Tuesday, December 11, 2007

more scarlet letter.

i was kinda rushed my last post so i didnt get the chance to say everything i wanted to say. and so here be the list of quotes i had marketh for thine eyes. (HAHA. failure...) Hawthorne's words are quite compelling to my heart, you have no idea.

1. "He loved the truth and loathed the lie...therefore above all things else he loathed his miserable self!"

2. "It is to the credit of human nature that, except where its selfishness is brought into play, it loves more readily than it hates. Hatred by a gradual & quiet process, will even be transformed into Love, unless the change be impeded by a continually new irritation of the original feeling of hostility."
(hawthorne could not be any truer.)

3. "Let men tremble to win the hand of woman, unless they win along with it the utmost passion of her heart." (haha i just liked this one. lmao it's a quote that long would have mocked my "feminist-ism" from last year..hahaha)

and these are regarding the words of keith neilson:

4. "That is Hawthorne's definition of sin: whatever isolates man from others and from himself. although Hawthorne might not have used the word himself, "A" equals alienation." (guess that makes me quite the sinner, eh?)

5. "To be fully human is to balance the heart, the mind, and the spirit. If any one of them overwhelm the other two, the self --that is the soul-- can be lost. Thus, The Scarlet Letter becomes a kind of parable of lost human potential --the Artist, the Scientist, and the minister each wasting not only what they were, but what they might have been." (story of my LIFE. wow..)

if this last statement of keith neilson is true, it is reasonable that i saw myself in the character of Hester Prynne at times, for i am "motivated by [my] heart--feelings, emotions, impulses--and defects of the heart." and just as Hester wears the scarlet letter on her bosom, i wear my heart on my sleeve. i am not afraid to show emotion. both of our problems are "excess of the heart," as neilson would say. even so, i see myself as Dimmesdale at times with this being said by neilson: "he is so concerned with the state of his soul that he cannot deal with the real world in which he must operate." how many times has that happened to me?? ... either way, it just proves to show that keith neilson is right; to be fully human is to have that balance of the heart, mind, and spirit. and i have yet to find that balance. good thing i still have the rest of my life to do so.

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