Reading, intellect, emotion
Siri Hustvedt:
Experiences of powerful emotions linger in the mind; experiences of tepid ones don’t. Great books, it seems to me, are distinguished by an urgency in the telling, a need that one can feel viscerally. Reading is not a purely cognitive act of deciphering signs; it is taking in a dance of meanings that has resonance far beyond the merely intellectual. Dostoyevsky is important to me, and I can place him in Russian intellectual history. I can talk about his biography, his ideas, his epilepsy, but that is not why I feel so close to his works. My intimacy is a product of my reading experiences. Every time I remember Crime and Punishment, I relive my feelings of pity, horror, despair, and redemption. The novel is alive in me.
Living, Thinking, Looking, p. 139
