Belles Lettres

[fdelano]

Belles-lettres

 

Those words chosen, that when arranged to convey the mood, emotion, setting and intention of the author, take on a presence of their own. They are words that live and live again each time they are read. Their construction and juxtaposition often bring about a lyrical quality, a Gestalt result that is so much more than simply a summation of the piece, or the passing on of information.

 

Does the work put you there in the action? Do you sense the surroundings and their framing relationship to the events? Do you react physically to the tension, the love, the anger, the danger, hilarity, or the pangs of disaster? Do you identify with the characters to the point of deep empathy? Do you sometimes fear to turn the next page? Do you rejoice with the spontaneous discovery of the unique attraction of lovers? Do you sometimes gasp or laugh out loud or cry? Do you want the story to never end?

 

“I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids—and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus sideshows, it is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass. When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination—indeed, everything and anything except me.”

Ralph Ellison

 

“Nick looked at the burned-over stretch of hillside, where he had expected to find the scattered houses of the town and then walked down the railroad track to the bridge over the river. The river was there. It swirled against the log spiles of the bridge. Nick looked down into the clear brown water, colored from the pebbly bottom, and watched the trout keeping themselves steady in the current with wavering fins. As he watched them they changed their positions by quick angles, only to hold steady in the fast water again. Nick watched them for a long time.”

Ernest Hemingway

 

“The writer has a way with words, and those words equally have a way with the Writer. Words offer more than expression to the Writer; they are his tools, yet they absorb him. Floating in softly at first, they become entrapped in his mind, sometimes banging forcefully against barriers for release.”

Gail Elizabeth Price

 

Enduring works are those that mirror life with reflections that become more real and solid with each new reader.

 

fdharden - 2008