2003-04-06 - 9:31 p.m. - -
i was writing a paper on the negative effects that the literary canon has on...well...basically, everything. I was using Conrad's Heart of Darkness and Chinua Achebe's essay on it to illustrate the racism that exists in many 'classic' and 'essential' novels. i hunted down and dug up my old copy of heart of darkness, the one i had to purchase and read in Mrs. Blatt's 12th grade British Literature class so that i could quote some passages. i hadn't touched the book since my senior year.i opened it and saw on the inside of the fron cover a poem that we talked about in class one day. it is called "In A Station of the Metro" It is by Ezra Pound. It goes a little something like this:
"The apparition of these faces in a crowd; petals on a wet black bough."
a moment to let it sink in.
i believe that this is the most amazing sentence every written in the english language. but seeing it there, written, still there on the inside cover of this novel ever since my senior year of high school, well i have to say that i definitely cried a little bit. or leaked a little bit from the eyes. you know. it happens.
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