Wednesday, I mean Thursday Reading Meme
Oct. 8th, 2015 05:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerWhat I've Just Finished Reading
Rainer Maria Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet, which... I don't know. He goes on and on about how some things are simple impossible to communicate in words, and I agree with this to some extent, but at the same time, I feel like he could probably communicate a lot more with words if he were just a bit more precise and concrete and not so airy-fairy.
Possibly this as as much a problem with the translation as Rilke himself, though.
Even if I found the book as a whole rather underwhelming, some of his observations were food for thought. Like this one: "Works of art are of an infinite solitude, and no means of approach is so useless as criticism. Only love can touch and hold them and be fair to them."
I wouldn't go so far as to say that criticism is useless - but I think there's also something to be said for just being with a work of art, and just being with it and not reflexively picking it to pieces. And, also, to understand a work of art, I think one has to be in some sympathy with its basic project: someone who thinks fantasy or YA or romance or literary fiction is by its very nature worthless tripe is not going to have anything very useful or interesting to say about it.
Or this quote: "Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love."
I can't decide if this is beautiful and inspiring, or hopeless tripe. Or somehow both at once. I think it's more true (to the extent that it is true) about the things that frighten us in ourselves, that we believe to be our flaws and weaknesses.
What I'm Reading Now
Black Dove, White Raven, which is not grabbing me like the other Elizabeth Wein books I've read. It's interesting, but there's no feeling of urgency to it, despite the fact that the prefatory letters make it clear that Teo is in dire straits. But it's hard to remember that while reading memories about Em and Teo's childhood.
What I Plan to Read Next
I have a small stack of books from the university library: Eugenia Ginzburg's Within the Whirlwind and A. R. Luria's The Making of Mind and The Man with the Shattered World. It's hard to choose from such an embarrassment of riches!
Rainer Maria Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet, which... I don't know. He goes on and on about how some things are simple impossible to communicate in words, and I agree with this to some extent, but at the same time, I feel like he could probably communicate a lot more with words if he were just a bit more precise and concrete and not so airy-fairy.
Possibly this as as much a problem with the translation as Rilke himself, though.
Even if I found the book as a whole rather underwhelming, some of his observations were food for thought. Like this one: "Works of art are of an infinite solitude, and no means of approach is so useless as criticism. Only love can touch and hold them and be fair to them."
I wouldn't go so far as to say that criticism is useless - but I think there's also something to be said for just being with a work of art, and just being with it and not reflexively picking it to pieces. And, also, to understand a work of art, I think one has to be in some sympathy with its basic project: someone who thinks fantasy or YA or romance or literary fiction is by its very nature worthless tripe is not going to have anything very useful or interesting to say about it.
Or this quote: "Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love."
I can't decide if this is beautiful and inspiring, or hopeless tripe. Or somehow both at once. I think it's more true (to the extent that it is true) about the things that frighten us in ourselves, that we believe to be our flaws and weaknesses.
What I'm Reading Now
Black Dove, White Raven, which is not grabbing me like the other Elizabeth Wein books I've read. It's interesting, but there's no feeling of urgency to it, despite the fact that the prefatory letters make it clear that Teo is in dire straits. But it's hard to remember that while reading memories about Em and Teo's childhood.
What I Plan to Read Next
I have a small stack of books from the university library: Eugenia Ginzburg's Within the Whirlwind and A. R. Luria's The Making of Mind and The Man with the Shattered World. It's hard to choose from such an embarrassment of riches!
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no subject
Date: 2015-10-08 10:09 pm (UTC)(I'm not even clear-eyed or a cynic, but I constantly feel that I ought to be, or am failing something insofar as I'm not).
Maybe that isn't true anymore? It's been a long time since I read any Rilke, beyond having the line "our fears are like dragons guarding our most precious treasures" stuck in my head in a loop for 20 years straight.
no subject
Date: 2015-10-09 12:58 pm (UTC)ETA: He is awfully quotable, though, goodness. Like the part about a love in which "two solitudes protect and border and greet each other."
no subject
Date: 2015-10-13 01:31 am (UTC)It sounds like maybe Rilke is best in curated quotes selected and reblogged by folks on Tumblr than in an entire book.
no subject
Date: 2015-10-13 03:23 am (UTC)