Quoting Literature
@Quoting_Lit
Honoring the dying tradition of beautiful prose. Follow me on IG: https://www.instagram.com/quoting_literature
Jung wrote that the real spiritual journey was series of humiliations of the false self. I struggle to think of a poem that captures just how violent that process can be better than this Eliot piece. Absolutely astounding lines.
The dove descending breaks the air With flame of incandescent terror Of which the tongues declare The one discharge from sin and error. The only hope, or else despair Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre— To be redeemed from fire by fire.
The older I get, the truer these T.S. Eliot lines feel. How much of life is being pulled back, over and over again, to the 4-5 personal crucibles each of us seems destined to bear, and finally comprehending them?
So many of Kierkegaard's words could be written today.
John Stuart Mill. Don't let the world choose your life.
Elizabeth Bishop, on what is too often an unfortunate but necessary initiatory experience into life.
F Scott Fitzgerald capturing what almost every famous and/or hyper-successful person relays feeling and no one listens: that dream-attainment won't make you happy for more than a fleeting second. None of that will fix you. None of it will even give you any real answers.
Few people could sling those sentences like Nabokov. "I wish you to gasp not only at what you read but at the miracle of its being readable." Incredible.
