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Throughout her entire life, she refused to play a role in the actual social life. She’d rather be kept to her innermost self. But after two centuries, a girl, afar in another continent, was sitting by the west window and relishing her poems, diaries and letters.
I could understand the way she took for her life, but the worldly happiness is still appealing to me. Anyway she was lucky that she had the material affluence to pursue her ideal and make it thorough and beautiful. But one thing unbelievable is that her family didn’t make any effort to fix her up with somebody, and they didn’t complain anything about it. There were several gentlemen who once stirred her peaceful soul, but she refrained from accepting lest the ordinary life would poach on the territory of her indistinct way of poem composition, which might also be the reason for her keeping from the crowd. She stubbornly equivocated about her love, which was not a profanity to Father at all to my point of view. On the other hand, not for her restraint, the world wouldn’t have a chance to savour such lonely beauty, and the world would just have another no-name happy family in Amherst, Massachusetts.
In the daily occurrences, she was silent while the world was talking; while in her poems, it was she, alone, who’s articulate for belief, nature, and death. I suppose she’s aware that it’s hapless to expect perfection of an imperfect world but perfection was all she wanted for her life, therefore she made up a spiritually perfect little world of her own, bringing all the heavenly immortality to the feast.
I think I know the culprit for her keeping at a distance from the world. That was her gradual obsession with letters. As a horse sense, people would be more frank to their own feelings and “speak” more correctly on the paper, because they are granted with time and space to listen to their heart closely. But as soon as she found words on paper instead of that from mouth could speak more and better of her mind; and all the people around her unconsciously encouraged this way of communication, she got a good reason to retreat from the world entirely. It was just like the modern internet over-indulged youth, who communicate better and more via network than in reality. The only vital difference was that some create something spectacular in this condition while some else don’t.
And the world is a huge substantial machine, which needs people to contribute to its proper operation in order to guarantee the worldly happiness of the majority. But such mysterious great poets should just be worshipped high at the shrine and their master works be relished to keep a calm and safe distance from the desire-ridden society.
--Claire |
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