26/1001 - FryeDay 2/8/2025

 

"It's Friday! Fryeday!" 

I love this line from Frye's discussion of King Lear. It's exactly right. As our language goes, so goes our humanity. When we cultivate our speech and our language, we open up new avenues and gain new abilities for deeper thoughts and broader experiences. You can't think thoughts beyond your language ability. 

This is why books written in old, unfamiliar, difficult language are a necessaty part ofnour reading life. They feed our thought life. Books that challenge us with their vocabulary and sentence structures force us to think outside of our modern verbal frameworks. They help us to think beyond ourselves. Language is a wonder. The way we use it reflects and determines how we think about ourselves, the world, and everything in it and beyond it. The struggle is worthwhile.

Short Story: I read the first 2 chapters of The Secret Garden

Essay: 'Wells of Fancy' by Donnarae MacCann in Only Connect - a pleasant essay. Nothing new or spectacular, but still worthwhile. It's nice to read a defense of fantasy and Alice in Wonderland & Through the Looking Glass specifically. Some quotes:

"When the writer himself makes a game of his storytelling, the child is apt to return to the fantasy again and again. And this is one of the most observable of the child's reactions to fantasies: he rereads them, apparently repeating his enjoyment of the game."

"The child audience is the ideal audience to respond to this most subtle of literary gifts. Although the child doesn't know what has captured him, every line he reads or hears reveals the author's power and imaginative and expressive talent. The loyalties children exhibit toward certain authors indicate their sensitivity to the power and consistency of an individual style. There is clearly a pleasure in how things are written as well as what-a response to the writer's mode of thinking. Children refer to certain authors by name and know them as distinctive voices."

"But what special demands does a fantasy make upon readers? Only that they be willing to encounter the supernatural and to receive the book as a whole. Certainly the playfulness of many fantasies, the conception of something new and completely self-contained, the distinctive voice, these are pleasures to offer to all children, not just to the few. As for the social commentary, this too is usually comprehended by a wide range of readers. ...In an age of dreary sameness in the mass media, it is indeed cause for celebration that the 'wells of fancy' have sprung up so plentifully during the last century."

Poem:

All But Blind

by Walter de la Mare

All but blind

In his chambered hole,

Gropes for worms

The four-clawed mole.

All but blind

In the evening sky,

The hooded Bat

Twirls softly by.

All but blind

In the burning day,

The barn owl

Blunders on her way.

And blind as are

These three to me,

So blind to someone

I must be.