Literature enlarges our being by admitting us to experiences not our own. They may be beautiful, terrible, awe-inspiring, exhilarating, pathetic, comic, or merely piquant. Literature gives the entree to them all. Those of us who have been true readers all our life seldom realize the enormous extension of our being that we owe to authors. We realize it best when we talk with an unliterary friend. He may be full of goodness and good sense, but he inhabits a tiny word. In it, we should be suffocated. My own eyes are not enough for me. Even the eyes of all humanity are not enough. Very gladly would I learn what face things present to a mouse or bee.
In reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself. Like the night sky in a Greek poem, I see with a thousand eyes, but it is still I who see. Here, as in worship, in love, in moral action, and in knowing, I transcend myself; and am never more myself than when I do.
Comentários
A parte a negrito, é bonita de ser ler. Podia dar uma música.
Mas isso parecem-me detalhes: em geral, uma vida sem leitura é mais pobre que uma vida com leitura, porque o mundo é mais pequeno quando só vemos com os nossos olhos, quando só o experimentamos com os nossos sentimentos.
Deixemos o Clive ser honesto, mesmo que pouco politicamente correcto. Aliás, acho que essa preocupação não exisitia na altura.