Since commenting on Walt Whitman in Literacy, Halloween Style, I thought to mark my point more explicitly. It turns, implicitly, on more active reading. You'll recall my About-page remarks: "My writing is unfortunately affected by too much old book learning, the revenge of dead trees upon the living." It falls equally upon aging writers, too.
Two great-souled men of philosophy and literature, Francis Bacon and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, today seem apt in their own spirited thoughts on book reading and what I'd call adult-level literacy.
Some books are to be tasted [Bacon claims], others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to read only in parts; others to be read but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.
There are three kinds of readers [Goethe judges]: one, who enjoys without judging; a third, who judges without enjoying; another in the middle, who judges while enjoying and enjoys while judging. The last class truly reproduces a work of art anew; its members are not numerous.
You might consider such souls as reminding us anew of our own duties, to get on with life while simultaneously finding meaning — especially on this day — in the full face of death.
It's the triple groundwork — don't you think? — of freedom, of democracy, and, perhaps, of happiness itself.
Unless otherwise stated, all original materials of whatever kind included in these pages, including weblog archives, are licensed under a Creative Commons License.
