Thursday, October 20, 2016

Thursday Thoughts...

“A writer is a world trapped in a person.” 

Victor Hugo

It's kind of about books I guess when you think about writers...

This is a big thought and I pondered and pondered it to make sure I could understand what I thought it really meant.  I think it is a lovely description of the expansiveness of a writer of fiction in particular; but possibly also of non-fiction, in terms of how big their creativity can be.

The notion that a whole world, imagined, created, described and brought to life (think JK Rowling and Tolkien) exists within a person - that a writer is that whole world inside one person. Delightful and possibly so very true!

Each time a writer either creates a world or describes a world for us, it is like that world exists within them. The sense of being trapped seems to be as much about the point of release - the time when the world has to be brought to life in the outer real world; the publication point. Or the telling time, when I think about it more - lots of parents are great at telling stories to their children that are whole lands and characters and worlds created in their heads.


Whole worlds lie within...

2 comments:


  1. just read this last night & feel that it fits in-

    "... Just as the artist's imagination "has a gift" that brings the work to life, so in the realized gifts of the gifted the spirit of the group "has a gift." These creations are not "merely" symbolic, they do not "stand for" the larger self; they are its necessary embodiment, a language without which it would have no life at all."

    from "The Gift- Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World" by Lewis Hyde (p.199)

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    Replies
    1. Isn't that intriguing Mo? I have the book and dip into it occasionally - seems like I need to spend more time with it! We all have gifts, and the gifts we share are almost necessary...

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