Hi, I've written this and I'm wondering if it's too impersonal and whether it sounds too much like I'm driving the same point in different words. Also I've exceeded the word limit by 15. Any feedback?
Prompt: Respond to the quotation;
"Literature is the best way to overcome death. My father, as I said, is an actor. He's the happiest man on earth when he's performing, but when the show is over, he's sad and troubled. I wish he could live in the eternal present, because in the theater everything remains in memories and photographs. Literature, on the other hand, allows you to live in the present and to remain in the pantheon of the future.
Literature is a way to say, I was here, this is what I thought, this is what I perceived. This is my signature, this is my name."
Ilan Stavans, Professor of Spanish, Amherst College
From "The Writer in Exile: an interview with Ilan Stavans" by Saideh Pakravan for the fall 1993 issue of The Literary Review
Literature is permanent. It is past, present and future, and with that I thoroughly agree - it is eternally now.
Literature makes a mark on the world that can never be erased, never be forgotten, and never be escaped from. It defies the transience of life - and the impermanence of every moment - and challenges its institutional rules. It overcomes the death of the human moment, and also the human. What one writes and what one reads is etched forever into the world, and remains even when one no longer does. The 'show' never gets over, it does not die, and it cannot be a lost memory because it exists to be revisited time and again, each time offering something new, as if reborn, yet remaining in itself eternally unchanged. Literature succeeds where memory falls short.
Literature is constant. All the unpredictability and inconsistency of the world freezes around the written word even while that itself tells the story of the incalculable and erratic. One could recreate or remember a moment - and one could perform the same scene every night - yet it is never really the same, and what is lost is forever; and what is gained, lost again. The word is final, remembered as it is, and the writer remains, unquestioned and forever, the man he immortalizes in his words - he has the power to define his name in the 'pantheon of the future'.
But literature can haunt. It is permanent, constant, irreversible - and it is painful. What is spoken leaves within the moment, and remains as a flash in a memory. What is written is relentless, autocratic - it can be read over and over and each time cause the same heartbreaking damage as it did the very first time.
Yet this is exactly how it lives and breathes, always today, always inerasable.
Even when life fails to be, literature is immortal, yet literature is life.
I am actually beginning work on this essay right now, and I can say that it is quite possibly the toughest one I have to write. That said, I think that you fell into one of the major traps of this essay. The prompt explicitly states that this essay should be personal in nature, NOT argumentative. Unfortunately, while your writing is strong, it (unintentionally) ignores that crucial point of the essay. The difficult part, I imagine, is being able to be profound and insightful, while also maintaining a personal feel.
Honestly, I think that you should re-work this essay entirely. I imagine that a good way to go about this would be to write about something in literature that you have personally read, and describe its lasting impact on you, or how it gave the writer a voice that has the permanence you spoke of in your essay.
Good luck!
Yeah I completely agree, I was quite qorried it would come across as rather impersonal and argumentative.
I guess you mean I could actually say the same thing I am saying here but with personal experience and insight rather than simply argumentative statements that don't open a window to the personal aspect of it. Am I right?
I really appreciate the feedback, thanks a ton!
