Reading check-in, day six: reading notes on Selected Appreciations of Fine Foreign Prose.
Mark Anderson Nexo’s childhood recollection “How I Took the Exam” tells of an episode in which he sat for a catechism examination. The childhood self he presents is innocent and guileless, and full of curiosity. “Whenever I saw something new and curious, I learned it, even if only for amusement.” Within this innocence there is also a streak of independence. The author mentions that whenever he had to do something serious, he could not muster the energy. Yet this, it seems, became the starting point for most of his progress.
The author then goes on to criticize the hypocrisy of the church and of human nature. Yet amid this filthy darkness, he seems almost unconcerned, still going his own way and answering the priest’s questions with frank spontaneity. In one passage, the priest asks him what limbs are. When the author cannot give a definition, the priest hints that whatever can move is a limb. The author then answers that ears are limbs. Why? Because, from the experience of seeing cattle move their ears to drive away mosquitoes, he had learned to move his own ears.
The hypocrisy of human nature is shown here in full. Everyone proposes sending “me” to Latin school, then to the seminary, and finally making me a priest. But when it comes time to pay, the matter is quietly dropped. The cowherd remains among the livestock, living beneath the blue sky as before. The author says that for a cowherd, everything truly is beset with difficulties. People will not let him go to school, yet they blame him for being foolish; they want to make him lose face in public, and they refuse to let him receive confirmation. Yet amid this inequality, the author is not struck down. Instead, he draws nourishment from nature, brings that plain simplicity into his writing, and unfolds one unadorned, beautiful scene after another.
This article was published at https://blog.lazying.art/html/1778.htm