I started studying literature as an extracurricular activity when I was 7, and I carried on for over ten years. When I was younger we learned about a good pronunciation and little poems, as I grew older we started going through the history. From the first book ever written, the first written Dutch text found, till right up to now. I even made my secondary school thesis about the use of colour and smell throughout history.
It wasn’t always fun, we started with lots of people, at the end only a few were left. Some parts didn’t resonate at all and were quite boring, and sometimes I just wanted to quit. There were things that made it all worth while though, and I want to share one of these with you.
I have no idea how popular Edna St.Vincent Millay is in English literature, you may know her better than me. I first learned about her poetry through a Dutch translation of Herman de Coninck, I loved it. She writes about death, sex and love in a very modern way even though she was born in 1892. She had an open marriage, and writes about her lovers in her poetry. She is frank and strong, and I think when I read her poetry as a teenager I longed to be like that.
Her most popular poem is Renascence, I am more fond of her sonnets. She is definitely worth reading, and you can find a lot of her work on the internet. I’ll leave you with one of the first poems I read.
V
If I should learn, in some quite casual way,
That you were gone, not to return again –
Read from the back-page of a paper, say,
Held by a neighbor in a subway train,
How at the corner of this avenue
And such a street (so are the papers filled)
A hurrying man — who happened to be you –
At noon to-day had happened to be killed,
I should not cry aloud — I could not cry
Aloud, or wring my hands in such a place –
I should but watch the station lights rush by
With a more careful interest on my face,
Or raise my eyes and read with greater care
Where to store furs and how to treat the hair.
