In high school we were forced to read Hemingway. I hated it. I thought (and still think) that he is a misogynist, somewhat trite author, and a bit of a bore (although I’ll give him a little redemption for Old Man and the Sea). However, a poem in the forward to one of his books struck me. For years it was plastered to my bedroom wall, showing up in Grandma Betty’s and following me to my college dorm. Somewhere along the way, the paper and the poem disappeared, and honestly, I had not thought about it in years.
I came across it yesterday and immediately copied it in my notebook. Looking back to it, I can’t help but think that these words had somehow sunk into my subconscious, subtly shaping my thoughts and experiences over the years. If someone asks for a reason I am in my chosen field, or the why for where my passions lie, I think that these words sum up the answer better than anything I could muster…
No man is an island,
entire of itself;
everyman is a piece of the Continent,
A part of the Main;
Any man’s death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in Mankind;
and therefore never send to know
for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.
John Donne, Devotions, XVII
Violet | 10-Feb-06 at 6:50 am | Permalink
I LOVE John Donne. During my undergrad I memorized a number of his poems. This one is definitely his most famous, but not the most profound. I’m glad to know we have this in common.
eli | 10-Feb-06 at 7:11 am | Permalink
If you cannot stand Hemingway, then I ask do you like Fitzgerald or do you like Faulkner? My reasoning is that readers fall into two categories when it comes to American Realists (althougth I would hardly call Fitzgerald a realist). I fall into the Fitzgerald camp simply because I read fiction to escape. Faulkner was difficult because it was written similar to Twain, using a southern voice that was unfamiliar and difficult to me.
However, I love Donne’s poem.
Holly | 10-Feb-06 at 4:51 pm | Permalink
Looking back, I think I liked both Faulkner and Fitzgerald. But I think I only read one by each. Hard to remember — around the end of high school I basically began to steer clear of anything written by a dead white man. Nothing personal, I just felt like all the stories were the same and I was bored. It was reading Richard Wright’s Black Boy and especially Native Son which gave me that realization. (Native Son had a tremendous impact on me; I read it the summer before my senior year of high school.)
In recent years, I haven’t read much fiction at all. Mostly because of time — there is so much to read to be on top of things that even in leisure I tend to stick to things related to health, development, globalization… that sort of stuff. So the majority are academic journals and nonfiction books. Considering how stimulating I find the topics, I don’t consider it a sacrifice; it is truly a preference these days. I’m especially in love with ethnographies/monographs and will pick up something along these lines before a fiction novel. (The exception are the Harry Potter novels, which I’ve been enamored with since the publication of Book 2.)
Cold Spaghetti » Blog Archive » Part of the Main | 27-Nov-08 at 11:17 pm | Permalink
[…] blogged about my own beliefs on these things before; John Donne still says it better than I ever […]