Q13. The respondent wrote, ... Reading and the religious experience are
similar in that both encourage and promote some kind of awakening; both are
revelatory. The writer/ poet has a sacred duty, e.g., such as Coleridge says in Kubla
Khan, the poet/ writer is the long-haired, wild-eyed poet – mystic who translates our
experiences for us. He / she works in profound philosophical truths. Reading is like
praying, opening the mind to the unknown (and the soul).
Q14 and 15 The respondent wrote, ... Yes! Take John Fowles’ novel The French
Lieutenant’s Woman for example. Fowles takes the reader into many possibilities.
He challenges us to choose our ending, even our path, the same as the characters’
paths and endings are chosen. The writer manipulates our feelings, ideas,
assumptions, beliefs, expectancies ... As in Fowles’ book, we are the other character
in the book [ story] , the unspoken observer [ in the place that we are taken to] but
very much a part of the writer’s intention.
Q16. She responded, ... Yes! My unconscious has been affected. I am completely
drawn into the world of the writer, poet ... I t is something like a trance, a
transcendence of the real physical space I occupy. I t opens the mind, elevates the
spirit and makes the world and its possibilities infinite. This is why I identify it
(reading) as being a mystical experience.
Q18 and 19 Her response was, ... Place is very much there in the subconscious
and conscious mind of e.g., [ for example] J.R.Tolkien’s Middle Earth in The Lord of
the Rings saga means something special to me – Places are where I learn things.
Place is where our quest lies and it is part of us, just as it was for Frodo in The Lord
of the Rings ... Places are associations, not entities in themselves. Place is a symbol
for many things.
Q20 Here, she wrote, (in the context of discussing Tolstoy’s War and Peace), ...
The land draws together its people and insinuates itself upon the reader in such a
way that we regard it as a shaping force in the lives and emotions of its people.
Without sounding too pretentious, the people arise or emerge from it as if begotten.
Tolstoy’s creative genius allows him to use it, not so much as a backdrop, but as a
major protagonist who shapes ideas and character and draws all threads of the
story together, just as the vast network of rail lines has drawn different and
disparate areas of the country, so Tolstoy uses place as a unifying principle.
ron
(Ron)
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