As I have previously told you, I am currently reading an English Literature degree. This, as I'm sure most of you will have guessed, involves a lot of reading. I am not about to proceed with a moan about how much time this takes out of my day, or how I dislike having to constantly have my head in a book as I do understand how ridiculous that would sound. It was my own decision after all to study literature. I would like to, however, to draw attention the world of mysterious and confusing literature.
Some of the most recent texts I have been studying include William Blake's Urizen and James Joyce's Ulysses and for those of you who have not had the life changing chance to read and process them, you will not be able to comprehend quite how confusing they both are. I mean, seriously Joyce, I understand that this is quite possibly one of the greatest pieces of modern literature, but at some points were you literally just putting words on a page?
In my recent seminar in which we were discussing Blake and Urizen I made the highly educated point that the text was in fact 'confusing and I didn't really get it.'
My seminar leader's reply....
'That's the point. You're not supposed to get it.'
Now, I love a good old tough piece of literature with huge amounts of allusions and metaphorical images, but I fail to understand what the point is of writing something that no one is ever going be able to recognise what the images, or the words actually mean. How can literature be considered inspired and fantastic if no one knows what it really means?
For all we know Blake wasn't trying to write his own version of the Bible. Maybe it was just a fancy to do list.
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