This respondent felt that there was ... a very strong spiritual dimension to
reading and that literary genres all seem to run together – they speak to my soul
and she was intrigued by the way favourite authors, Tolstoy, Dosteovsky, Henry
James, G. Greene, James Lee, Thomas Merton and Joseph Campbell (I could go on,
but these are some) – of course, Shakespeare ... bring understanding to the human
condition and its origins.
Q5. Here, the respondent revealed just how much reading had influenced her
when she wrote; When my marriage broke down I read Henry James’ Portrait of A
Lady. I n about Ch 41 or 42, I sobel Archer thinks about leaving her husband. She
weighs up the pros and cons. This character seemed to articulate my own
experience, responsibilities, my own feelings of being trapped etc. I t helped me to
make a decision as well as illustrating or beautifully articulating my own quandary.
Anna Karinina, War and Peace, Crime and Punishment, The Power and the Glory, Dr
Zhivago, the Bible, The Teachings of Buddha – these are some of the books that
have spoken to me at a deep subliminal level.
Q6. Here, she said, ... My perceptions are more sharp, a little bit like blundering
on through life and suddenly, after looking through a glass darkly, you experience a
profound revelation. As I said once the creative process begins, i.e., reading and
re-creating what the writer has conveyed, then I think the Word (see Gospel of
John) does become flesh and you do enter a different realm of consciousness; the
world of the book .... I t is a very mystical process.
Q7. She believed that ... reading is a transformative act in the sense that you
become what you read. Your mind is given free play, you have the power, like the
writer, to shape images and realise them. Reading is re-creative and responsive so
that it is more accurately defined using your own faculty of the imagination.
Q8. The respondent wrote ... Yes! Reading is an empathetic process ... For
myself, I experienced this on reading Second Coming by W. B. Yeats. The images
presented in this poem draw the reader into that sense of falling into a narrow cone
of chaos (the widening gyre) so that one is presented with a portrait of Hell, of
encroaching evil ... an anarchy similar to the situation in Kosovo today is envisaged
and the feeling of horror seems as real as it is repugnant, all-encompassing and
doom fraught. The mind and emotions are in free play, associations are made, the
flesh crawls and the mood stays for hours and is recurring. As in the gyre one is
drawn in and enveloped by a process of identification. The same thing happened to
me when reading T.S. Eliot’s Journey of the Magi.
ron
(Ron)
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