an eye for an eye

One of my favorite books is The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas. Full of deceit, revenge, love, fighting, jealousy, learning, and so much more, this book is hard to put down despite its intimidating size. I actually reread it this past summer, immersing myself into the pages. I love the way Faria takes in Edmond on the Chateau d’If, replacing Dántes’ beloved father. The way Edmond escapes and maneuvers himself into the lives of those who abandoned, set up, and ruined him in the first place. His deception is graceful and terribly satisfying to the reader.
 
At the end of the book, Dántes sails off into the sunset with his young Greek wife Haydée, completely satisfied with the work he did among those who had screwed him over, so to speak. The happiness that is portrayed in the end of Edmond’s story always was unsettling to me. I realized that this was because his happiness, and his peace, came from his revenge, not from a legitimate source of happiness that I would understand or that I had been taught. Being slightly familiar with the code of Hammurabi, I realized this was an old law that isn't a part of the gospel I know. I came to terms with the end of the book by focusing more on the good deeds the Count performed, even though this perspective did not exactly line up with my own gospel principles. "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth" no longer resonates with the gospel of Christ, and does not sit well with me either, and this book verified to me that that is not the way I ought to live.


Examples of spiritual-literary experiences:
- The poem I wrote to deal with the loss of my friend
- Being told bedtime stories by my mother when I was little
- Studying Shakespeare in my classes
- Teaching others anthropology as a teaching assistant at BYU through my own studies
- Writing any spoken word poems and being able to perform them
- Writing letters to missionaries
- Keeping a blog when on my own study abroad
- Reading Shel Silverstein poetry books and More Silver Pennies

Literature as Self-Relfection

I have read "Faust" Part 1 by Goethe in two of my English classes.  I have read other novels that have provided a spiritual experience along the lines of a burning in my bosom and bringing tears to my eyes.  However, this novel provided a different types of spiritual experience, one of self-reflection and a touch of chastisement.

Faust was a great scholar and a man who continually seeks for more than he has.  In a short summary, he sells his soul to the devil for power, lust and worldly things.  As I read the novel, I realized that I have more in common than I care to have.  I am not saying that I have sold my soul but I was made aware of two things: things things I put before God and the abundance that I have. Reading Faust and seeing this character choose things of a worldly nature caused a degree of self reflection about how I value my spiritual life and its up keep.  How often have I chosen social media, physical appearance and other worldly desires and activities over God?

Faust had a great yearning for more than his secular knowledge.  Being an individual who has taken part in the spiritual, I understand why Faust would yearn for more.  Faust's yearning made me realize the abundant blessings i have.  Though a cliche statement, I don't know who I would be or what I would have without the spiritual truths I have been given.  Even so, would I sell my soul for more?  Literature has a way of uplifting and making you feel differently but also has a way of illuminating the need for self-assessment and change.

Spiritual Literary Experiences:

• reading Wordsworth's "We are Seven" and his understanding of the next life
• writing literary blogposts on my personal blog
• Reading "Frankenstein" and feeling that all desire love and acceptance
• Helping my high school sister with her Shakespeare homework
• Watching "Phantom of the Opera" after having read the novel and having a literary conversation with a roommate about the tragic character of the Phantom
• Reading Tolkien's "Return of the King" and seeing that all people have a place and a purpose

Losing Reading

When I was in High School, I started reading. It wasn't my choice, but my slowly developing sense of integrity was still strong enough by my sophomore year to draw me away from Sparknotes and into the paperbacks I was assigned. I had heard a lot about gateway drugs growing up in Southern California, but I was unfamiliar with the idea of a gateway book until I read To Kill A Mockingbird. As I muscled through the early pages of the novel, trying to understand what people seemed to love about the whole reading thing, I came across a line that has largely shaped how I think about literature in my life today. Contemplating reading, Scout states, "Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing."

I read that and wanted to understand it. I had had a similar experience with sports growing up. I often had minor injuries I attained from playing soccer, none of which threatened anything but my temporary mobility, but these experiences had reminded me of muscles I had never noticed making a difference in my happiness until they were disabled. Through reading, I started to explore similar untapped parts of me, and eventually learned what it meant to fear losing it.

• Reading my digital journal I kept during my study abroad in Jerusalem and having a whole new experience reading through the printed version.
• Buying the short stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald and JD Salinger in high school. 
• Writing poetry for competitions as an elementary school student and being given encouragement to continue writing by judges. 
• Reading Borges for the first time in Spanish after my mission and having a whole new experience with it. 
• Finding my favorite book, A Separate Peace, when I was 16 and re-reading it every year. 

"Because we cannot know enough people"

When I was a college freshman—back when I liked to read obscure books to satisfy my pretension—I stumbled upon a genre I had never heard of before, in a book and author who were equally unfamiliar: Novelists and Novels, a collection of essays in literary criticism by Harold Bloom.

          Cool! I thought, this guy has read all the cool books that I have, and even some that I haven’t! Too cheap to buy the book, I spent hours at the BYU bookstore, flipping through Bloom’s essays, anxious to hear what he thought about Jane Eyre, Sons and Lovers, The Sound and the Fury, Ulysses. I subscribed completely to Bloom’s philosophy: reading well means seeking for aesthetic and spiritual wisdom, not collecting ammunition for political polemics.

          Bloom completely altered the path of my education. He taught me to read books as I would read scripture, that literature is different than allegory, that solitude requires responsibility. He gave me the courage to change majors, and to take literature as seriously as I do living. This is spirituality—the art of living full, and of embracing humanity with confidence. Six years later, I am amazed that his writing had this effect on me, particularly because there is so much other literary criticism out there that I find soul-suckingly anti-human.

          I haven’t given you any examples yet, so I will just end this essay with one of his quotes:

Reading well is one of the great pleasures that solitude can afford you, because it is, at least in my experience, the most healing of pleasures. It returns you to otherness, whether in yourself or in your friends, or in those who may become friends. Imaginative literature is otherness, and as such alleviates loneliness. We read…because we cannot know enough people.

(How to Read and Why, 19). 

An Old Book is Like a Friend

I stood in awe, staring at row after row of books. My fingers brushed over the worn edges of each used title. Harry Potter e la pietra filosofale, Jane Eyre, Le fiabe grimm. Some of the titles were the same, while others bore their equivalent in Italian. Never before had I been so star-struck standing in a bookstore as I was that day.
Regardless of my adoration for literature, it had been months since I had picked up a novel. I was serving a full-time mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and as a result, I had chosen to leave such passions behind me for 18 months. But it wasn't easy.
My companion and I had been walking down the street when this ancient bookstore caught my eye. We wandered in and found the most adorable mini-replica of the Beast's library from Beauty and the Beast. Old, loved books lined the walls from top to bottom, stacked so high it required a ladder to reach them all. In that moment, standing in an old bookstore in Italy, I realized how deeply literature had touched me throughout my life. In a moment when I couldn't read for pleasure, I recognized how my books had changed me over the years and made me who I am today.

Sample of my personal baby library (it's growing!)

Spiritual-literary experiences:

• Listening to my daddy read his favorite childhood book, The Great Brain by John D Fiztgerald aloud to me and my siblings
• Writing letters to family and friends
• Listening to Josh Turner's song Me and God 
• Reading inspirational quotes on pinterest
• Writing about my brother's experience with cancer
• Discussing books with my parents
• Receiving a treasured antic book from my grandma every year for Christmas
• Discovering the deep insight in Crime and Punishment in a high school English class

Finding Myself

     I have found out, throughout the course of my very short life, that sometimes we can forget ourselves. We forget ourselves when we abandon the dreams, the desires of our hearts, the fantasies and aspirations we used to hold so dear as children. I don’t think it’s something that is done on purpose, it’s just that in the routine of life, sometimes dreams get lost, and with them, a part of ourselves gets lost as well. But getting lost is not the worst thing that could happen, because you can always find yourself again, and the manner in which you do is different for each one. Mine, came through a story.

     “Y colorin colorado, este cuento aun no se ha acabado.” I read this beautiful, short novel in Spanish written by Odin Dupeyron when I was younger and had in a sense, lost myself. In English, it translates to: “And this story has not yet ended.” One day, my mom handed me this book and told me to read it, that I needed it. She was right. The story helped me to, in a way, find myself again. It helped me remember the girl I wanted to and aspired to be. “Forgive me if I have left you alone. Forgive me if I have forgotten you…but you will no longer be alone, my little girl, because I will be with you. We have many dreams ahead to fulfill my dear, and this time, I promise, I really promise that I will fulfill them for you.” These words, meant as a promise from the present older girl to the younger self, are what really inspired me to find myself again and retake my abandoned dreams.

Other spiritual-literary experiences:
- Reading my past journal entries; all the heartaches and pains and to realize that I’ve grown so much since then
- Reading letters that I wrote to myself starting from the 8^th grade up until before leaving for college with really inspiring messages to myself that were just what I needed to hear
- Reading the letters my mom wrote to me when I was younger, telling me not to abandon my talent and passion for writing and other really inspiring words I needed to hear that meant a lot coming from her
- Writing a mission statement for my life in a student development class here at BYU (my goals, purpose in life) and re-reading that every once in a while (really helps to maintain perspective and remember what life is really about)
- When I read the beloved Anne of Green Gables. I love that book and as a young girl, I loved to just sit there and mull over the words that I found in that book and it’s a good inspiring book to have when you’re young            

           

Memory, Learning, Reality

Since childhood, I’ve recognized the value of writing things down. Something written is something remembered. The act of recording something also forces you to think it through, thereby teaching you more about itself. And writing something down makes it real.

Generally, these perks—memory, learning, and reality—have made journaling a favorite activity of mine. But a three-month gap in my high school journal proves an exception. I didn’t want to remember or learn anything else about that time. And more than anything, I wished it didn’t have to be real.

My intent had been to banish the memories, but instead I’d put them under house arrest. The unexpressed anger, questions, and grief stiffened my soul.

So one day I gave in. I wrote. Not in my journal—not in a way that would make much sense to anyone else. This time it was a poem. Literarily, it wasn’t much. It didn’t even kick out the memories. 

But it brought her to my door: Peace. And she—she picked the lock, creaked open the door, and called in restful tones, “You need not stay here—you are free to go.” She was speaking to the memories, but also to me.

All of us return now and again, but only when we choose to—when we’re ready for the learning and reality. But Peace always comes with us. And she makes all the difference.    


Other spiritual-literary experiences:

• Seeing myself in the character of a story I was writing--and thereby something I needed to change
• Understanding an Emily Dickinson poem so well it knocked the wind out of me
• Venting my anger at a boy through a poem (and then forgiving him about three rereads later)
• Watching the film version (with Kenneth Branagh one, of course) of "Much Ado About Nothing" and realizing why Shakespeare is worth studying in every single English class
• Finishing the "Harry Potter" series and feeling like I'd lost one of my closest friends
• The first time I wrote a sonnet (incorrectly, but that didn't end up being important), which made that form my favorite to write in
• Receiving "letters" (actually script-style records of conversations with near-edible morsels of personality) from my family on my mission

A Tree Grows In Brooklyn: Only let me be something

Photo by erin m

There have been many moments whilst reading literature that I have stopped, stunned at a phrase that seems so simple but writes truth so perfectly. One such moment was while I was reading A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith. Following the childhood of Francie, a studious young girl who escapes her alcoholic, poverty-stricken home life through books, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn would often move me with small, profound ideas. While sitting in the passenger seat of my car on a hot day, I was reading while my husband was driving, waiting for me to tell him the next passage that was too good to be left unspoken. 

Currently suffering from a bout of depression, I look up at Spencer and say, "Listen to this: 'Dear God,' she prayed, 'let me be something every minute of every hour of my life. Let me be gay; let me be sad. Let me be cold; let me be warm. Let me be hungry . . . have too much to eat. Let me be ragged or well dressed. Let me be sincere—be deceitful. Let me be truthful; let me be a liar. Let me be honorable and let me sin. Only let me be something every blessed minute. And when I sleep, let me dream all the time so that not one little piece of living is ever lost." 

When I finished Spencer, who has also suffered from depression, breathed deeply, saying nothing. It had been said. We were glad in that moment to live any moment because at least that moment included life itself. 


Other spiritual experience with literature include:

• Understanding happiness while reading the first lines of Anna Karenina: "All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."
•  Feeling the vast intricacies of nature, and the lonely fullness of my identity within nature while reading The Rings of Saturn. I may be an individual, and I may even be alone sometimes, but I exist within the far expanses of a beautiful eternity.
• Experiencing the palpable reality of sin and redemption in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.
• Listening to the voice of Death as the narrator of The Book Thief.
• Reading the accounts of Elie Wiesel's Night and Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning, in comparison to each other as a study of suffering and either losing or finding God when there is no balm in Gilead. 
• Listening to my husband stand up and recite the poem "I Don't Care".
• Reading "Rabbi Ben Ezra" by Robert Browning with my husband the night he proposed to me.