Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
I'm afraid I really see no reason for memorising poetry - that's why writing was invented in the first place, so that people didn't have to remember everything.
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Because, Harry, memorizing great writing is a way of building elevated language into the sinews and synapses of one's thought. Every English lit professor knows this, as does virtually every writer -- especially the greats. American poet Robert Gluck has even talked about transcribing Keats's poetry simply to feel what it was like to have that sort of concentrated beauty spill from his pen. J.S. Bach used to learn from other composers by copying out their scores, so the practice is represented in virtually every art -- we've all seen great examples of copied or imitated paintings.
These aren't things that we
have to do; they're things we
choose to do to counter the everyday hour-by-hour onslaught of mundane thought and feeling. Call it health food for the psyche and sensibility.
If you don't feel the need to do these things, that's fine; no one's going to judge you for living and reading in your own way. But to profess incredulity at anyone who bothers to memorize, quote or transcribe passages of writing that ring true for them shows that you probably haven't understood one of the fundamental ways in which the writers whom you admire learned their craft.