(c) Reader 2. J.M. (Retired Teacher of English Literature - HSC Coordinator.)
JM began by explaining that she is a confirmed bibliophile and elaborated in
Question 2 by stating I read through the night, and consequently feel too tired for
work every morning. I often feel resentful about being at work because it’s a waste
of good reading time. .... Reading makes me more tolerant than I ’d otherwise be ...
reading makes me more accepting of humanity. (I ndeed, in response to Question
9, JM wrote, ... I have no memory of not reading ... and that ... birthday and
Christmas presents were always books, always rapturously received and dearly
treasured to be read and re read over and over.)) I n response to Question 3, JM
stated that, as a result of reading, she lives vicariously and simultaneously, rather
than a singular, limited, linear life experience.
Q3. JM wrote that, ... Hardy’s Wessex, Dostoevsky’s St. Petersburg, Paretaby’s
Chicago, Yeats’ Dublin and Coole Park, Wordsworth’s Windermere ... are all
examples of symbiotic relationship between place and people and that the where is
just as important to a work of literature as the who, the what, the when, the how
and the why – and often ... is instrumental in determining the others. ... The spirit
of place is so potent and pervasive that the writings in question could not be
separated from it.
Most significantly, JM wrote that these locales and settings include artificially
contrived socio/ moral/ emotional landscapes of the imagination ... But, draw me
back, inevitably, frequently, to the notion of the divine in nature ... I ’m a pantheist
at heart, all ground is sacred.
Q5. Here, she revealed that her childhood dreams were often haunted by
savages and wild beasts, all the terrors of the Amazon jungle but that Africa
remains the dark continent ... the Heart of Darkness. She continued ... as a
teenager, discovering Russian literature was a mind-blowing experience and that
Hardy’s novels helped her focus on the idea of landscapes as imaginative
projections of darkness and light in the human psyche.
Q6. Here, she conceded that she has experienced, while reading, Déjà vu, yes,
but perhaps more as a flash of recognition when some buried knowledge or partial
understanding is freshly articulated ... returning to places with new insights gained
through reading, ... as was the case when she went to live in I reland. She reported
that altered states of consciousness used to occur more frequently in the days when
I was more self-absorbed and precious than I am now ... poetry still has this effect.