An Experiment in Criticism: Nancy Clark

Posted At : October 9, 2008 1:00 AM
Related Categories: Personal Narratives

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Taken from An Experiment in Criticism by C.S. Lewis, published by Cambridge University Press.

Contributed and read by Nancy Clark: "This passage was introduced to me by my first college English professor, Dr. Suzanne Rahn." Nancy was born and raised in Anchorage, and is head of the reference department at the Anchorage Public Library. Her interesting website: The Dead People Server -- it verifies celebrity and other notable deaths and dispels false death reports.

In An Experiment in Criticism, C.S. Lewis writes:

"Those of us who have been true readers all our life seldom fully realise the enormous extension of our being which we owe to authors. We realise it best when we talk with an unliterary friend. He ... inhabits a tiny world. ... My own eyes are not enough for me, I will see through those of others. Reality, even seen through the eyes of many, is not enough. I will see what others have invented. ...

... in reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself. Like the night sky in the Greek poem, I see with a myriad eyes, but it is still I who see. Here, as in worship, in love, in moral action, and in knowing, I transcend myself; and am never more myself than when I do."

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