The Comfort of the Written Word

I just finished reading a delightful book call The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. It's a series of fictional letters written in Post-WWII Britain between a writer, her friends and the potential subjects of her work. She discovers a literary society that came into being mostly by accident on the island of Guernsey during its occupation by the Germans. The following passage, I thought, perfectly captures one of the many values of the written word. So, of course, I had to share.

Best to say we weren't a true literary society at first. Aside from Elizabeth, Mrs. Maugery, and perhaps Booker, most of us hadn't had much to do with books since our school years. We took them from Mrs. Maugery's shelves fearful we'd spoil the fine papers. I had no zest for such matters in those days. It was only by fixing my mind on the Commandant and jail that I could make myself to lift up the cover of the book and begin.

It was called Selections from Shakespeare. Later, I came to see that Mr. Dickens and Mr. Wordsworth were thinking of men like me when they wrote their words. But most of all, I believe, that William Shakespeare was. Mind you, I cannot always make sense of waht he says, but it will come.

It seems to me the less he said, the more beauty he made. Do you know what sentence of his I admire the most? It is "The bright day is done, and we are for the dark."

I wish I'd known those words on the day I watched those German troops land, plane-load after plane-load of them--and come off ships down in the harbor! All I could think of was damn them, damn them, over and over. If I could have thought the words "the bright day is done and we are for the dark," I'd have been consoled somehow and ready to go out and contend with circumstance--instead of my heart sinking to my shoes.

Isn't it amazing how a few words or a few lines can mean so much and make such a difference? I suppose the value is really in what they express or what they represent for us. For my part, and it's completely unrelated, my favorite Shakespeare line comes from Hamlet: "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy." But I'll have to expound on that one another day....