I'm fast-forwarding to the twentieth-century just for this post-- my intent behind this, however, comes from a tradition that took sway in the medieval period and continues to recur today, albeit in a more creative form: Dear Reader. Dante speaks to his readers in the Commedia, Augustine in the Confessions, later in the Renaissance, Montaigne is obssessed with his readers as is Cervantes. What they have in common with each other is their urge to somehow explain themselves and their writing to their readers. To speak to the reader means to address the inexpressable expression-- the poem, the confession, the endless adventure, and to tie it back to the author's self, a very private, hidden, often mangled self. In other words, it can be read as the author's desire to coyly say what George Orwell said so unashamedly, "Why I Write."
I've always enjoyed the guy-- in fact, I think my first attempts at close reading in high school were based on passages from Animal Farm and Romeo and Juliet, so I would even say I owe him a special debt. There are a couple of things I want to borrow from his famous, aforementioned essay in order to say everything that I want to say about why I am writing this blog. Indeed, as Orwell says, I write this blog out of sheer egoism-- I do wish to be remembered in some way or the other (but not necessarily after I die-- I think memory is sometimes overrated), and I probably do wish to get back at others. But I like his second reason better: aesthetic enthusiasm. Aesthetic enthusiasm is not just having a "perception of beauty in the outside world," but having one that you wish to share because it has pierced you. Though Orwell goes on to detail two more driving factors of the writer, I want to go on from here.
I started writing this blog on sheer whim-- it was a way to exercise my mind during a painful, but good summer. I had decided that I would blog about the same books I read in Princeton's humanities bootcamp, the HUM Sequence. I began taking it more and more seriously with each post, I'd say I even got close to it. But for the longest time, this blog was essentially for me. It was at once an exercise in memory and forgetfulness-- I wanted to remember things that lodged in my mind unnoticed, and to forget some of the other roads the HUM sequence had led me too. At the same time, my blog was a way to find answers from a different world. Over the past couple of months, some of these motives may have changed, and I know certainly that my readership has grown from more than the three to four intially obliging friends who read my posts and gchatted with me about my ideas-- and this makes me want to write more, and write even when I'm bleary-eyed and tired, and even when the more pressing concerns of graduate school are calling. Like the rest of my posts, this one reeks of rambling also, so I'll try to sum it up-- I wanted to try and explain why I wrote and continue to write this blog. And I want to try an acknowledge the authors of the texts I write about, their words and their characters, but also the people who taught me how read, reread, write, and rewrite, and the friends and strangers who read me as very much a part of this blog. But back to Orwell for a brief second-- because I think he hits the spot (as my friend AH says) in terms of what brings us ALL together: vive la beauté and the way we perceive it.
I've always enjoyed the guy-- in fact, I think my first attempts at close reading in high school were based on passages from Animal Farm and Romeo and Juliet, so I would even say I owe him a special debt. There are a couple of things I want to borrow from his famous, aforementioned essay in order to say everything that I want to say about why I am writing this blog. Indeed, as Orwell says, I write this blog out of sheer egoism-- I do wish to be remembered in some way or the other (but not necessarily after I die-- I think memory is sometimes overrated), and I probably do wish to get back at others. But I like his second reason better: aesthetic enthusiasm. Aesthetic enthusiasm is not just having a "perception of beauty in the outside world," but having one that you wish to share because it has pierced you. Though Orwell goes on to detail two more driving factors of the writer, I want to go on from here.
I started writing this blog on sheer whim-- it was a way to exercise my mind during a painful, but good summer. I had decided that I would blog about the same books I read in Princeton's humanities bootcamp, the HUM Sequence. I began taking it more and more seriously with each post, I'd say I even got close to it. But for the longest time, this blog was essentially for me. It was at once an exercise in memory and forgetfulness-- I wanted to remember things that lodged in my mind unnoticed, and to forget some of the other roads the HUM sequence had led me too. At the same time, my blog was a way to find answers from a different world. Over the past couple of months, some of these motives may have changed, and I know certainly that my readership has grown from more than the three to four intially obliging friends who read my posts and gchatted with me about my ideas-- and this makes me want to write more, and write even when I'm bleary-eyed and tired, and even when the more pressing concerns of graduate school are calling. Like the rest of my posts, this one reeks of rambling also, so I'll try to sum it up-- I wanted to try and explain why I wrote and continue to write this blog. And I want to try an acknowledge the authors of the texts I write about, their words and their characters, but also the people who taught me how read, reread, write, and rewrite, and the friends and strangers who read me as very much a part of this blog. But back to Orwell for a brief second-- because I think he hits the spot (as my friend AH says) in terms of what brings us ALL together: vive la beauté and the way we perceive it.
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