UNLEARNING

Unlearning is the choice, conscious or unconscious, of any real artist…The ability to see things fresh and new and in eternity, rather than in time, can be lost—and for the writer to lose it and not find it again is fatal. It is our unlearning we share in our writing whether for children or grownups, that unlearning which gives us the courage to open ourselves to the sinister as well as the dexterous part of our creativity. Thus we will be able to work to our fullest, to allow the characters that people our stories to lead us in directions we never anticipated. We don’t need to settle for the limited selves we can control and manipulate.

From Madeleine L’Engle Herself: Reflections on a Writing Life. Compiled by Carole F. Chase. Colorado Springs: WaterBook Press, 2001.

Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie
Thy Soul's immensity;
Thou best Philosopher, who yet dost keep
Thy heritage, thou Eye among the blind,
That, deaf and silent, read'st the eternal deep,
Haunted for ever by the eternal mind,--
Mighty Prophet! Seer blest!
On whom those truths do rest,
Which we are toiling all our lives to find,
In darkness lost, the darkness of the grave;
Thou, over whom thy Immortality
Broods like the Day, a Master o'er a Slave,
A Presence which is not to be put by;
Thou little Child, yet glorious in the might
Of heaven-born freedom on thy being's height,
Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke
The years to bring the inevitable yoke,
Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife?
Full soon thy Soul shall have her earthly freight,
And custom lie upon thee with a weight
Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life!

From Intimations of Immortality
by William Wordsworth, 1770-1850