A visual vocabulary

   

     "I suppose that an American's approach to English literature must always be oblique. We share a language but not a landscape. In order to understand the English classics as adults, we must build up a sort of visual vocabulary from the books we read as children. Children's literature is, in some ways, more important to us than it is to the English child. I contend that a child brought up on the nursery rhymes and Jacobs' English Fairy Tales can better understand Shakespeare; that a child who has pored over Beatrix Potter can better respond to Wordsworth. Of course it is best if one can find for himself a bank where the wild thyme grows, or discover daffodils growing wild. Failing that, the American child must feed the 'inward eye' with the images in the books he reads when young, so that he can enter a larger realm when he is older. I am sure I enjoyed the Brontë novels more for having read The Secret Garden first. As I stood on those moors, looking out over that wind-swept landscape I realised that it was Mrs. Burnett who taught me what 'wuthering' meant long before I ever got round to reading Wuthering Heights. Epiphany comes at the moment of recognition."

    Joan Bodger, How the Heather Looks. 

Comments

[Gwendoline]

True enough but I would suggest that there is variation within the British Isles too isn’t there? Children for whom e.g. Arthur Ransome’s Broads are as foreign as can be. Great literature gives enough clues that a picture can be formed from whatever the memory holds; that’s the thing. We all bring ourselves to what we read so everyone reads something slightly different. There is no perfectly formed interpretation to aspire to.

[Barbara M. In NH]

Yes… that is the meaning of the poem, and why it was chosen for the title of the book. Emily Dickinson wrote that “ I never saw a moor……….but I know how the Heather looks.”

I grew up inland in the US…but I knew what Heather looked like, because I read about it. (Admittedly, some of my mental images did not match the real thing, but remember, I was a child!). As a young adult (23) I recognized what I remembered and adjusted my images but I KNEW where I was!

I red this book after I came home from my year in the UK (72-73) while I was raising 3 young ones who all gre up knowing “How the Heather looks.” We’ve moved many times, and books have had to be cast aside, but this one is still here, still treasured.

Barbara M. In NH