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Thank you!<br>

<br>

Vara Neverow<br>

Department of English<br>

Southern Connecticut State University<br>

New Haven, CT 06515<br>

203-392-6717<br>

neverowv1@southernct.edu<br>

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<div id="divRplyFwdMsg" dir="ltr"><font face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="font-size:11pt" color="#000000"><b>From:</b> Vwoolf <vwoolf-bounces+neverowv1=southernct.edu@lists.osu.edu> on behalf of Karen Levenback via Vwoolf <vwoolf@lists.osu.edu><br>

<b>Sent:</b> Sunday, May 12, 2019 8:25:49 AM<br>

<b>To:</b> Woolf Listserv<br>

<b>Subject:</b> [Vwoolf] Fw: For anyone who has ever been ill, or will be ill, or has loved someone ill – which is pretty much all of us – Virginia Woolf on illness; and more.</font>

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<div>On Virginia Woolf and illness--from a friend</div>

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<div>----- Forwarded Message -----<br>

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<div><b>From:</b> "awiest@aol.com" <awiest@aol.com></div>

<div><b>To:</b> "kllevenback@att.net" <kllevenback@att.net></div>

<div><b>Sent:</b> Sunday, May 12, 2019, 8:04:45 AM EDT</div>

<div><b>Subject:</b> Fwd: For anyone who has ever been ill, or will be ill, or has loved someone ill – which is pretty much all of us – Virginia Woolf on illness; and more.</div>

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<div style="font-family:arial,helvetica; font-size:10pt; color:black">-----Original Message-----<br clear="none">

From: Brain Pickings by Maria Popova <newsletter@brainpickings.org><br clear="none">

To: Aimee Wiest <awiest@aol.com><br clear="none">

Sent: Sun, May 12, 2019 6:03 am<br clear="none">

Subject: For anyone who has ever been ill, or will be ill, or has loved someone ill – which is pretty much all of us – Virginia Woolf on illness; and more.<br clear="none">

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 Woolf on Being Ill and the Strange Transcendence Accessible Amid the Terrors of the Ailing Body</a>

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“The body provides something for the spirit to look after and use,” computing pioneer Alan Turing wrote as he contemplated

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the binary code of body and spirit</a> in the spring of his twenty-first year, having just lost the love of his life to tuberculosis. Nothing garbles that code more violently than illness — from the

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temporary terrors</a> of food poisoning to the <a shape="rect" href="https://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fbrainpickings.us2.list-manage.com%2Ftrack%2Fclick%3Fu%3D13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1%26id%3D54d178848a%26e%3Dbcf47a4edd&data=02%7C01%7Cneverowv1%40southernct.edu%7Cbc3aceead99d4262c25a08d6d6d4fecc%7C58736863d60e40ce95c60723c7eaaf67%7C0%7C0%7C636932607640851065&sdata=ilp1rONNvkKcYRqwtkfs2l%2FyzQ3mLFK2Z50yts%2FUFkw%3D&reserved=0" originalsrc="https://brainpickings.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1&id=54d178848a&e=bcf47a4edd" shash="I7SdqycgCVes31lf4YrjQflyQZTHdge4gJxkZ4IBj/EBD5SAKwf2Bbv72Gp6+y+H5r+ma3SgfUyi97z5y+Zf9VkqIo6uFhW5vBYHL4GGUI031WWmgnMTL8qgQlbrDvp5R11Q8HOA7ilE9/FSDFscsIz8ym3L4ZrgO+aXrAuZGes=" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">

existential tumult</a> of a terminal diagnosis — our entire mental and emotional being is hijacked by the demands of a malcontented body as dis-ease, in the most literal sense, fills sinew and spirit alike. These rude reminders of our atomic fragility are perhaps

 the most discomfiting yet most common human experience — it is difficult, if at all possible, to find a person unaffected by illness, for we have all been or will be ill, and have all loved or will love someone afflicted by illness.

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No one has articulated the peculiar vexations of illness, nor addressed the psychic transcendence accessible amid the terrors of the body, more thoughtfully than

<strong>Virginia Woolf</strong> (January 25, 1882–March 28, 1941) in her 1926 essay “On Being Ill,” later included in the indispensable posthumous collection of her

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<strong><em>Selected Essays</em></strong></a> (<a shape="rect" href="https://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fbrainpickings.us2.list-manage.com%2Ftrack%2Fclick%3Fu%3D13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1%26id%3D6297e195e3%26e%3Dbcf47a4edd&data=02%7C01%7Cneverowv1%40southernct.edu%7Cbc3aceead99d4262c25a08d6d6d4fecc%7C58736863d60e40ce95c60723c7eaaf67%7C0%7C0%7C636932607640861079&sdata=6v3gx%2B%2BPXtdyB38RlrskOnhTU7AqwNsm8UF16I%2BUA%2BA%3D&reserved=0" originalsrc="https://brainpickings.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1&id=6297e195e3&e=bcf47a4edd" shash="RRCr4cQEkWUA7j0P+yadQkNi8utn+pOORl1+0wFq52BA9pyzGFf+UCpq0fv1KkBJwxtD7ysv7Z5vBahaeVh+xq2ANszPQZq7flT0EwtDGLtKSvROshv3rQd8nj4QPfADbNkEcVTYNNMcoNMxIPiy29bk8K0smFcpqvEEOmBV4G4=" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"><em>public

 library</em></a>). </div>

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Portrait of Virginia Woolf from <a shape="rect" href="https://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fbrainpickings.us2.list-manage.com%2Ftrack%2Fclick%3Fu%3D13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1%26id%3D1be7955db0%26e%3Dbcf47a4edd&data=02%7C01%7Cneverowv1%40southernct.edu%7Cbc3aceead99d4262c25a08d6d6d4fecc%7C58736863d60e40ce95c60723c7eaaf67%7C0%7C0%7C636932607640871084&sdata=DAr4yl%2BaFkwX9igT6HSN4qJeyBRAX9YVXYI2ZK7tXiA%3D&reserved=0" originalsrc="https://brainpickings.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1&id=1be7955db0&e=bcf47a4edd" shash="YA6xwWPjzm6cEL5bVvMvnDduvsMJaEI1D7h7XuF3Bh+pAHHB0NzKE08sGjyrx55Xd85Ndt8NuWMwjBlwY5A5oJhfH8h4J8/m90EENV7RPPLVneUdhTkhYm5nN1nAXxmkL5CtvzCTMQpCc3uIzr0iloP7hTQDmuYCRoBrjsaMDQg=" rel="nofollow" target="_blank" style="color:#C33737; text-decoration:underline">

<em>Literary Witches</em></a>.</div>

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Half a century before Susan Sontag’s landmark book <a shape="rect" href="https://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fbrainpickings.us2.list-manage.com%2Ftrack%2Fclick%3Fu%3D13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1%26id%3Dfa4d9b61ff%26e%3Dbcf47a4edd&data=02%7C01%7Cneverowv1%40southernct.edu%7Cbc3aceead99d4262c25a08d6d6d4fecc%7C58736863d60e40ce95c60723c7eaaf67%7C0%7C0%7C636932607640871084&sdata=%2BWtzq0iR02bjOX%2FAw7rGAbl2q0hGzUA71f4L6EuJPng%3D&reserved=0" originalsrc="https://brainpickings.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1&id=fa4d9b61ff&e=bcf47a4edd" shash="Zgbshe4dmRMX2PGK03gau14TTM5VcUX646ofK4/LJIme1o+JuvOdYUGyS322nJjI4U0aW5Pzg7pUWeTgcXWs8yqRzdj7TK04L+1ohXXYXo8F3/j8iIOGlAQezr0Wig+HtgpPHVrypRwj+JMgmrdRxHOWdKnvjcxg7XNnpcs88jc=" rel="nofollow" target="_blank" style="color:#C33737; text-decoration:underline">

<em>Illness as Metaphor</em></a>, Woolf writes:</div>

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<img align="left" alt="2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png" class="x_ydp312f85aeyiv4839275198" style="border:0; height:auto; line-height:100%; outline:none; text-decoration:none; padding:5px 30px 10px 0; display:inline; width:50px!important" src="https://gallery.mailchimp.com/13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1/images/2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png">Considering

 how common illness is, how tremendous the spiritual change that it brings, how astonishing, when the lights of health go down, the undiscovered countries that are then disclosed, what wastes and deserts of the soul a slight attack of influenza brings to view,

 what precipices and lawns sprinkled with bright flowers a little rise of temperature reveals, what ancient and obdurate oaks are uprooted in us by the act of sickness, how we go down into the pit of death and feel the waters of annihilation close above our

 heads and wake thinking to find ourselves in the presence of the angels and the harpers when we have a tooth out and come to the surface in the dentist’s arm-chair and confuse his “Rinse the mouth — rinse the mouth” with the greeting of the Deity stooping

 from the floor of Heaven to welcome us — when we think of this, as we are so frequently forced to think of it, it becomes strange indeed that illness has not taken its place with love and battle and jealousy among the prime themes of literature. Novels, one

 would have thought, would have been devoted to influenza; epic poems to typhoid; odes to pneumonia; lyrics to toothache. But no; with a few exceptions — De Quincey attempted something of the sort in

<em>The Opium Eater</em>; there must be a volume or two about disease scattered through the pages of Proust — literature does its best to maintain that its concern is with the mind; that the body is a sheet of plain glass through which the soul looks straight

 and clear, and, save for one or two passions such as desire and greed, is null, and negligible and non-existent.</div>

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Five years earlier, the ailing Rilke had written in a <a shape="rect" href="https://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fbrainpickings.us2.list-manage.com%2Ftrack%2Fclick%3Fu%3D13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1%26id%3D359ba516ff%26e%3Dbcf47a4edd&data=02%7C01%7Cneverowv1%40southernct.edu%7Cbc3aceead99d4262c25a08d6d6d4fecc%7C58736863d60e40ce95c60723c7eaaf67%7C0%7C0%7C636932607640881093&sdata=fI%2Fkm32cCCeaTSnpvrH1fkVhRgbXiD8MhhsDbZEgOXk%3D&reserved=0" originalsrc="https://brainpickings.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1&id=359ba516ff&e=bcf47a4edd" shash="JxQyTC8vzoM3fm9lRIOWq9h6a5Ps4lUqZORpOIYuJuKJkUn5aENATW15JuRAyOJQDbDm3u7LA3ZAXdazAZp7JDKUyBHa41lrNEHb3FsKWrKqhdOQqJvoTYWgKAqzIk03oz2/TsFpHudBgj0eposKXtpeiu5Zh8H8roo5Q6TZlEI=" rel="nofollow" target="_blank" style="color:#C33737; text-decoration:underline">

letter to a young woman</a>: “I am not one of those who neglect the body in order to make of it a sacrificial offering for the soul, since my soul would thoroughly dislike being served in such a fashion.” Woolf, writing in the year of Rilke’s death and well

 ahead of the modern scientific inquiry into <a shape="rect" href="https://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fbrainpickings.us2.list-manage.com%2Ftrack%2Fclick%3Fu%3D13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1%26id%3Dbb9e8e3ab7%26e%3Dbcf47a4edd&data=02%7C01%7Cneverowv1%40southernct.edu%7Cbc3aceead99d4262c25a08d6d6d4fecc%7C58736863d60e40ce95c60723c7eaaf67%7C0%7C0%7C636932607640881093&sdata=n95bTLn3W4q%2BrggLAk0tc09w0JiTs2uo8YinqZhIL7g%3D&reserved=0" originalsrc="https://brainpickings.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1&id=bb9e8e3ab7&e=bcf47a4edd" shash="wAJx5DaSoi60ziSKknY5nVhsXKJQGyscSwKIotf27pz4330cjtLdToeo6Cj32tsCqmhHw6RADzeTyIzEaupyZPF9Z2vRxuDEHL0GhCNtWYZSrqujix3U/IjUkQUTnsEi6WXVyiVS/iWv2BFIinuth3srIVyH81sFIC7EYRiFbKU=" rel="nofollow" target="_blank" style="color:#C33737; text-decoration:underline">

how the life of the body shapes the life of the mind</a>, rebels against the residual Cartesianism of the mind-body divide with her characteristic fusion of wisdom and wry humor, channeled in exquisite prose:</div>

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<img align="left" alt="2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png" class="x_ydp312f85aeyiv4839275198" style="border:0; height:auto; line-height:100%; outline:none; text-decoration:none; padding:5px 30px 10px 0; display:inline; width:50px!important" src="https://gallery.mailchimp.com/13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1/images/2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png">All

 day, all night the body intervenes; blunts or sharpens, colours or discolours, turns to wax in the warmth of June, hardens to tallow in the murk of February. The creature within can only gaze through the pane — smudged or rosy; it cannot separate off from

 the body like the sheath of a knife or the pod of a pea for a single instant; it must go through the whole unending procession of changes, heat and cold, comfort and discomfort, hunger and satisfaction, health and illness, until there comes the inevitable

 catastrophe; the body smashes itself to smithereens, and the soul (it is said) escapes. But of all this daily drama of the body there is no record. People write always of the doings of the mind; the thoughts that come to it; its noble plans; how the mind has

 civilised the universe. They show it ignoring the body in the philosopher’s turret; or kicking the body, like an old leather football, across leagues of snow and desert in the pursuit of conquest or discovery. Those great wars which the body wages with the

 mind a slave to it, in the solitude of the bedroom against the assault of fever or the oncome of melancholia, are neglected. Nor is the reason far to seek. To look these things squarely in the face would need the courage of a lion tamer; a robust philosophy;

 a reason rooted in the bowels of the earth. Short of these, this monster, the body, this miracle, its pain, will soon make us taper into mysticism, or rise, with rapid beats of the wings, into the raptures of transcendentalism.</div>

</blockquote>

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Art from the vintage science primer <a shape="rect" href="https://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fbrainpickings.us2.list-manage.com%2Ftrack%2Fclick%3Fu%3D13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1%26id%3Da8a17acff6%26e%3Dbcf47a4edd&data=02%7C01%7Cneverowv1%40southernct.edu%7Cbc3aceead99d4262c25a08d6d6d4fecc%7C58736863d60e40ce95c60723c7eaaf67%7C0%7C0%7C636932607640891103&sdata=4eqsc0fqPzfRl46jNT1EtC2%2BdViHGMO2In0B5KPK7rA%3D&reserved=0" originalsrc="https://brainpickings.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1&id=a8a17acff6&e=bcf47a4edd" shash="vxCWAdg2rAzaoA9cqNsR9mlucCEUZFCMH5TIHvG1rJLMwq8tLLbTrZWkIAIjQiizd1xigs881SYbAQTUDy1GtTU1NuisvLi50aPqZ1+IhyhhwpaC/Wrxm53Ofq009zpWP5VeZJvXboqVHkYSw3V2AMmsIFhWElnNOQikYhsOfM8=" rel="nofollow" target="_blank" style="color:#C33737; text-decoration:underline">

<em>The Human Body: What It Is and How It Works</em></a>.</div>

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“Is language the adequate expression of all realities?” Nietzsche <a shape="rect" href="https://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fbrainpickings.us2.list-manage.com%2Ftrack%2Fclick%3Fu%3D13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1%26id%3Dd854e8157c%26e%3Dbcf47a4edd&data=02%7C01%7Cneverowv1%40southernct.edu%7Cbc3aceead99d4262c25a08d6d6d4fecc%7C58736863d60e40ce95c60723c7eaaf67%7C0%7C0%7C636932607640891103&sdata=VYlKcs0fOweLTIuNrg38sPvZCsSrpZX5CNXMdAfqb%2F4%3D&reserved=0" originalsrc="https://brainpickings.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1&id=d854e8157c&e=bcf47a4edd" shash="w2PjkZktNwJL69HpeorouFjIF5sBL73GrMMv1882o4H7qzoxPrRP3dTkcLse6WedsbGjOjYusXOHXHfZPuvMHerUJHoPRysSlWjTMoiX5GYTyXhYQ0GO4GiJy3BR41qUxX6z46cN8OGoPFPAgjT9NVXMDlEN+Pdzq8sv1sOmzNM=" rel="nofollow" target="_blank" style="color:#C33737; text-decoration:underline">

had asked</a> when Woolf was just genetic potential in her parents’ DNA. Language, the fully formed human argues as she considers the unreality of illness, has been utterly inadequate in conferring upon this commonest experience the dignity of representation

 it confers upon just about every other universal human experience:</div>

<blockquote style="display:block">

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<img align="left" alt="2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png" class="x_ydp312f85aeyiv4839275198" style="border:0; height:auto; line-height:100%; outline:none; text-decoration:none; padding:5px 30px 10px 0; display:inline; width:50px!important" src="https://gallery.mailchimp.com/13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1/images/2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png">To

 hinder the description of illness in literature, there is the poverty of the language. English, which can express the thoughts of Hamlet and the tragedy of Lear, has no words for the shiver and the headache. It has all grown one way.</div>

</blockquote>

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In a passage Oliver Sacks could have written, Woolf pivots to the humorous, somehow without losing the profundity of the larger point:</div>

<blockquote style="display:block">

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<img align="left" alt="2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png" class="x_ydp312f85aeyiv4839275198" style="border:0; height:auto; line-height:100%; outline:none; text-decoration:none; padding:5px 30px 10px 0; display:inline; width:50px!important" src="https://gallery.mailchimp.com/13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1/images/2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png">Yet

 it is not only a new language that we need, more primitive, more sensual, more obscene, but a new hierarchy of the passions; love must be deposed in favour of a temperature of 104; jealousy give place to the pangs of sciatica; sleeplessness play the part of

 villain, and the hero become a white liquid with a sweet taste — that mighty Prince with the moths’ eyes and the feathered feet, one of whose names is Chloral.</div>

</blockquote>

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And then, just like that, in classic Woolfian fashion, she fangs into the meat of the matter — the way we plunge into the universality of illness, so universal as to border on the banal, until we reach the rock bottom of utter existential aloneness:</div>

<blockquote style="display:block">

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<img align="left" alt="2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png" class="x_ydp312f85aeyiv4839275198" style="border:0; height:auto; line-height:100%; outline:none; text-decoration:none; padding:5px 30px 10px 0; display:inline; width:50px!important" src="https://gallery.mailchimp.com/13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1/images/2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png">That

 illusion of a world so shaped that it echoes every groan, of human beings so tied together by common needs and fears that a twitch at one wrist jerks another, where however strange your experience other people have had it too, where however far you travel

 in your own mind someone has been there before you — is all an illusion. We do not know our own souls, let alone the souls of others. Human beings do not go hand in hand the whole stretch of the way. There is a virgin forest in each; a snowfield where even

 the print of birds’ feet is unknown. Here we go alone, and like it better so. Always to have sympathy, always to be accompanied, always to be understood would be intolerable.</div>

</blockquote>

<img alt="virginiawoolf2.jpg" class="x_ydp312f85aeyiv4839275198" style="border:0px; line-height:100%; outline:none; text-decoration:none; display:inline; width:100%; max-width:800px" src="https://i2.wp.com/www.brainpickings.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/virginiawoolf2.jpg">

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Art by Nina Cosford from the <a shape="rect" href="https://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fbrainpickings.us2.list-manage.com%2Ftrack%2Fclick%3Fu%3D13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1%26id%3D9ee3ece0e1%26e%3Dbcf47a4edd&data=02%7C01%7Cneverowv1%40southernct.edu%7Cbc3aceead99d4262c25a08d6d6d4fecc%7C58736863d60e40ce95c60723c7eaaf67%7C0%7C0%7C636932607640901108&sdata=rLduDcekWRQJy1iU9PYAPV%2FUS1QC3lI2oPqk%2BqmXrL0%3D&reserved=0" originalsrc="https://brainpickings.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1&id=9ee3ece0e1&e=bcf47a4edd" shash="IdtFF7PDe0Yz7a2EoMZJqOFQWda+fuBwH0jZsmyDSY1fc/JKGxHmFRsky2VWgQesvux2ajBMIsDG8R0j5FO6t4ek4NvqyJfDZCn+jEW1d4g/Dm6owu50xpJM6l5Ucn9imd3cqgo8A/ZBzFK1DG8Ni2H5i1/UoCaGc73E8EzTzS0=" rel="nofollow" target="_blank" style="color:#C33737; text-decoration:underline">

illustrated biography of Virginia Woolf</a> </div>

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In health, Woolf argues, we maintain the illusion, both psychological and outwardly performative, of being cradled in the arms of civilization and society. Illness jolts us out of it, orphans us from belonging. But it also does something else, something beautiful

 and transcendent: In piercing the trance of busyness and obligation, it awakens us to the world about us, whose smallest details, neglected by our regular societal conscience, suddenly throb with aliveness and magnetic curiosity. It renders us “able, perhaps

 for the first time for years, to look round, to look up — to look, for example, at the sky”:</div>

<blockquote style="display:block">

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<img align="left" alt="2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png" class="x_ydp312f85aeyiv4839275198" style="border:0; height:auto; line-height:100%; outline:none; text-decoration:none; padding:5px 30px 10px 0; display:inline; width:50px!important" src="https://gallery.mailchimp.com/13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1/images/2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png">The

 first impression of that extraordinary spectacle is strangely overcoming. Ordinarily to look at the sky for any length of time is impossible. Pedestrians would be impeded and disconcerted by a public sky-gazer. What snatches we get of it are mutilated by chimneys

 and churches, serve as a background for man, signify wet weather or fine, daub windows gold, and, filling in the branches, complete the pathos of dishevelled autumnal plane trees in autumnal squares. Now, lying recumbent, staring straight up, the sky is discovered

 to be something so different from this that really it is a little shocking. This then has been going on all the time without our knowing it! — this incessant making up of shapes and casting them down, this buffeting of clouds together, and drawing vast trains

 of ships and waggons from North to South, this incessant ringing up and down of curtains of light and shade, this interminable experiment with gold shafts and blue shadows, with veiling the sun and unveiling it, with making rock ramparts and wafting them away…</div>

</blockquote>

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But in the consolations of this transcendent communion with nature resides the most disquieting fact of existence — the awareness of an unfeeling universe, operating by impartial laws unconcerned with our individual fates:</div>

<blockquote style="display:block">

<div style="color:#595959; font-family:Arial,Sans-serif; font-size:15px; line-height:170%; text-align:left">

<img align="left" alt="2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png" class="x_ydp312f85aeyiv4839275198" style="border:0; height:auto; line-height:100%; outline:none; text-decoration:none; padding:5px 30px 10px 0; display:inline; width:50px!important" src="https://gallery.mailchimp.com/13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1/images/2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png">Divinely

 beautiful it is also divinely heartless. Immeasurable resources are used for some purpose which has nothing to do with human pleasure or human profit.</div>

</blockquote>

<img alt="comet3-1.jpg" class="x_ydp312f85aeyiv4839275198" style="border:0px; line-height:100%; outline:none; text-decoration:none; display:inline; width:100%; max-width:800px" src="https://i0.wp.com/www.brainpickings.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/comet3-1.jpg">

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Drawing from <a shape="rect" href="https://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fbrainpickings.us2.list-manage.com%2Ftrack%2Fclick%3Fu%3D13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1%26id%3Dfae53a5def%26e%3Dbcf47a4edd&data=02%7C01%7Cneverowv1%40southernct.edu%7Cbc3aceead99d4262c25a08d6d6d4fecc%7C58736863d60e40ce95c60723c7eaaf67%7C0%7C0%7C636932607640901108&sdata=bdr4Q6Mn%2FxabgLr8Q%2Fhjx4eme0da4HOFCB7s%2BvZIiRM%3D&reserved=0" originalsrc="https://brainpickings.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1&id=fae53a5def&e=bcf47a4edd" shash="iOq6xjc/kTSrlrBvJF02OyNbPaIbmUjU7hRuhndckdDiDYEsOye7zLvWruUVUVll2X4jrm68d/I5gAZQEKqNjb3U4b4RRZ+EXLgRgEy4ppMqF+qXVpESGi/7dP8Bmi9nKgyhenbJ9w0un5i4DIij6Yn3am9LUVlRJNZS/OPH/dc=" rel="nofollow" target="_blank" style="color:#C33737; text-decoration:underline">

<em>The Comet Book</em></a> — a 16th-century pre-astronomical document of magical thinking about the laws of the universe.</div>

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It would take Woolf more than a decade to fully formulate, in a <a shape="rect" href="https://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fbrainpickings.us2.list-manage.com%2Ftrack%2Fclick%3Fu%3D13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1%26id%3D4267b8b71f%26e%3Dbcf47a4edd&data=02%7C01%7Cneverowv1%40southernct.edu%7Cbc3aceead99d4262c25a08d6d6d4fecc%7C58736863d60e40ce95c60723c7eaaf67%7C0%7C0%7C636932607640911121&sdata=7cnA4tLG9%2FUgnYwnVId7ZXMLaYw84Oe%2F1Y0VLWCmeZc%3D&reserved=0" originalsrc="https://brainpickings.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1&id=4267b8b71f&e=bcf47a4edd" shash="my5sFU3Pu6UpHELI0tsPYcutJT935ZelYU5oTCDU4CoH6EUiOM7j6YnvHkBJZL21tFQZ8N7kjcVyskpLftDyafCtq+glqlZ89HaQ39M5//OCyxTS6hn0jTTr48OhNoE+zWX5y6jcJ2yg24JuDMtOTDYOIGJ6VtMsNX66nIHO4vY=" rel="nofollow" target="_blank" style="color:#C33737; text-decoration:underline">

most stunning reflection</a>, the paradoxical way in which these heartless laws are the very reason we are called to make beauty and meaning within their unfeeling parameters: “There is no Shakespeare, there is no Beethoven; certainly and emphatically there

 is no God; we are the words; we are the music; we are the thing itself,” she would write in 1939. Now, in her meditation on illness, she hones the anchor of these ideas:</div>

<blockquote style="display:block">

<div style="color:#595959; font-family:Arial,Sans-serif; font-size:15px; line-height:170%; text-align:left">

<img align="left" alt="2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png" class="x_ydp312f85aeyiv4839275198" style="border:0; height:auto; line-height:100%; outline:none; text-decoration:none; padding:5px 30px 10px 0; display:inline; width:50px!important" src="https://gallery.mailchimp.com/13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1/images/2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png">Poets

 have found religion in nature; people live in the country to learn virtue from plants. It is in their indifference that they are comforting. That snowfield of the mind, where man has not trodden, is visited by the cloud, kissed by the falling petal, as, in

 another sphere, it is the great artists, the Miltons and the Popes, who console not by their thought of us but by their forgetfulness.</div>

<div style="color:#595959; font-family:Arial,Sans-serif; font-size:15px; line-height:170%; text-align:left">

[…]</div>

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It is only the recumbent who know what, after all, Nature is at no pains to conceal — that she in the end will conquer; heat will leave the world; stiff with frost we shall cease to drag ourselves about the fields; ice will lie thick upon factory and engine;

 the sun will go out.</div>

</blockquote>

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This sudden awareness of elemental truth renders the ill person a sort of seer, imbued with an almost mystical understanding of existence, beyond any intellectual interpretation. Nearly a century before Patti Smith came to contemplate

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how illness expands the field of poetic awareness</a>, Woolf writes:</div>

<blockquote style="display:block">

<div style="color:#595959; font-family:Arial,Sans-serif; font-size:15px; line-height:170%; text-align:left">

<img align="left" alt="2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png" class="x_ydp312f85aeyiv4839275198" style="border:0; height:auto; line-height:100%; outline:none; text-decoration:none; padding:5px 30px 10px 0; display:inline; width:50px!important" src="https://gallery.mailchimp.com/13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1/images/2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png">In

 illness words seem to possess a mystic quality. We grasp what is beyond their surface meaning, gather instinctively this, that, and the other — a sound, a colour, here a stress, there a pause — which the poet, knowing words to be meagre in comparison with

 ideas, has strewn about his page to evoke, when collected, a state of mind which neither words can express nor the reason explain. Incomprehensibility has an enormous power over us in illness, more legitimately perhaps than the upright will allow. In health

 meaning has encroached upon sound. Our intelligence domineers over our senses. But in illness, with the police off duty, we creep beneath some obscure poem by Mallarmé or Donne, some phrase in Latin or Greek, and the words give out their scent and distil their

 flavour, and then, if at last we grasp the meaning, it is all the richer for having come to us sensually first, by way of the palate and the nostrils, like some queer odour.</div>

</blockquote>

<div style="color:#262626; font-family:Georgia,serif; font-size:16px; line-height:165%; text-align:left">

Complement this portion of Woolf’s thoroughly fantastic <a shape="rect" href="https://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fbrainpickings.us2.list-manage.com%2Ftrack%2Fclick%3Fu%3D13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1%26id%3Df79c12dca9%26e%3Dbcf47a4edd&data=02%7C01%7Cneverowv1%40southernct.edu%7Cbc3aceead99d4262c25a08d6d6d4fecc%7C58736863d60e40ce95c60723c7eaaf67%7C0%7C0%7C636932607640921122&sdata=d3M0FpGujJqiLsQ7vNIvEXD5IOfl7zusV5BMOAQVjrw%3D&reserved=0" originalsrc="https://brainpickings.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1&id=f79c12dca9&e=bcf47a4edd" shash="q2XGakrpM7uOPGxz6vpethvXzq/gqGpqnEiJPepVTrV4bKN1JC9PnPMJs1ohsQLdOa71U80k61pXwLcA1qRBXASwxo0Vop3O/KK7JjfY+Gt+VnD7e4IujCxKQJtXhlZANW8Fd1yMtOjiU0R7SDgaFf/4fWnbBl4Sq88SX3bkwM0=" rel="nofollow" target="_blank" style="color:#C33737; text-decoration:underline">

<strong><em>Selected Essays</em></strong></a> with Roald Dahl on <a shape="rect" href="https://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fbrainpickings.us2.list-manage.com%2Ftrack%2Fclick%3Fu%3D13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1%26id%3D2f4f02abcf%26e%3Dbcf47a4edd&data=02%7C01%7Cneverowv1%40southernct.edu%7Cbc3aceead99d4262c25a08d6d6d4fecc%7C58736863d60e40ce95c60723c7eaaf67%7C0%7C0%7C636932607640931127&sdata=elMbLKYJqiY3q30iBwqOpMKPYuqj7h06d4IoagZ3GD0%3D&reserved=0" originalsrc="https://brainpickings.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1&id=2f4f02abcf&e=bcf47a4edd" shash="al/P8Mf+u04sQfYn657T7xBXJCkig0xrn4FXVVOUbqzhV17IOo9+lDQDdKCmt5/ZNvwN0wYCbDXaB1pPodcnon/m2J0ZOxRBe5Xk0ycIcQ4AL05jeWqhH09L2Vvznu3ofxz/UWvJnjdA7BRo2VQWPZmgdMeNKb9CuPh31sqd2Yw=" rel="nofollow" target="_blank" style="color:#C33737; text-decoration:underline">

how illness emboldens creativity</a> and Alice James — Henry and William James’s brilliant sister, whom Woolf greatly admired — on

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how to live fully while dying</a>, then revisit Woolf on <a shape="rect" href="https://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fbrainpickings.us2.list-manage.com%2Ftrack%2Fclick%3Fu%3D13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1%26id%3D4f2e9e9cb8%26e%3Dbcf47a4edd&data=02%7C01%7Cneverowv1%40southernct.edu%7Cbc3aceead99d4262c25a08d6d6d4fecc%7C58736863d60e40ce95c60723c7eaaf67%7C0%7C0%7C636932607640941136&sdata=erLWj92ubHzdxtNWUQVIcwf6glSGsoE0b%2FAAAvHOUYU%3D&reserved=0" originalsrc="https://brainpickings.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1&id=4f2e9e9cb8&e=bcf47a4edd" shash="zAaELI6mNMaaPsRwGDNcU7MdRgywfuTRWEykYE+vT1ojBFdrPARXo2Dy412qHhA2VvdJmp1RWGOsGiEVZDxxDP9/tXOX7cIdJmGMFZcpedXSD4kIYu8l9KDBMMwyNMhTuqVcL+lZAm2pHzy1R1BpI7mg86Gjx4ZtTKlUWC/D7Jk=" rel="nofollow" target="_blank" style="color:#C33737; text-decoration:underline">

the art of letters</a>, <a shape="rect" href="https://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fbrainpickings.us2.list-manage.com%2Ftrack%2Fclick%3Fu%3D13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1%26id%3D3ca0f99181%26e%3Dbcf47a4edd&data=02%7C01%7Cneverowv1%40southernct.edu%7Cbc3aceead99d4262c25a08d6d6d4fecc%7C58736863d60e40ce95c60723c7eaaf67%7C0%7C0%7C636932607640951145&sdata=U4ehTnUIJOUgCKWeVKIy3G%2F%2BvrbLz5B%2BHWB3X%2BxQts4%3D&reserved=0" originalsrc="https://brainpickings.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1&id=3ca0f99181&e=bcf47a4edd" shash="DX3ZAlsN4OWCXE4bbHZUjw/bOPOc8hk8LUBMeUr2TtjzjkyN6cvnwgq9PDxdhmT4DUt4L97hsYda2C11jmsbAPlL0CW2n/6fjc332E+3DRlLIlFIYFD8yrKZjWRTi11ep9lltVJJWXj7Pu9y40OwYaOK9mXyXEh0p/wbO4px1Xg=" rel="nofollow" target="_blank" style="color:#C33737; text-decoration:underline">

the relationship between loneliness and creativity</a>, <a shape="rect" href="https://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fbrainpickings.us2.list-manage.com%2Ftrack%2Fclick%3Fu%3D13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1%26id%3D6af333cf1a%26e%3Dbcf47a4edd&data=02%7C01%7Cneverowv1%40southernct.edu%7Cbc3aceead99d4262c25a08d6d6d4fecc%7C58736863d60e40ce95c60723c7eaaf67%7C0%7C0%7C636932607640951145&sdata=uhrYB0b231Tn5UiXhdsBgxoMkhkm4xTK3yAfUwLytss%3D&reserved=0" originalsrc="https://brainpickings.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1&id=6af333cf1a&e=bcf47a4edd" shash="U1h54d4+0ELjT5SGl5tCXEFuSyFxPJgLT5C6TK5BDbTR95gHJNg8gtqUuDuqBuHWn8i3MQe026J6QrYepK74PjBJagm5AtIwtc+sTmZg1Ps6MUXftCnBlTzsSzd6G/E9GOerdbvjm/k+0P9C6Ndj2AO3u+wLnDruzMEif9aXXks=" rel="nofollow" target="_blank" style="color:#C33737; text-decoration:underline">

the creative potency of the androgynous mind</a>, and her <a shape="rect" href="https://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fbrainpickings.us2.list-manage.com%2Ftrack%2Fclick%3Fu%3D13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1%26id%3D14d666363c%26e%3Dbcf47a4edd&data=02%7C01%7Cneverowv1%40southernct.edu%7Cbc3aceead99d4262c25a08d6d6d4fecc%7C58736863d60e40ce95c60723c7eaaf67%7C0%7C0%7C636932607640961155&sdata=WQytvkWHIIE5tyAbe0EEx%2BPPMSh7qwsL8Yd63gvOExk%3D&reserved=0" originalsrc="https://brainpickings.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1&id=14d666363c&e=bcf47a4edd" shash="PynAk5Cjn0/iPAYDW7TfxiRoJCsAKLzJCWWj+FQrCAETsdiQCSzMA1+2THkVvnS3gC/Apu+9g1kE9aSj9f9WDgPdQ1/0O7CsqQYDXfTK3n4QTetNW4eKi/WOQ1LfX7QAnxgyuXBA9vVJ2jo4wGuqvRUgyBHuP5Sfl7mArY20AwA=" rel="nofollow" target="_blank" style="color:#C33737; text-decoration:underline">

transcendent account of a total solar eclipse</a>.</div>

</div>

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donating=loving</h2>

I pour tremendous time, thought, heart, and resources into <em>Brain Pickings</em>, which remains free and ad-free, and is made possible by patronage. If you find any joy, stimulation, and consolation in my labor of love, please consider supporting it with

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monthly donation</h2>

<span style="color:#ffffff">You can become a Sustaining Patron with a recurring monthly donation of your choosing, between a cup of tea and a Brooklyn lunch.</span>

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one-time donation</h2>

<span style="color:#ffffff">Or you can become a Spontaneous Supporter with a one-time donation in any amount.</span>

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<h1 style="display:block; font-family:Georgia,serif; font-size:21px; font-style:normal; font-weight:bold; line-height:125%; letter-spacing:normal; border-bottom:1px solid #E19B9B; margin:0 40px; padding:0 0 7px; text-align:left; color:#262626!important">

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 Radio Talks from the Harvard Observatory: Cecilia Payne, Who Discovered the Chemical Fingerprint of the Universe, on the Science of Stars and the Muse of All Great Scientists</a>

</h1>

<div class="x_ydp312f85aeyiv4839275198ydp2815f65dyiv1358638964ydp4dfd3fd7yiv4505063133entry_content" style="margin:0 40px">

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</div>

<div style="color:#262626; font-family:Georgia,serif; font-size:16px; line-height:165%; text-align:left">

In his stirring poem <a shape="rect" href="https://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fbrainpickings.us2.list-manage.com%2Ftrack%2Fclick%3Fu%3D13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1%26id%3D64bdc57db4%26e%3Dbcf47a4edd&data=02%7C01%7Cneverowv1%40southernct.edu%7Cbc3aceead99d4262c25a08d6d6d4fecc%7C58736863d60e40ce95c60723c7eaaf67%7C0%7C0%7C636932607641001179&sdata=92jP79QZggnda2JsQzmykupIQWYSm8S21eW6lr6QpAE%3D&reserved=0" originalsrc="https://brainpickings.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1&id=64bdc57db4&e=bcf47a4edd" shash="R5qf0pLLdBRwajQEaeSwrmhzODJEZ8QJZrUU5Vy23SxhJmMVR5BRX/mNAWwT47HbwIr3FQQeZxRT06H3ZsM8qvsqdJm4sQg5MeMi//9NHY2Nfziw4hkxu04vCwu0p98qIE+JFirtcHM6MofvvEBPlxTM5SnlnRPUgFKTO7kAItc=" rel="nofollow" target="_blank" style="color:#C33737; text-decoration:underline">

“The More Loving One,”</a> W.H. Auden asked: “How should we like it were stars to burn / With a passion for us we could not return?” It is a perennial question — how to live with our human fragility of feeling in a dispassionate universe. But our passions,

 along with everything we feel and everything we are, do belong to the stars, in the most elemental sense. “We’re made of star-stuff. We are a way for the cosmos to know itself,” Carl Sagan proclaimed in his iconic series

<em>Cosmos</em> — a scientific statement so poetic and profound that it has enchanted more imaginations and infected more lay people with cosmic curiosity than any other sentiment in the history of science. It is also a statement Sagan could not have made without

 the foundational work of the English-American astronomer and astrophysicist <strong>

Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin</strong> (May 10, 1900–December 7, 1979). </div>

<div style="color:#262626; font-family:Georgia,serif; font-size:16px; line-height:165%; text-align:left">

In 1925, in her 215-page Harvard doctoral thesis that made her the first person to earn a Ph.D. in astronomy at Radcliffe-Harvard, Payne discovered the chemical composition of stars — the “stuff” the cosmos is made of, which was, much to scientists’ surprise,

 the selfsame “stuff” of which we too are made. It was a shock and a revelation — a landmark leap in our understanding of the universe and of ourselves.</div>

<img alt="ceciliapayne.jpg?resize=680%2C449" class="x_ydp312f85aeyiv4839275198" style="border:0px; line-height:100%; outline:none; text-decoration:none; display:inline; width:100%; max-width:680px" src="https://i2.wp.com/www.brainpickings.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/ceciliapayne.jpg?resize=680%2C449">

<div class="x_ydp312f85aeyiv4839275198ydp2815f65dyiv1358638964ydp4dfd3fd7yiv4505063133caption" style="color:#595959; font-family:Arial,Sans-serif; font-size:11px; line-height:165%; text-align:left; border-bottom:1px solid #bfbfbf; padding:0 0 4px; font-weight:bold">

Cecilia Payne, Harvard College Observatory</div>

<div style="color:#262626; font-family:Georgia,serif; font-size:16px; line-height:165%; text-align:left">

In early November 1925, the Harvard College Observatory broadcast the first episode of a series of radio talks about astronomy. Every Tuesday and Thursday for the next eleven weeks, Harvard astronomers would take to the airwaves of Boston’s Edison Electric

 Illuminating Company, WEEI, and deliver short, surprisingly poetic lectures on everything from comets, shooting stars, and eclipses to the evolution of stars and the search for life beyond Earth. Nothing like this had ever been done before — it was the world’s

 first public broadcast series of popular science and its printed record, published the following year as

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<strong><em>The Universe of Stars: Radio Talks from the Harvard College Observatory</em></strong></a> (<a shape="rect" href="https://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fbrainpickings.us2.list-manage.com%2Ftrack%2Fclick%3Fu%3D13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1%26id%3Dfd65d85b2f%26e%3Dbcf47a4edd&data=02%7C01%7Cneverowv1%40southernct.edu%7Cbc3aceead99d4262c25a08d6d6d4fecc%7C58736863d60e40ce95c60723c7eaaf67%7C0%7C0%7C636932607641021193&sdata=gcTPGQj3CVd5UgovFP7ucgqf%2FyAdSYLqHewBJ53Me2U%3D&reserved=0" originalsrc="https://brainpickings.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1&id=fd65d85b2f&e=bcf47a4edd" shash="Adb8HOGAN6+DieGbttqIefG19EVjrIVXzX/ONaCAKpH+uWM7XIpQi+UY/SyIcfxQ5De1ukR+xSaxDumj3JCXdWGudDIFkyJSZqIW0GucOhJHKxT2s++o4PIHQ7p18WDUORflku0c14gLGC6t6SFNpVrKNvff2/HJ5lhm9jsO9k8=" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"><em>public

 library</em></a>), became the world’s first book of radio transcripts. </div>

<div style="color:#262626; font-family:Georgia,serif; font-size:16px; line-height:165%; text-align:left">

In mid-December 1925, having just completed her revolutionary doctoral thesis, the 25-year-old Payne delivered the fourteenth lecture in the series, titled “The Stuff Stars are Made of.”

</div>

<div style="color:#262626; font-family:Georgia,serif; font-size:16px; line-height:165%; text-align:left">

Five years before the discovery of Pluto and mere months after Edwin Hubble had refuted Harvard College Observatory director Harlow Shapley’s longtime insistence that our home galaxy was the full extent of the cosmos by identifying stars that must belong to

 another galaxy, Andromeda — a radical revision of previous ideas about the nature and size of the universe — Payne takes her listeners on a journey into our cosmic neighborhood and beyond, into the unfathomed cosmic unknown:</div>

<blockquote style="display:block">

<div style="color:#595959; font-family:Arial,Sans-serif; font-size:15px; line-height:170%; text-align:left">

<img align="left" alt="2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png" class="x_ydp312f85aeyiv4839275198" style="border:0; height:auto; line-height:100%; outline:none; text-decoration:none; padding:5px 30px 10px 0; display:inline; width:50px!important" src="https://gallery.mailchimp.com/13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1/images/2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png">We

 are going tonight far out beyond the bounds of the solar system, for this talk relates especially to the universe of stars… This solar system of ours is large enough, measured by earthly standards, since the distance across the orbit of Neptune, the farthest

 known planet, is some six thousand million miles. Even light, which travels at the furious speed of eleven million miles a minute, takes about eight hours to cross that space. But let us go out into the moonless night. Overhead we shall see thousands of twinkling

 points of light that we call the stars. Although light takes a third of a day to cross the solar system, the light that reaches us from the Milky Way may have been travelling five thousand years.</div>

</blockquote>

<img alt="milkyway1.jpg?resize=680%2C890" class="x_ydp312f85aeyiv4839275198" style="border:0px; line-height:100%; outline:none; text-decoration:none; display:inline; width:100%; max-width:680px" src="https://i0.wp.com/www.brainpickings.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/milkyway1.jpg?resize=680%2C890">

<div class="x_ydp312f85aeyiv4839275198ydp2815f65dyiv1358638964ydp4dfd3fd7yiv4505063133caption" style="color:#595959; font-family:Arial,Sans-serif; font-size:11px; line-height:165%; text-align:left; border-bottom:1px solid #bfbfbf; padding:0 0 4px; font-weight:bold">

One of Étienne Léopold Trouvelot’s stunning <a shape="rect" href="https://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fbrainpickings.us2.list-manage.com%2Ftrack%2Fclick%3Fu%3D13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1%26id%3D392828afb0%26e%3Dbcf47a4edd&data=02%7C01%7Cneverowv1%40southernct.edu%7Cbc3aceead99d4262c25a08d6d6d4fecc%7C58736863d60e40ce95c60723c7eaaf67%7C0%7C0%7C636932607641021193&sdata=QKxDXwW6O1yO%2BCBFqY2H4uQFZInvQwxQkWNynIyeMSk%3D&reserved=0" originalsrc="https://brainpickings.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1&id=392828afb0&e=bcf47a4edd" shash="PHhkMCmPcg9u74Ifzq7Sjn/179CsAT4LuBpcZaYSRJfQcAbbpykEMkF35jppIhdosRQjRTANEAtXPrx1/6glk3c5Mntxj/KePj1DJj5du1R6UuiiBjRnWZCWiFXTnbhRRZrZYERAIbRZQ49k8BxhHeP+r8iMmZ2WcAHEDwwW2XI=" rel="nofollow" target="_blank" style="color:#C33737; text-decoration:underline">

19th-century astronomical drawings</a>, based on his observations at the Harvard College Observatory.</div>

<div style="color:#262626; font-family:Georgia,serif; font-size:16px; line-height:165%; text-align:left">

Echoing pioneering astronomer Maria Mitchell’s lovely incantation — <a shape="rect" href="https://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fbrainpickings.us2.list-manage.com%2Ftrack%2Fclick%3Fu%3D13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1%26id%3D12b6d1a3fe%26e%3Dbcf47a4edd&data=02%7C01%7Cneverowv1%40southernct.edu%7Cbc3aceead99d4262c25a08d6d6d4fecc%7C58736863d60e40ce95c60723c7eaaf67%7C0%7C0%7C636932607641031198&sdata=2B%2F2rxthJdIE1085DQfZcXNL%2F3YIK9a%2FmwCyPqSf680%3D&reserved=0" originalsrc="https://brainpickings.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1&id=12b6d1a3fe&e=bcf47a4edd" shash="NiyacZgPNRa2Mh+0CZky0X2FrZ2SWgyckP1dqr91ZtQJtL3mkt5AkUCWNrwp2GGar4jDFomlahUUWTXbyDimdf2ovmHPH33f5RFixILj0ZR1M+c2UmUh/TNIHkPktrpQvwuEZeXWl3F36MFCz6lrSglE5Z3nFVflF2FgP/67U9g=" rel="nofollow" target="_blank" style="color:#C33737; text-decoration:underline">

“Mingle the starlight with your lives and you won’t be fretted by trifles,”</a> Mitchell had told her Vassar students, who

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paved the way for women</a> at the Harvard College Observatory — Payne reflects:</div>

<blockquote style="display:block">

<div style="color:#595959; font-family:Arial,Sans-serif; font-size:15px; line-height:170%; text-align:left">

<img align="left" alt="2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png" class="x_ydp312f85aeyiv4839275198" style="border:0; height:auto; line-height:100%; outline:none; text-decoration:none; padding:5px 30px 10px 0; display:inline; width:50px!important" src="https://gallery.mailchimp.com/13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1/images/2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png">When

 we direct our thoughts to the stellar universe, the solar system is dwarfed out of recognition. We only notice it because we happen to be living in it. Until we begin to think in terms of the system of stars, we are liable to overrate the size and comprehensiveness

 of the system of the planets.</div>

</blockquote>

<div style="color:#262626; font-family:Georgia,serif; font-size:16px; line-height:165%; text-align:left">

Writing in an era when there was only rudimentary awareness of the existence of stellar nuclei and nuclear reactions, she considers the mystery of our ancient nocturnal companions:</div>

<blockquote style="display:block">

<div style="color:#595959; font-family:Arial,Sans-serif; font-size:15px; line-height:170%; text-align:left">

<img align="left" alt="2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png" class="x_ydp312f85aeyiv4839275198" style="border:0; height:auto; line-height:100%; outline:none; text-decoration:none; padding:5px 30px 10px 0; display:inline; width:50px!important" src="https://gallery.mailchimp.com/13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1/images/2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png">When

 we look at the twinkling light of the stars, we need all our powers of imagination to visualize what they really are. Every one of those points of light is actually a huge mass, often far larger than the Sun. Every one shines because it is hot — so hot that

 it glows by its own light. And every one of them is pouring out light and heat into space in enormous quantities. Many bright stars pour out hundreds of millions of tons of light every second.</div>

<div style="color:#595959; font-family:Arial,Sans-serif; font-size:15px; line-height:170%; text-align:left">

[…]</div>

<div style="color:#595959; font-family:Arial,Sans-serif; font-size:15px; line-height:170%; text-align:left">

When you look at the night sky, you are looking at an almost inconceivably great quantity of matter; and therefore when I talk about the stuff the stars are made of I am telling you what we know of the Chemistry of the Universe.</div>

</blockquote>

<img alt="vijacelmins_thestars.jpg?resize=680%2C992" class="x_ydp312f85aeyiv4839275198" style="border:0px; line-height:100%; outline:none; text-decoration:none; display:inline; width:100%; max-width:680px" src="https://i0.wp.com/www.brainpickings.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/vijacelmins_thestars.jpg?resize=680%2C992">

<div class="x_ydp312f85aeyiv4839275198ydp2815f65dyiv1358638964ydp4dfd3fd7yiv4505063133caption" style="color:#595959; font-family:Arial,Sans-serif; font-size:11px; line-height:165%; text-align:left; border-bottom:1px solid #bfbfbf; padding:0 0 4px; font-weight:bold">

Etching by artist Vija Celmins from her project <a shape="rect" href="https://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fbrainpickings.us2.list-manage.com%2Ftrack%2Fclick%3Fu%3D13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1%26id%3Db87743fe11%26e%3Dbcf47a4edd&data=02%7C01%7Cneverowv1%40southernct.edu%7Cbc3aceead99d4262c25a08d6d6d4fecc%7C58736863d60e40ce95c60723c7eaaf67%7C0%7C0%7C636932607641041207&sdata=KwI4So%2F7UsqA3G%2F7NBelLpJ7wTUa5W7NQptIEUN3aWA%3D&reserved=0" originalsrc="https://brainpickings.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1&id=b87743fe11&e=bcf47a4edd" shash="PlAZyVyVQFQPKZNSZ4F5DkmUt/gaN5a8FuFOcNJ3r1CnQZECpxYuv4JExhsImXOj53mB2xPCDpPgWIzNeWZPDwVtmMUQxuvoNgAS1tJzd0hLN3xaEvpzwiVQ1aFoE9TvYtm1cQiRAIZofu2C9x4cwKDuo/7Qc0ZZyhigYEoxcmI=" rel="nofollow" target="_blank" style="color:#C33737; text-decoration:underline">

<em>The Stars</em></a>.</div>

<div style="color:#262626; font-family:Georgia,serif; font-size:16px; line-height:165%; text-align:left">

Payne examines the essence of the question itself: When we ask what things are “made of” in the world around us, we answer by pointing to their material — clay and rocks and water and wood — and then further analyze each material into different kinds of atoms.

 But because it is impossible to physically fetch atoms directly from a star the way one might fetch a fistful of clay from the ground, scientists can only analyze another aspect of the stellar “stuff”: light. Three centuries after Newton first used the word

<em>spectrum</em> — Latin for “appearance” — to describe the beautiful band of rainbow produced when sunlight disperses onto a glass prism, giving rise to the science of spectrography, Payne explains the study of stellar light:</div>

<blockquote style="display:block">

<div style="color:#595959; font-family:Arial,Sans-serif; font-size:15px; line-height:170%; text-align:left">

<img align="left" alt="2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png" class="x_ydp312f85aeyiv4839275198" style="border:0; height:auto; line-height:100%; outline:none; text-decoration:none; padding:5px 30px 10px 0; display:inline; width:50px!important" src="https://gallery.mailchimp.com/13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1/images/2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png">[Stars]

 are all pouring out light into space and we can catch that light as it strikes the Earth, and analyze it. In a fundamental sense, that light was once as much a part of the stars as clay is a part of the Earth. Light is a form of energy, and it is the energy

 of a star that makes it shine, and keeps it going, and enables it to survive. A star literally lives on its light.</div>

</blockquote>

<img alt="ceciliapayne_cas-a.jpg?resize=680%2C666" class="x_ydp312f85aeyiv4839275198" style="border:0px; line-height:100%; outline:none; text-decoration:none; display:inline; width:100%; max-width:680px" src="https://i1.wp.com/www.brainpickings.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/ceciliapayne_cas-a.jpg?resize=680%2C666">

<div class="x_ydp312f85aeyiv4839275198ydp2815f65dyiv1358638964ydp4dfd3fd7yiv4505063133caption" style="color:#595959; font-family:Arial,Sans-serif; font-size:11px; line-height:165%; text-align:left; border-bottom:1px solid #bfbfbf; padding:0 0 4px; font-weight:bold">

Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin’s embroidery of supernova remnant Cas A. Read the story behind the project

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here</a>.</div>

<div style="color:#262626; font-family:Georgia,serif; font-size:16px; line-height:165%; text-align:left">

Analyzing that light makes it possible to discern what stars are made of, because matter in the gaseous state emanates light of specific wavelengths, with each atom occupying a different set of wavelengths and thus appearing at a different spot along the color

 spectrum when its light passes through a prism. This method, Payne notes, revealed that stars are made of the selfsame elements found all around us, even though conditions on those stars are dramatically different from those on Earth, with temperatures reaching

 tens of thousands of degrees centigrade. After a necessary detour to physics, explaining how the structure of the atom factors into this commonality of matter, Payne concludes with the kernel of the poetic and profound sentiment Sagan would popularize more

 than half a century later:</div>

<blockquote style="display:block">

<div style="color:#595959; font-family:Arial,Sans-serif; font-size:15px; line-height:170%; text-align:left">

<img align="left" alt="2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png" class="x_ydp312f85aeyiv4839275198" style="border:0; height:auto; line-height:100%; outline:none; text-decoration:none; padding:5px 30px 10px 0; display:inline; width:50px!important" src="https://gallery.mailchimp.com/13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1/images/2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png">In

 the spectrum of the Sun, we can pick out all the two thousand colors that are given out by an atom of iron; they are exactly the same as the colors that would be given out by a piece of iron, heated in the electric arc in the laboratory. A common chemistry

 and a common physics run through the universe.</div>

<div style="color:#595959; font-family:Arial,Sans-serif; font-size:15px; line-height:170%; text-align:left">

[…]</div>

<div style="color:#595959; font-family:Arial,Sans-serif; font-size:15px; line-height:170%; text-align:left">

The story that I have told you is one that has wide implications. Not only does it confirm us in our belief that a common physics and chemistry underlie the universe, but it suggests a basis for the study of the fundamental problem of the stability of matter.

 [This] implies that all stars have the same composition… that the relative amount of the different elements are in some way fixed, and have some fundamental significance in the universe.</div>

</blockquote>

<div style="color:#262626; font-family:Georgia,serif; font-size:16px; line-height:165%; text-align:left">

This was a revolutionary idea that would lead to entirely new theories about the evolution of the universe. Payne herself would devote the remainder of her life to illuminating these mysteries, becoming the first woman to chair a Harvard department. But such

 honors meant little to her — she stood with Maria Mitchell, who famously asserted that honors “are small things in the light of stars.” Six decades after her doctoral thesis, Payne ended

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her autobiography</a> with a short poem of her own, celebrating the scientific muse that governed her trailblazing career — a beautiful articulation of the universal motive force that impels all great scientists to do what they do.

</div>

<div style="color:#262626; font-family:Georgia,serif; font-size:16px; line-height:165%; text-align:left">

At the third annual <a shape="rect" href="https://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fbrainpickings.us2.list-manage.com%2Ftrack%2Fclick%3Fu%3D13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1%26id%3Debf810ac04%26e%3Dbcf47a4edd&data=02%7C01%7Cneverowv1%40southernct.edu%7Cbc3aceead99d4262c25a08d6d6d4fecc%7C58736863d60e40ce95c60723c7eaaf67%7C0%7C0%7C636932607641051212&sdata=VLgKV6y%2BYrOSenK1qVjz03CwtwreCX4jESMjRSX8LpA%3D&reserved=0" originalsrc="https://brainpickings.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1&id=ebf810ac04&e=bcf47a4edd" shash="t/nixmOj6VEIOKgV73v5d013rvsJzwkdMkeacQOdyu3U4+oncWgn5GT6xWIxwABD4i45Hjt8XF0CqXVYYIISS/14igyPmXe/6UleXx7x/NaExsM1LY52i6qLq07aPZAcampbHGvWjoVz0jrdLKXhcYmrhsQnW/peLQKW9p6z+L8=" rel="nofollow" target="_blank" style="color:#C33737; text-decoration:underline">

<em>Universe in Verse</em></a>, astrophysicist Natalie Batalha — project scientist on NASA’s Kepler mission, responsible for discovering more than 4,000 exoplanets: whole new worlds unimaginable in Payne’s time, when the very notion of another galaxy was a

 shock — <a shape="rect" href="https://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fbrainpickings.us2.list-manage.com%2Ftrack%2Fclick%3Fu%3D13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1%26id%3D0e3fdc331c%26e%3Dbcf47a4edd&data=02%7C01%7Cneverowv1%40southernct.edu%7Cbc3aceead99d4262c25a08d6d6d4fecc%7C58736863d60e40ce95c60723c7eaaf67%7C0%7C0%7C636932607641061221&sdata=5Qs9gZg2nfMBqTmzGtEsRkrPwDWLn6pZJCEPlsr%2BkFA%3D&reserved=0" originalsrc="https://brainpickings.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1&id=0e3fdc331c&e=bcf47a4edd" shash="nRmsf0tUAsPHUFYb1H2zMiHEX7TXQAedIBa8zfdVKOQGORO2b8a8M1FqFw1TmcCHW2i0poKmqf+sVeGOdoYG3jJN/e/+OkmIk86X+B+E3ZEekhWutKnTOZRJPVytZ5CMVFMWDS+FH+ExjjqVJc7AWyXdLM3C+7pJhwTgisay+nk=" rel="nofollow">

returned</a> to read Payne’s poem, with a lovely prefatory mediation reaching across space and time to connect Payne to Sagan to her own work and the largest questions human beings bring to and ask of the universe:</div>

<div style="color:#262626; font-family:Georgia,serif; font-size:16px; line-height:165%; text-align:left">

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</div>

<blockquote style="display:block">

<div style="color:#595959; font-family:Arial,Sans-serif; font-size:15px; line-height:170%; text-align:left">

<img align="left" alt="2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png" class="x_ydp312f85aeyiv4839275198" style="border:0; height:auto; line-height:100%; outline:none; text-decoration:none; padding:5px 30px 10px 0; display:inline; width:50px!important" src="https://gallery.mailchimp.com/13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1/images/2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png"><strong>RESEARCH</strong>

<br clear="none">

<em>by Cecilia Payne</em> </div>

<div style="color:#595959; font-family:Arial,Sans-serif; font-size:15px; line-height:170%; text-align:left">

O Universe, O Lover,<br clear="none">

I gave myself to thee<br clear="none">

Not for gold<br clear="none">

Not for glory<br clear="none">

But for love.<br clear="none">

Our children are immortal,<br clear="none">

I am the Mother.<br clear="none">

The offspring of our love<br clear="none">

Will bear the image of a humble mother<br clear="none">

And also a proud imperious Father.<br clear="none">

Like Danae<br clear="none">

I saw him in a stream of glowing stars;<br clear="none">

Like Alkmena<br clear="none">

Long, long I lay in his terrible embrace.<br clear="none">

Their sons go striding round the firmament;<br clear="none">

My children gambol at their heels.</div>

</blockquote>

<div style="color:#262626; font-family:Georgia,serif; font-size:16px; line-height:165%; text-align:left">

Couple with Cecilia Payne’s <a shape="rect" href="https://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fbrainpickings.us2.list-manage.com%2Ftrack%2Fclick%3Fu%3D13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1%26id%3D1f0aa5db1f%26e%3Dbcf47a4edd&data=02%7C01%7Cneverowv1%40southernct.edu%7Cbc3aceead99d4262c25a08d6d6d4fecc%7C58736863d60e40ce95c60723c7eaaf67%7C0%7C0%7C636932607641071231&sdata=9NLWDvOj7miytc8ZCXNxmSRAE7ZWt3f5okdytOlrSNQ%3D&reserved=0" originalsrc="https://brainpickings.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1&id=1f0aa5db1f&e=bcf47a4edd" shash="Ycv7Sa2a7S2nuPLrWdeYLkWRrKW0Hi2qO6brYfLyguTOLhhUPBH/dkTvrf/TvHOmW7h26BX6NMD8PByxmXhtFPr23GJGLraUK3aHUktpzVu+Fk2SU25/gME4fUQYQ1V4HR4OYviaLiqUfMgKCSU3xrfo5TbxZA+4AA5+LuZQ5Mw=" rel="nofollow" target="_blank" style="color:#C33737; text-decoration:underline">

advice to the young</a>, then revisit other highlights from <em>The Universe in Verse</em>: Regina Spektor reading

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“Theories of Everything”</a> by the Canadian astronomer, poet, and tragic genius Rebecca Elson, astrophysicist Janna Levin reading Adrienne Rich’s

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tribute to the world’s first professional female astronomer</a>, Amanda Palmer reading

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Neil Gaiman’s tribute to Rachel Carson</a>, poet Marie Howe reading her <a shape="rect" href="https://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fbrainpickings.us2.list-manage.com%2Ftrack%2Fclick%3Fu%3D13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1%26id%3Dd734444d09%26e%3Dbcf47a4edd&data=02%7C01%7Cneverowv1%40southernct.edu%7Cbc3aceead99d4262c25a08d6d6d4fecc%7C58736863d60e40ce95c60723c7eaaf67%7C0%7C0%7C636932607641091241&sdata=zzP59ppYgf6gl%2Bg0xK524GZV7IW9RqTt5y5kjtcsQys%3D&reserved=0" originalsrc="https://brainpickings.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1&id=d734444d09&e=bcf47a4edd" shash="SyC8XxIUnvtdzgTXwcbuhrAskyv8ug4cyonFnOh/wE3LWObR7jtjydRpYEwxdr4j3vlox1P3qKhWR/usQ5Wnh16pd4F6Asy/krgdI36LZ5xxK2yAF83Nr9hAG73Dy85L28Ycq7kBeheM3bRtlsDVVsw7d0+afjgGz5RFVS6Y0P4=" rel="nofollow" target="_blank" style="color:#C33737; text-decoration:underline">

homage to Stephen Hawking</a>, U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith reading her <a shape="rect" href="https://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fbrainpickings.us2.list-manage.com%2Ftrack%2Fclick%3Fu%3D13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1%26id%3Dcd3a2fdc41%26e%3Dbcf47a4edd&data=02%7C01%7Cneverowv1%40southernct.edu%7Cbc3aceead99d4262c25a08d6d6d4fecc%7C58736863d60e40ce95c60723c7eaaf67%7C0%7C0%7C636932607641101250&sdata=Ik1BJ84zPBpVMYvMzF5HVDqORWpa6D1jMqBHfJXAJ8Q%3D&reserved=0" originalsrc="https://brainpickings.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1&id=cd3a2fdc41&e=bcf47a4edd" shash="mUu18nQuTZRpIkcbwugaXnWFgyzGB4kxVCMqcsHCHIKo6PTlsMgelOgCqjuBABeymedszwZDndLaCJcdatf/MPJT8Ut96sRcAMWG5Lfjx5+Imcp4zmUoSuxCq4/yyjPOtE5UzKvJyIq5pkqyn/A3kGYAXET83msAWxj1n2xBRUo=" rel="nofollow" target="_blank" style="color:#C33737; text-decoration:underline">

ode to the Hubble Space Telescope</a>, and Rosanne Cash reading Adrienne Rich’s <a shape="rect" href="https://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fbrainpickings.us2.list-manage.com%2Ftrack%2Fclick%3Fu%3D13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1%26id%3Dbc3dae3c43%26e%3Dbcf47a4edd&data=02%7C01%7Cneverowv1%40southernct.edu%7Cbc3aceead99d4262c25a08d6d6d4fecc%7C58736863d60e40ce95c60723c7eaaf67%7C0%7C0%7C636932607641111259&sdata=tkLPNPJSSwF0WeVTQ8bKszcpJoVdYTxD8fzfAtQb9JA%3D&reserved=0" originalsrc="https://brainpickings.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1&id=bc3dae3c43&e=bcf47a4edd" shash="bP+XTOXK5/xHGiNZ+P3vFbd/nUH+1uqP0OislQwnmVKT5RSOU1LifQxaqOlWtzRcDATwc3jsRbMGAc+ibneL+fOGGhn6dYgpriKg8lYhbFJEeMiMYiudggUPU4vH3D5+P/rWxge4DVpwSANGzoITIZqHF+oOcJnmHTwq4X1eiOQ=" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">

tribute to Marie Curie</a>.</div>

</div>

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<h1 style="display:block; font-family:Georgia,serif; font-size:21px; font-style:normal; font-weight:bold; line-height:125%; letter-spacing:normal; border-bottom:1px solid #E19B9B; margin:0 40px; padding:0 0 7px; text-align:left; color:#262626!important">

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 Browning on Artistic Integrity, Withstanding Criticism, and the Courage to Create Rather Than Cater</a>

</h1>

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“Does what goes on inside show on the outside?” the 26-year-old Van Gogh wrote to his brother in his

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stirring letter</a> about the struggle for artistic purpose and recognition. “Someone has a great fire in his soul and nobody ever comes to warm themselves at it, and passers-by see nothing but a little smoke at the top of the chimney.” It is a hollowing feeling

 every artist experiences at one point or another, this dispiriting mismatch between the ferocity of one’s inner fire and the cold, blind eye of the outside world.

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In the same era, another artist of towering genius and paltry recognition articulated this sentiment, as well as its heartening antidote, in a letter to the love of his life.

</div>

<img alt="robertbrowning-1.jpg?resize=680%2C477" class="x_ydp312f85aeyiv4839275198" style="border:0px; line-height:100%; outline:none; text-decoration:none; display:inline; width:100%; max-width:680px" src="https://i2.wp.com/www.brainpickings.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/robertbrowning-1.jpg?resize=680%2C477">

<div class="x_ydp312f85aeyiv4839275198ydp2815f65dyiv1358638964ydp4dfd3fd7yiv4505063133caption" style="color:#595959; font-family:Arial,Sans-serif; font-size:11px; line-height:165%; text-align:left; border-bottom:1px solid #bfbfbf; padding:0 0 4px; font-weight:bold">

Robert Browning</div>

<div style="color:#262626; font-family:Georgia,serif; font-size:16px; line-height:165%; text-align:left">

<strong>Robert Browning</strong> (May 7, 1812–December 12, 1889) met and fell in love with

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Elizabeth Barrett</a> in the land of verse. “I love these books with all my heart — and I love you too,” he wrote to the stranger who had enchanted him with her 1844 poetry collection. He was an obscure poet six years her junior and this was the beginning of

 a most improbable courtship, recounted in <a shape="rect" href="https://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fbrainpickings.us2.list-manage.com%2Ftrack%2Fclick%3Fu%3D13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1%26id%3D97a00386b6%26e%3Dbcf47a4edd&data=02%7C01%7Cneverowv1%40southernct.edu%7Cbc3aceead99d4262c25a08d6d6d4fecc%7C58736863d60e40ce95c60723c7eaaf67%7C0%7C0%7C636932607641161293&sdata=2nj8pOOMa6SdrhOUJran7LSDeEUgxp6Q1ZmlvDaHlSE%3D&reserved=0" originalsrc="https://brainpickings.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1&id=97a00386b6&e=bcf47a4edd" shash="M/UCttEdEOtVDFMGHOqvm/QrRoxXmtjhXqM9vhivl5sFYJbhKx0VqQJ7yRlaaUFMwZWqjp5QcI3wSN0Yhm7RvhHZhKB4xLMUCUtis7bJ28tcpHxM64iCnszfOYfIDbQ4uE0PCx0xHhShGDedwb4+fvntmHkS7nkYkISt0aX8VQg=" rel="nofollow" target="_blank" style="color:#C33737; text-decoration:underline">

<em>Figuring</em></a>, that would soon become one of the grandest, most beautiful true love stories in the common record.</div>

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“You and I seem to meet in a mild contrarious harmony,” Elizabeth wrote to Robert in their early epistolary romance, collected in the almost unbearably beautiful

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<strong><em>Love Letters of Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning</em></strong></a> (<a shape="rect" href="https://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fbrainpickings.us2.list-manage.com%2Ftrack%2Fclick%3Fu%3D13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1%26id%3De08bcdd0e1%26e%3Dbcf47a4edd&data=02%7C01%7Cneverowv1%40southernct.edu%7Cbc3aceead99d4262c25a08d6d6d4fecc%7C58736863d60e40ce95c60723c7eaaf67%7C0%7C0%7C636932607641171298&sdata=lhkoKXQUQLYjaYxcpa4jlGhPojmZ4sGrL%2FQsHskjhCs%3D&reserved=0" originalsrc="https://brainpickings.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1&id=e08bcdd0e1&e=bcf47a4edd" shash="QZN2rer5L0lztbFrgI8oIPi/2/zRf6PAlKe+vWe6QuCIeKu1AxQWK6Tg1sIVj8sn+si9FBDN8ak0OFK22/bEeOTcw4h/VUwix6pURbJ0tc3kZP96iO2CqLprrZVd+oP0r/a6jVsF6DpsSduyV2aW9nBB3g7msAgfjlpcm66fnyE=" rel="nofollow" target="_blank" style="color:#C33737; text-decoration:underline"><em>public

 library</em></a> | <a shape="rect" href="https://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fbrainpickings.us2.list-manage.com%2Ftrack%2Fclick%3Fu%3D13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1%26id%3Db87ea1ebc6%26e%3Dbcf47a4edd&data=02%7C01%7Cneverowv1%40southernct.edu%7Cbc3aceead99d4262c25a08d6d6d4fecc%7C58736863d60e40ce95c60723c7eaaf67%7C0%7C0%7C636932607641181307&sdata=EUD1kOEamTJMc4J%2Fr0NI2ID4O5eshPicUhm27Q9TBfw%3D&reserved=0" originalsrc="https://brainpickings.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1&id=b87ea1ebc6&e=bcf47a4edd" shash="ZQFdH77vr9ypf9exu7K4Pqe78nXEsNB0+Im+d6NfRGvvlGyYIWGCCfkro4mymR82/8J/VNEqJzda/R5qxAGEl3VC37QtAZMxx8HEG1FLo4IreX7yg97a47TX0tmRpu8+9ufAUnufzqftndNqi9Sgfe1IFUZet8sPRk+SSyasVb8=" rel="nofollow" target="_blank" style="color:#C33737; text-decoration:underline">

<em>free ebook</em></a>). What harmonized their differences and contradictions was literature — the shared passion for it, the intellectual and creative bond around it, the mutual admiration of each other’s artistic gift, particularly transformative for Robert:

 Elizabeth’s confidence in his talent buoyed him when criticism and indifference sank his spirit as he struggled for recognition.

</div>

<img alt="ebb.jpg?resize=680%2C482" class="x_ydp312f85aeyiv4839275198" style="border:0px; line-height:100%; outline:none; text-decoration:none; display:inline; width:100%; max-width:680px" src="https://i0.wp.com/www.brainpickings.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/ebb.jpg?resize=680%2C482">

<div class="x_ydp312f85aeyiv4839275198ydp2815f65dyiv1358638964ydp4dfd3fd7yiv4505063133caption" style="color:#595959; font-family:Arial,Sans-serif; font-size:11px; line-height:165%; text-align:left; border-bottom:1px solid #bfbfbf; padding:0 0 4px; font-weight:bold">

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (British Library)</div>

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In a letter penned at the dawn of their courtship, Elizabeth probes his orientation to criticism and creative purpose:</div>

<blockquote style="display:block">

<div style="color:#595959; font-family:Arial,Sans-serif; font-size:15px; line-height:170%; text-align:left">

<img align="left" alt="2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png" class="x_ydp312f85aeyiv4839275198" style="border:0; height:auto; line-height:100%; outline:none; text-decoration:none; padding:5px 30px 10px 0; display:inline; width:50px!important" src="https://gallery.mailchimp.com/13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1/images/2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png">I

 do not know, I cannot guess, whether you are liable to be pained deeply by hard criticism and cold neglect, such as original writers like yourself are too often exposed to — or whether the love of Art is enough for you, and the exercise of Art the filling

 joy of your life.</div>

</blockquote>

<div style="color:#262626; font-family:Georgia,serif; font-size:16px; line-height:165%; text-align:left">

Aware of her own creative courage and defiance of convention, the 33-year-old Robert responds:</div>

<blockquote style="display:block">

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<img align="left" alt="2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png" class="x_ydp312f85aeyiv4839275198" style="border:0; height:auto; line-height:100%; outline:none; text-decoration:none; padding:5px 30px 10px 0; display:inline; width:50px!important" src="https://gallery.mailchimp.com/13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1/images/2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png">You

 inquire about my “sensitiveness to criticism”… I write from a thorough conviction that it is the duty of me, and with the belief that, after every drawback and shortcoming, I do my best, all things considered — that is for me, and, so being, the not being

 listened to by one human creature would, I hope, in nowise affect me.</div>

</blockquote>

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A decade before Walt Whitman proclaimed in <em>Leaves of Grass</em>, <a shape="rect" href="https://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fbrainpickings.us2.list-manage.com%2Ftrack%2Fclick%3Fu%3D13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1%26id%3D6e825ce7a4%26e%3Dbcf47a4edd&data=02%7C01%7Cneverowv1%40southernct.edu%7Cbc3aceead99d4262c25a08d6d6d4fecc%7C58736863d60e40ce95c60723c7eaaf67%7C0%7C0%7C636932607641191316&sdata=8bk0CYxJgDd%2Fy2HqLJUTCHHzbu8TWcnbw6GAkIVgINg%3D&reserved=0" originalsrc="https://brainpickings.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1&id=6e825ce7a4&e=bcf47a4edd" shash="PDc2XFfMIJzDP2q44FzxzIpJoH6uKd/MAQIxwPa2yYJ2cjve5OIqPVh7BJh6wS93dZIFZvz6hyW1VgyAKFvzGS6jSDAxseTz/v+qr2aH+ghFUii1mAl1sXRYYj+NL8Ha7OmQaJqwDhSZu6xslvthUWv7BJtLq2lnFT1InQP4PpM=" rel="nofollow" target="_blank" style="color:#C33737; text-decoration:underline">

“I do not trouble my spirit to vindicate itself or be understood,”</a> Browning reflects on his own poems, dismissed and misunderstood by critics, and the fiery animating force behind them:</div>

<blockquote style="display:block">

<div style="color:#595959; font-family:Arial,Sans-serif; font-size:15px; line-height:170%; text-align:left">

<img align="left" alt="2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png" class="x_ydp312f85aeyiv4839275198" style="border:0; height:auto; line-height:100%; outline:none; text-decoration:none; padding:5px 30px 10px 0; display:inline; width:50px!important" src="https://gallery.mailchimp.com/13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1/images/2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png">These

 scenes and song-scraps <em>are</em> such mere and very escapes of my inner power, which lives in me like the light in those crazy Mediterranean phares I have watched at sea, wherein the light is ever revolving in a dark gallery, bright and alive, and only

 after a weary interval leaps out, for a moment, from the one narrow chink, and then goes on with the blind wall between it and you; and, no doubt,

<em>then</em>, precisely, does the poor drudge that carries the cresset set himself most busily to trim the wick — for don’t think I want to say I have not worked hard — (this head of mine knows better) — but the work has been

<em>inside</em>, and not when at stated times I held up my light to you — and, that there is no self-delusion here, I would prove to you (and nobody else), even by opening this desk I write on, and showing what stuff, in the way of wood, I

<em>could</em> make a great bonfire with, if I might only knock the whole clumsy top off my tower! Of course, every writing body says the same, so I gain nothing by the avowal; but when I remember how I have done what was published, and half done what may never

 be, I say with some right, you can know but little of me.</div>

</blockquote>

<div style="color:#262626; font-family:Georgia,serif; font-size:16px; line-height:165%; text-align:left">

In a sentiment even more countercultural today, as many artists sacrifice creative authenticity at the alter of catering — to existing tastes, to lucrative “markets,” to the guarantees of convention and their own past proven successes — Elizabeth condemns Tennyson,

 perhaps the most “successful” poet in the English language at the time and a writer she did admire, for his readiness in catering to the likes and dislikes of critics and tastemakers rather than composing from a place of authentic creative vision. A century

 before James Baldwin considered <a shape="rect" href="https://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fbrainpickings.us2.list-manage.com%2Ftrack%2Fclick%3Fu%3D13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1%26id%3D0b01cb7c0e%26e%3Dbcf47a4edd&data=02%7C01%7Cneverowv1%40southernct.edu%7Cbc3aceead99d4262c25a08d6d6d4fecc%7C58736863d60e40ce95c60723c7eaaf67%7C0%7C0%7C636932607641191316&sdata=VfcW%2BGXMRx6mrhrfldj50sMnRZKJhGpV0zoDZtK0i%2BM%3D&reserved=0" originalsrc="https://brainpickings.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1&id=0b01cb7c0e&e=bcf47a4edd" shash="yohADa1OOxMz4C/Dl+nO9ZEROnYHPHvye4bBQDS21n8Rd4jhWxOPjWiiw4VKARkysLZ51XVD4gvsDxlVDryOesdO5cU3OnXVOTBFU8SKsQHi6TOd+KTYVVWaCql4Rul3otD09qs3O4zD1mzl5SmAWvvqi/mVVycwCb13nvKMwbg=" rel="nofollow" target="_blank" style="color:#C33737; text-decoration:underline">

the artist’s struggle for integrity</a> and Mark Rothko lamented that <a shape="rect" href="https://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fbrainpickings.us2.list-manage.com%2Ftrack%2Fclick%3Fu%3D13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1%26id%3Dba2fc6dc4b%26e%3Dbcf47a4edd&data=02%7C01%7Cneverowv1%40southernct.edu%7Cbc3aceead99d4262c25a08d6d6d4fecc%7C58736863d60e40ce95c60723c7eaaf67%7C0%7C0%7C636932607641201317&sdata=MJI%2BTvsoozdhr2F0D2gDrTE7RcEF1oZdR3lL3sAu6gg%3D&reserved=0" originalsrc="https://brainpickings.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1&id=ba2fc6dc4b&e=bcf47a4edd" shash="JZxrwmFUjxl0BQo1ehSimkkl6VaB93UCPN9k1H9zjvwKuN9XPhOF+58OOdzr2PG0HbGr/27KjarWZPVnfumKrDY3Ln9hwi7JeKaqMavmY+4r0VXFcB8xSvGKZ95pgy8ff/UbN+MccdOA7N680pkmeWOa/lNBMZd/qY+GdRJV//I=" rel="nofollow" target="_blank" style="color:#C33737; text-decoration:underline">

“while the authority of the doctor or plumber is never questioned, everyone deems himself a good judge and an adequate arbiter of what a work of art should be and how it should be done,”</a> she writes:</div>

<blockquote style="display:block">

<div style="color:#595959; font-family:Arial,Sans-serif; font-size:15px; line-height:170%; text-align:left">

<img align="left" alt="2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png" class="x_ydp312f85aeyiv4839275198" style="border:0; height:auto; line-height:100%; outline:none; text-decoration:none; padding:5px 30px 10px 0; display:inline; width:50px!important" src="https://gallery.mailchimp.com/13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1/images/2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png">That

 such a poet [as Tennyson] should submit blindly to the suggestions of his critics… is much as if Babbage were to take my opinion and undo his calculating machine by it.</div>

</blockquote>

<div style="color:#262626; font-family:Georgia,serif; font-size:16px; line-height:165%; text-align:left">

Emboldened by her insistence on authenticity over approval, Robert concurs:</div>

<blockquote style="display:block">

<div style="color:#595959; font-family:Arial,Sans-serif; font-size:15px; line-height:170%; text-align:left">

<img align="left" alt="2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png" class="x_ydp312f85aeyiv4839275198" style="border:0; height:auto; line-height:100%; outline:none; text-decoration:none; padding:5px 30px 10px 0; display:inline; width:50px!important" src="https://gallery.mailchimp.com/13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1/images/2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png">Tennyson

 reads the <em>Quarterly</em> and does as they bid him, with the most solemn face in the world — out goes this, in goes that, all is changed and ranged. Oh me!</div>

</blockquote>

<img alt="browning_hosmer.jpg?resize=680%2C544" class="x_ydp312f85aeyiv4839275198" style="border:0px; line-height:100%; outline:none; text-decoration:none; display:inline; width:100%; max-width:680px" src="https://i1.wp.com/www.brainpickings.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/browning_hosmer.jpg?resize=680%2C544">

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Bronze cast of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s clasped hands by <a shape="rect" href="https://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fbrainpickings.us2.list-manage.com%2Ftrack%2Fclick%3Fu%3D13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1%26id%3D13caa823a0%26e%3Dbcf47a4edd&data=02%7C01%7Cneverowv1%40southernct.edu%7Cbc3aceead99d4262c25a08d6d6d4fecc%7C58736863d60e40ce95c60723c7eaaf67%7C0%7C0%7C636932607641211331&sdata=YYHQUh03VRpMfw9cH5BNucOqbjO29BGh3hRJZGIGLqU%3D&reserved=0" originalsrc="https://brainpickings.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1&id=13caa823a0&e=bcf47a4edd" shash="sjQTwmPWWynQzJXnI1EsBtELEueGTIMKVmRndUO2H5Om5SjmpTGH9DB8qjMx6SPLuXK0WlhUunHYzS7edlHA2R53aaliuSjR7ZLSdppqjO+nP8C9obX6d0W4kQeRsL+IKwe1VjfyQo19NgBrFmvjfKM0YjF+Jq+J4YA87Zg6oPg=" rel="nofollow" target="_blank" style="color:#C33737; text-decoration:underline">

the pioneering sculptor Harriet Hosmer</a>. Nathaniel Hawthorne would later write of Hosmer’s piece as capturing “the individuality and heroic union of two high, poetic lives.” (Metropolitan Museum of Art)</div>

<div style="color:#262626; font-family:Georgia,serif; font-size:16px; line-height:165%; text-align:left">

Robert Browning would go on to become one of the most beloved and influential poets our civilization has produced, much thanks to Elizabeth’s encouragement. Although today he is the better known of the two Brownings — a common selective erasure reflective of

 history’s worship of the Y chromosome — he spent most of his career in her shadow, always ungrudgingly, always in admiration. As Elizabeth rose to celebrity, Robert’s pride in her work was so great that he sublimated his own ego, readily recounting a period

 during which he could get publishers interested in his own work only if he also sent them something of his wife’s. A decade into their love, he published

<em>Men and Women</em> — a two-volume collection of his poems, for which both Brownings had high hopes. It fell on unenchanted ears, dismissed by critics and ignored by the public. Several months later,

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<em>Aurora Leigh</em></a> — her epic novel in blank verse, a sensation best described today as viral — stationed Elizabeth atop a new stratum of celebrity. Robert was jubilant. “I am surprised, I own, at the amount of success,” a disbelieving Elizabeth wrote

 to her sister-in-law. “Golden-hearted Robert is in ecstasies about it — far more than if it all related to a book of his own.” Perhaps she was thinking of Robert’s obscurity and the public’s painful indifference to his books when she had her protagonist proclaim:</div>

<blockquote style="display:block">

<div style="color:#595959; font-family:Arial,Sans-serif; font-size:15px; line-height:170%; text-align:left">

<img align="left" alt="2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png" class="x_ydp312f85aeyiv4839275198" style="border:0; height:auto; line-height:100%; outline:none; text-decoration:none; padding:5px 30px 10px 0; display:inline; width:50px!important" src="https://gallery.mailchimp.com/13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1/images/2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png">We

 get no good<br clear="none">

By being ungenerous, even to a book<br clear="none">

And calculating profits — so much help<br clear="none">

By so much rending. It is rather when<br clear="none">

We gloriously forget ourselves, and plunge<br clear="none">

Soul-forward, headlong, into a book’s profound,<br clear="none">

Impassioned for its beauty and salt of truth —<br clear="none">

’Tis then we get the right good from a book.</div>

</blockquote>

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Complement this fragment of the altogether magnificent <a shape="rect" href="https://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fbrainpickings.us2.list-manage.com%2Ftrack%2Fclick%3Fu%3D13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1%26id%3D37ff00dde0%26e%3Dbcf47a4edd&data=02%7C01%7Cneverowv1%40southernct.edu%7Cbc3aceead99d4262c25a08d6d6d4fecc%7C58736863d60e40ce95c60723c7eaaf67%7C0%7C0%7C636932607641221335&sdata=Hy6ao63zM6cYfsFzYjb43GBIVBeHMQ6%2F8b9eXTx24zI%3D&reserved=0" originalsrc="https://brainpickings.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1&id=37ff00dde0&e=bcf47a4edd" shash="CmsnXYX9Ukbz3pKZ1rgAgUBh8EqAzCph3kPN3KhRDYXz1K2dh2PE7aJY6VKjKyZoN4GfgS/wnNgpZm1vMhq4//46QiW9YlWTCvsRIUwgpF2gzD3YlB3D87qnr/eZ8SxcZkMv4iXeIEGdINbnH/mTILOwgQinijkJuOa6W8Ytm9c=" rel="nofollow" target="_blank" style="color:#C33737; text-decoration:underline">

<strong><em>Love Letters of Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning</em></strong></a> with the couple’s contemporaries Felix Mendelssohn on

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artistic integrity</a> and Walt Whitman on <a shape="rect" href="https://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fbrainpickings.us2.list-manage.com%2Ftrack%2Fclick%3Fu%3D13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1%26id%3D706ead68f9%26e%3Dbcf47a4edd&data=02%7C01%7Cneverowv1%40southernct.edu%7Cbc3aceead99d4262c25a08d6d6d4fecc%7C58736863d60e40ce95c60723c7eaaf67%7C0%7C0%7C636932607641231345&sdata=Ea6C0hpovJ5%2Bnt%2FyU7rWYqrh6Vd7jss9F9yCkWd1%2Bv0%3D&reserved=0" originalsrc="https://brainpickings.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1&id=706ead68f9&e=bcf47a4edd" shash="vtB/64UIEkk6DkLY3tJB9ceOBCiiTrcptOsFdo6Qn7fjVnGpDp8sIAnaeVIrgR0/dg8QNmCI0riCfLECdtBIWLDB/pEwqG1AhoDdMrMZIC4oOiuLX/iZuw5iZvXuXMf3tGiVL+CzJIcEIp4Wnh+5EyWU0Lfm3k5b9chEAyb+NV0=" rel="nofollow" target="_blank" style="color:#C33737; text-decoration:underline">

keeping criticism from sinking your creative confidence</a>, then revisit Elizabeth Barrett Browning — an artist who persevered through an inordinate share of suffering — on

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what makes life worth living</a> and <a shape="rect" href="https://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fbrainpickings.us2.list-manage.com%2Ftrack%2Fclick%3Fu%3D13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1%26id%3D21a5ff957c%26e%3Dbcf47a4edd&data=02%7C01%7Cneverowv1%40southernct.edu%7Cbc3aceead99d4262c25a08d6d6d4fecc%7C58736863d60e40ce95c60723c7eaaf67%7C0%7C0%7C636932607641251359&sdata=fhv84sXBb9NmuvnkRaSTNzWfti4PTzzT2zyjx9Etg4c%3D&reserved=0" originalsrc="https://brainpickings.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1&id=21a5ff957c&e=bcf47a4edd" shash="QlsHKJ7gFC2CN5ijd1CtKqdDRpgORCgdA0isO2I2J0uHoOasugSZN9FbCT9WV5s6KYNeO/jl1mPqkysdY4fl19CDgGdImu+0ieVr3iui3upacv6MC4lyNvQ71ODZm3qA9ZrfNQuW1Qo5YHWDGMGVauLjR87FVp/ZBmqesZtiyCQ=" rel="nofollow" target="_blank" style="color:#C33737; text-decoration:underline">

happiness as a moral obligation</a>.</div>

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donating=loving</h2>

I pour tremendous time, thought, heart, and resources into <em>Brain Pickings</em>, which remains free and ad-free, and is made possible by patronage. If you find any joy, stimulation, and consolation in my labor of love, please consider supporting it with

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monthly donation</h2>

<span style="color:#ffffff">You can become a Sustaining Patron with a recurring monthly donation of your choosing, between a cup of tea and a Brooklyn lunch.</span>

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one-time donation</h2>

<span style="color:#ffffff">Or you can become a Spontaneous Supporter with a one-time donation in any amount.</span>

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