Reading Classics

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 when he turned into a cockroach completely detestable, unhumanly, but would you not treat a cockroach that way?

I’d like to quote many DH Lawrence excerpts, lately, that has made me thinking:

• When Connie says, “people are kind to the person who I am, but they are not kind to the female in me”.
• 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 intmacy.
• A democracy of touch, not a democracy of pocket. (I don’t know what this means)
• 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.

…to be continued.

posted-last-min-at-iwc,
calra