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About This Author
My name is Joy, and I love to write.
Why poetry, here? Because poetry uplifts its writer, and if she is lucky enough, her readers, too. Around us, so many objects abound to write about. Once a poet starts with a smallest, most trivial object, he shall discover that his pen will spill out what is most delicate or most majestic hidden inside him. Since the classics sometimes dealt with lofty subjects with a lofty language, a person with poetry in his soul may incline to emulate that. That is understandable. Poetry does that to a person: it enlarges the soul and gives it wings. Yet, to really soar, a poet needs to take off from the ground.
 
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Daily Cascade #1094807 added August 6, 2025 at 1:06pm
Restrictions: None
For the Love of Literature
Prompt:
"For the love of literature."
Write about this in your Blog entry today.
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Since this prompt is a phrase alone, it suggests to me doing something purely out of passion, appreciation, or love for books, reading, and the written word. It means dedication to literature for its own sake.
Literature for literature's sake...which brings to mind the attempt of some who like to see themselves in print, not for literature's sake but only for money, fame, or obligation. I have to say, here, "to each his or her own" since what anyone does is their own business.
As for me, my love of literature began very early with my mother's story-telling abilities. That's probably why I learned to read before I had turned four. Then, over the years, my love grew, and I ended up studying it very seriously throughout my years in higher education.
They say literature is for the rebellious, non-conforming spirit. Certainly, I am non-conforming, but rebellious, I don't think so. I never liked to make waves. Not that I couldn't, but I usually chose not to. Yet, I love literature even the kind that makes waves, and sometimes, I like especially the kind that makes waves. This is because I can make deep connections to people and ideas that I'm not too familiar with.
Then, call me, one-sided, but my closest friends have always been those who could write and/or those who loved reading. Also, every person has a different view about a particular topic...and the differences in opinion may collide. Then, even that can be an eye-opener.
I think, the importance of literature is best brought to print by the Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa. He says, in his essay, “Why Literature?” about those who do not read much:
"They earn my pity not only because they are unaware of the pleasure that they are missing, but because I am convinced that a society without literature or a society in which literature has been hated--like some hidden vice--to the margins of social and personal life, and transformed into something like a secterian cult, is a society condemned to become spiritually barbaric, and even to jeopardize its freedom."
He also goes on to say:
"It (literature} has enabled individuals, in all the particularities of their lives, to transcend history: as readers of Cervantes, Shakespeare, Dante, and Tolstoy, we understand each other across space and time, and we feel ourselves to be members of the same species because, in the works that these writers created, we learn what we share as human beings, what remains common in all of us under the broad range of differences that separate us. Nothing better protects a human being against the stupidity of prejudice, racism, religious or political sectarianism, and exclusivist nationalism than this truth that invariably appears in great literature: that men and women of all nations and places are essentially equal, and that only injustice sows among them discrimination, fear, and exploitation."
And I so agree! |
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