Get Drunk!
My friend Vijaya Sirimalle recently mentioned that she had found her Dream, her Passion a little later in life, but it had transported her existence into a sustained state of positive energy. Such passion for anything, whenever we find it in life, is a blessing.
My passion was always literature and writing, since childhood. My grandfather being a professor of English, with his own passion for writing poetry, and my home being a heaven filled with books was what fueled my passion. All through my career, I have been fortunate that I could get to write, albeit in the area of communications or technology. Along the way, I also have been able to write other works, and keep this flame burning.
Earlier this week an old friend / colleague Dan Bissonnette sent me this cartoon, and I decided to write this article on some strategies for reading and enjoying Literature:
1) Surface vs Depth – read to first grasp the surface of the text (literal meaning) and then to seek deeper, less obvious meanings lying underneath.
2) Patterns - find an image, word choice or other design that is repeated in unexpected places throughout the text.
3) Opposites - notice contradictions or opposites in the text and draw conclusions that complicate the traditional way we understand things.
4) Context – Discover or support an interpretation by using information about the author’s time period, cultural background and their other works,
5) Genre - Discover or support an interpretation by using information about the history, cultural associations, or conventions of the text’s genre and by noting cultural references made in the text.
6) Social Bearing - use the text to understand the origins or nature of social issues in our own contemporary society.
7) Theory - interpret the text through the lens of a theory outside of the text, to see what this lens elucidates or highlights in the content.
8) Critical Conversation - Identify a point of disagreement or a gap in what others have said about the text and responding to it by adding a new point.
In this article, I will just elaborate Point One. And will do similarly for the rest of the points in future articles. The example I have chosen is the poem below.
Literal Meaning: This poem describes how important it is to be in a perpetual state of inebriation, no matter how that state comes about: for example, from drinking, from women, from being a good person. It says that everything in life wants us (and tells us) to be drunk at all times. The literal meaning is therefore, enjoy life all the time.
Deeper (Figurative) Meaning: This poem is a reminder to us about the importance of living with passion and stimulation, the importance of finding what makes you wildly happy, whether it’s partying, romance, or spirituality. The main thing is that this passion will take us out of our daily rut, and the mindset of melancholia or loneliness. And if we mindfully listen to the world around us, it, too, reminds us to be passionate. The deeper meaning is therefore, find your passion in life and give your all to it.
How did we arrive at the deeper meaning: “Wine, women, or virtue, as you please” are just a few symbols of sources of gratification --- alcohol provides recreational pleasure, romance provides sexual satisfaction and virtue provides spiritual bliss. Being intoxicated means being saturated, overcome with giddiness, to the point of not worrying or fretting. And that is the ideal state of elevated passion to be in – with whatever is our raison d'être.
Why (we premise) Baudelaire wanted to communicate this message to us: The poet keeps repeating references to time and “Time’s burden,” which is the clock, the relentless passage of days toward the end of our lives. The poet believes that experiencing such deep, abiding, satiating passion helps us deal with the weight of our humanity, our mortality.
Engaging the reader (what this text offers of use and relevance to the reader): The title itself denotes something frivolous, something lighthearted. The title seems current, or at least, and the language is relevant to contemporary lifestyles. And in addition, on reading the poem, Baudelaire’s advice is to fritter away life in wine, women and some sense of virtue. But looking deeper into his piece, the answer is not in “wine, women, or virtue” but rather in all three, in finding one’s pleasure in fun, in love, and in a deeper connection to goodness that will make a better life for all over time. Looking even deeper, the answer lies in any passion in life that gives us a scope to lead a full existence and make the best use of the time allotted to us on this planet Earth.
~~~ All literature is but a word -- a thought -- a maxim amplified. (Edward Counsel, Maxims) ~~~