you not treat a cockroach that way? I think the same applies to Misty’s dislike for Caterpie in the Pokémon series. If insects are able to express human-like emotions, and humans are able to interpret them, then the balance of personal preference to prejudice is liminal. To express preferences without being unkind.
Few abridged and paraphrased excerpts from D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover:
- The love-making, an anti-climax, to the beauty of arguments and discussions the sisters had with their lovers.
- The sex business was oldest, ancient connection, mostly written in glorified form by men. Women always knew there was something better, higher. The pure blissful freedom of existing and having agency.
- Friends of Clifford say, “sex should be as commonplace a conversation as exchanging ideas about weather, a physical conversation.”
- The freedom of having a talking to men, freely, on their ideas, offers greater stimulation than the physical act.
- Clifford’s idea of intimacy, Of having a routine together and calling it intimacy.
- A democracy of touch, not a democracy of pocket. (I don’t know what this means)
- When Connie says, “people are kind to the person who I am, but they are not kind to the female in me”.
- The responsibility that comes, when someone idolizes you, saying “I gave up everything for you, I have done all this for you”.
- How you need to maintain both faculties, the outer and the inner, the two layers of the coconut. The practicality exterior shell-self, and the inner self. How the inners go soft, when you stop paying attention to your emotions. Becoming a crab.
- The game-keeper’s view of loneliness, how it haunts you and drives you to seek for comfort but then at last you must accept it, accept your aloneness, sleep by yourself, and accept the warmth of someone sharing a bed with you.
…to be continued.
posted-last-min-at-iwc,
calra
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