Literature Humanities 07-08

Crime and Punishment, Part V (p.419)

I simply killed--killed for myself, for myself alone--and whether I would later become anyone's benefactor, or would spend my life as a spider, catching everyone in my web and sucking the life-sap out of everyone, should at that moment have made no difference to me[...]Understand me: perhaps continuing on that same path, I would never again repeat the murder. There was something else I wanted to know; something else nudging my arm. I wanted to find out then, and find out quickly, whether I was a louse like the rest, or a man? Would I be able to step over, or not! Would I dare to reach down and take, or not? Am I a trembling creature, or do I have the right...

"The Poet" p.296

The poets made all the words, and therefore language is the archives of history, and, if we must say it, a sort of tomb of the muses. For though the origin of most of our words is forgotten, each word was at first a stroke of genius, and obtained currency because for the moment it symbolized the world to the first speaker and the first hearer...Language is fossil poetry. As the limestone of the continent consists of infinite masses of the shells of the animalcules, so language is made up of images and tropes, which now, in their secondary use, have ceased to remind us of their poetic origin.

"Song of Myself" p. 63

I know I have the best of time and space--and that I was never measured
and will never be measured.

I tramp a perpetual journey,
My signs are a rain-proof coat and good shoes and a staff cut from the
      woods;
No friend of mine takes his ease in my chair,
I have no chair, nor church nor philosophy;
I lead no man to a dinner-table or library or exchange,
But each man and each woman of you I lead upon a knoll,
My left hand hooks you around the waist,
My right hand point to landscapes of continents, and a plain public
road.

Not I, not anyone else can travel that road for you,
You must travel it yourself.

It is not far...it is within reach...

Hamlet. 3.2.192-211

PLAYER KING
    What to ourselves in passion we propose,
    The passion ending, doth the purpose lose.
    The violence of either grief or joy
    Their own enactures with themselves destory.
    Where joy most revels, grief doth most lament;
    Grief joys, joy grieves, on slender accident.
    This world is not for aye, not 'tis not strange
    That even our loves should with our fortunes
       change;
    For 'tis a question left to prove,
    Whether love lead fortune, or else fortune love,
    The great man down, you mark his favorite flies;
    The poor advanced makes friends of enemies.
    And hitherto doth love on fortune tend;
    For who not needs shall never lack a friend,
    And who in want a hallow friend doth try
    Directly seasons him his enemy.
    But, orderly to end where I begun,
    Our wills and fates do so contrary run
    That our devices are still overthrown...

From "On Experience" p.356

I, who pretend to nothing else, find in myself such an infinite depth and variety that the sole fruit of my study is to make me feel how much I still have to learn. To this weakness of mine, which I so often admit, I owe my tendency to be modest, to accept the beliefs laid down for me, and to be consistently cool and modern in my opinions.

I also owe to it my hatred for that tiresome and wrangling arrogance which believes and trusts entirely in itself, and is the chief enemy of learning and truth.

Decameron, p. 800

All things have their own special purpose, but when they are wrongly used a great deal of harm may result, and the same applies to my stories. If anyone should want to extract evil counsel from these tales, or fashion an evil design, there is nothing to prevent him, provided he twists and distorts them sufficiently to find the thing he is seeking. And if anyone should study them for the usefulness and profit they may bring him, he will not be disappointed. Nor will they ever be thought of or described as anything but useful and seemly, if they are read at the proper time by the people for whom they were written.