‘...to sentimentalise something is to look only at the emotion it stirs in us rather than the reality of it, which we are always tempted not to look at because reality, truth, silence are all what we are not much good at and avoid when we can. To sentimentalise is to savour rather than suffer the sadness of it, it is to sigh over the prettiness of it rather than to tremble at the beauty of it, which may make fearsome demands of us or pose fearsome threats.’
~ 'Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy and Fairytale' by Fredrick Buchner (1977)
I thought this was an interesting idea, and I want to be careful of sentimentalising things and missing their meaning. This book is absolutely beautiful. I’ve been reading it slowly, in between Dickens, Bronte, Tennyson and all the other Victorian writers that we’re looking at this semester. It is worth reading, whatever your philosophy on life, purely because he writes such wonderful sentences (about silence, about loneliness, about laughing). And he quotes Shakespeare, and he is insightful and intelligent, and he writes about ideas through stories, and... and... ah, it’s brilliant.
(Picture from: here).
♥
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