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The Pure Flame

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Harlan Hatcher
Harlan Hatcher*
Affiliation:
University of Michigan
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Extract

“Life is a pure flame, and we live by an invisible sun within us.”

This sentence, better than any I know, goes to the heart of letters. It defines the personal and professional quest which inspires us day by day, and brings us together in this Association year by year. It is the continuing wonder of man that the pure flame of his life is bound up in words. His greatest moments require the shape of the right words in the right order to be recognized and given meaning. Until they are uttered and recorded, the moment, the experience, is fragmentary and illusory. Emerson spoke of Shakespeare as “the man who carries the Saxon race in him.” It was no exaggeration. He said so much so simply that other men of lesser insight or gift of words have unanimously nodded their heads in agreement and offered their thanks. What they had sharply or dimly felt was given form and meaning. Henceforth it was.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 67 , Issue 1 , February 1952 , pp. 67 - 70
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1952

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Footnotes

*

An address given at the General Meeting of the Modern Language Association in Detroit, Michigan, 28 December 1951.