Experiencing and Understanding
Experiencing and understanding have an odd relationship in nature. But they both bring enlightenment to the reader or voyager. Literary examples will display how even if you fail to understand a topic you can still enjoy it, how understanding and experiencing can trigger one another, and how sometimes understanding and experiencing are completely separate events. In “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer,” Walt Whitman states, “How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick, / Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself, / In the mystical moist night air, and from time to time, / Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars” (59). This example shows how someone researching, let’s say stars, could have all …show more content…
In Sea Stars by Barbara Hurd, she learns about starfish and is then eager to experience them first hand. Hurd begins by taking starfish from and intellectual point of view and in her essay and states, “I know from the charts the moon was full last night, the midnight tide higher than usual. Were the skies clear? Were the stars out? I’d like to have seen these creatures then: stars in the dark overhead and here a spiny constellation draped over the rocks” (CR20). Reading the charts triggers Hurd to see the starfish and not just read about their behaviors in a book. The longing and temptation to see the starfish is illustrated in this quote, “...there’s a chance for the lucky encounter with someone or something—a painting or poem, a place—that can beckon to what lies broken and hungry inside us all. I believe it’s what most of us long for” (CR22). In a later excerpt Hurd acts on this urge and finally sees the starfish first hand. “One of the largest, a northern sea star, now lies upside down in the palm of my hand. Almost a foot across, its orangy body glistens wet in the dawn light. Hundreds of slender tubes wriggle like antennae, only these aren’t sense organs; they’re feet, and what they’re searching for isn’t food or enemy or mate, but something to cling to, any firm surface that can anchor them and end this futile flailing at the air” (CR20). …show more content…
An example of this is in ¨Astronomy Lesson¨ by Alan R. Shapiro where he explains the stupidity of trying to understand things when you could just enjoy them,“The older boy is saying that no matter / how many stars you counted there were/always more stars beyond them/and beyond the stars black space/going on forever in all directions,/so that even if you flew up/millions and millions of years/you’d be no closer to the end/of it than they were now/here on the porch on Tuesday night/in the middle of summer” (web). In ¨Information¨ by David Ignatow, he reiterates the same idea as Shapiro in saying that what astronomers are doing is stupid when stars are infinite, “to count leaves is not less meaningful than to count the stars, as astronomers are always doing” (web). Ignatow illustrates that counting every leaf on a tree is a meticulous and monotonous task-- and there’s a finite number of leaves, but there’s an infinite number of stars and astronomers are wasting their time trying to understand them and know all of them. There no point in trying to understand something that is inconceivable like stars. The more people try to understand and keep records or the stars, the less people enjoy them. Sometimes, after someone goes through all the effort of
Experiencing and understanding have an odd relationship in nature. But they both bring enlightenment to the reader or voyager. Literary examples will display how even if you fail to understand a topic you can still enjoy it, how understanding and experiencing can trigger one another, and how sometimes understanding and experiencing are completely separate events. In “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer,” Walt Whitman states, “How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick, / Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself, / In the mystical moist night air, and from time to time, / Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars” (59). This example shows how someone researching, let’s say stars, could have all …show more content…
In Sea Stars by Barbara Hurd, she learns about starfish and is then eager to experience them first hand. Hurd begins by taking starfish from and intellectual point of view and in her essay and states, “I know from the charts the moon was full last night, the midnight tide higher than usual. Were the skies clear? Were the stars out? I’d like to have seen these creatures then: stars in the dark overhead and here a spiny constellation draped over the rocks” (CR20). Reading the charts triggers Hurd to see the starfish and not just read about their behaviors in a book. The longing and temptation to see the starfish is illustrated in this quote, “...there’s a chance for the lucky encounter with someone or something—a painting or poem, a place—that can beckon to what lies broken and hungry inside us all. I believe it’s what most of us long for” (CR22). In a later excerpt Hurd acts on this urge and finally sees the starfish first hand. “One of the largest, a northern sea star, now lies upside down in the palm of my hand. Almost a foot across, its orangy body glistens wet in the dawn light. Hundreds of slender tubes wriggle like antennae, only these aren’t sense organs; they’re feet, and what they’re searching for isn’t food or enemy or mate, but something to cling to, any firm surface that can anchor them and end this futile flailing at the air” (CR20). …show more content…
An example of this is in ¨Astronomy Lesson¨ by Alan R. Shapiro where he explains the stupidity of trying to understand things when you could just enjoy them,“The older boy is saying that no matter / how many stars you counted there were/always more stars beyond them/and beyond the stars black space/going on forever in all directions,/so that even if you flew up/millions and millions of years/you’d be no closer to the end/of it than they were now/here on the porch on Tuesday night/in the middle of summer” (web). In ¨Information¨ by David Ignatow, he reiterates the same idea as Shapiro in saying that what astronomers are doing is stupid when stars are infinite, “to count leaves is not less meaningful than to count the stars, as astronomers are always doing” (web). Ignatow illustrates that counting every leaf on a tree is a meticulous and monotonous task-- and there’s a finite number of leaves, but there’s an infinite number of stars and astronomers are wasting their time trying to understand them and know all of them. There no point in trying to understand something that is inconceivable like stars. The more people try to understand and keep records or the stars, the less people enjoy them. Sometimes, after someone goes through all the effort of