The best quote I know about the fickle nature of affection comes from W.B. Yeats. Quoting his father, who may very well have been quoting Balzac, Yeats wrote: “A man does not love a woman because he thinks her clever or because he admires her, but because he likes the way she has of scratching her head.”
We all have books we love for reasons that we could never explain to another, let alone to ourselves. There are books we love because of where we were when we read them. Others we esteem because of how we think they changed us.
The bridge that art creates between the world and ourselves is important enough to make time for, even during the busiest of days. A few pages from a book of poetry or a good novel or a few minutes listening to a Coltrane session are as necessary to our spiritual life as prayer, another thing we too often neglect.
We know that humans are spiritual as well as physical beings. Those things that nourish us spiritually– religion, art, love, and friendship– are easy to overlook, to push to the end of the to-do list, to save for the weekend when time is not so valuable.
When we are young, I think we manage this balance a little better. Age and responsibilities though, conspire against us. This is one of the reasons that the books and music of our youth can still bring so much pleasure, can seem so much like a tonic at times.
In his prologue to Dyers Hand, W.H. Auden lists 6 characteristics of a critic. It is my hope that this blog, ClimbingSky, will grow to live up to Auden’s list.
1) Introduce me to authors or works of art of which I was hitherto unaware.
2) Convince me that I have undervalued an author or a work because I had not read them carefully enough.
3) Show me relations between works of different ages and cultures which I could never have seen for myself because I do not know enough and never shall.
4) Give a “reading” of a work which increases my understanding of it.
5) Throw light upon the process of artistic “Making.”
6) Throw light upon the relation of art to life, to science, economics, ethics, religion, etc.