I love literature, and I understand that I, like Clive in Maurice, think that someone else other than myself, you reading this for example, simply by reading a passage in a piece of litearture, will suddenly understand something. That the passage is a solution, or, more importantly, a glimpse into my own feelings, and if I tell you to read it, you'll understand. I know that isn't true, though. It wasn't true in Maurice. Maurice didn't understand what Clive was trying to tell him by telling him to read the Symposium. And likewise, why do I expect that any of you will suddenly understand my feelings when I type up these passages from books I read? Do you understand what I am feeling through my typing these passages up? Or am I, like Clive, too lost in literature? I didn't understand how silly it was to try to convey to non-English majors my feelings through literature until my professor, while teaching Maurice to us, said that it is a flaw in Clive's character for him to expect that Maurice will understand simply by reading the Symposium. Does my extended comparison of myself to Clive in this passage show just how silly I am with literature? Probably. But here is a passage from Isherwood's novel A Single Man. Enjoy.


"'I certainly should have,' he agrees smiling and thinking what an absurd and universally accepted bit of nonsense it is that your best friends must necessarily be the ones who understand you. As if there weren't far too much understanding in the world already; above all, that understanding between lovers, celebrated in song and story, which is actually such torture that no two one of them can bear it without frequent separation or fights."