The Art of the Epigraph: How Great Books Begin

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

EDITOR’S NOTE

Life

Tell the Truth

Love

The River of Time

Human Folly

Follow Your Bliss

Courage

Warnings and Lamentations

Off the Map

The Empire of the Mind

Rebels and Outsiders

The Generations

We’re All Mad Here

An Excellent Thing in a Woman

Know Thyself

Paradox

Wit and Wisdom

Morality

A Matter of Perception

Books and Storytelling

Bitter Truth

The Existential Epigraph

Unexpected Sources

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

ABOUT ROSEMARY AHERN

INDEXES

for ML

For books continue each other in spite of our habit of judging them separately.

—VIRGINIA WOOLF

Off I go, rummaging about in books for sayings which please me.

—MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE

INTRODUCTION

I’m always surprised when someone claims not to read epigraphs. To me, that’s an offering refused, a pleasure skipped. Those intriguing quotations, sayings, snippets of songs and poems, do more than just set the tone for the experience ahead: the epigraph informs us about the author’s sensibility. Are we in the hands of a literalist or a wit? A cynic or a romantic? A writer of great ambition or a miniaturist? The epigraph hints at hidden stories and frequently comes with one of its own.

In hunting for epigraphs, I’ve discovered them as far back as the fourteenth century, in The Canterbury Tales, and I wouldn’t be surprised if a more serious scholar traced the tradition back even further. The cumbersome (occasionally amusing) prefaces found in early novels like Don Quixote (1605) and Gulliver’s Travels (1726) can be considered the literary forebears of the crisp, succinct epigrams that became the fashion in the twentieth century. Glamorous modernists like Hemingway and Fitzgerald popularized epigraphs, challenging authors to appear as learned and clever in their use of them ever since.

Some of my favorite authors are purists who present their work without outside association or adornment, without a wink or a clue. Flaubert, Edith Wharton, Virginia Woolf, Patti Smith. I respect and admire their silence before their books begin. However, this book celebrates the generosity of authors willing to part the curtain and show us a glimpse of their mental furniture; to give us a preview of what they think is vital, funny, and true. George Eliot, Vladimir Nabokov, C. S. Lewis, Lorrie Moore. Of course, their books would be every bit as memorable and important without epigraphs appended, but wouldn’t we miss that extra element of anticipation? It would be like going to see Vertigo or Midnight in Paris and not taking your seat until after the opening title sequence. I always want to see how mood is established—and to submit.

Epigraphs appeal to those of us who occasionally need the kind of bolstering an ingenious turn of phrase or inspiring piece of wisdom can provide. I’m with Dorothy Parker when she says, I might repeat to myself, slowly and soothingly, a list of quotations beautiful from minds profound—if I can remember any of the damn things. Thankfully, memory aides abound in the front matter of many of the world’s best books. All that truth, humor, and novelty of expression presorted for us by consummate artists and cherished friends.

So yes, The Art of the Epigraph can be enjoyed like any quotation book. Here you will find advice on how to live well, be brave, avoid mistakes, apply the correct etiquette, adjust your expectations, appreciate quirkiness (your own and others’), attract a lover, break out of a rut, and dodge obligations. But you will also encounter fascinating conversations conducted over centuries and across cultures and genres. Writers communing with other writers, sometimes resulting in odd but delightful coincidences, like the fact that Susan Sontag and Mary Higgins Clark both turned to Tennyson when selecting epigraphs for their books. Divisions disappear; ideas and affinities are more clearly revealed.

Epigraphs remind us that writers are readers. I suppose that is what I like best about them. The experience I have when I read, encountering lines that perfectly express what I believe but can’t articulate, that open up a new point of view, that make me feel understood or filled with joy, as brilliant and lofty as I might consider that book’s author—it happens to them too. And that’s what’s on display in the epigraph: an author acknowledging his or her place in the fellowship of readers.

EDITOR’S NOTE

The Oxford English Dictionary defines epigraph as the short quotation or motto placed at the commencement of a book, chapter, etc. In compiling The Art of the Epigraph, I have primarily chosen quotations that open the work in question. However, I have occasionally selected epigraphs from chapters or parts when doing so would allow classics like The Red and the Black, Middlemarch, and The Souls of Black Folk to be represented—or when an interior quote simply proved impossible to resist.

It should be noted that many authors adorn their opening pages with two, three, even several epigraphs. With a few exceptions, I have selected one quote from the crop. Some authors present their epigraphs unattributed. Where it has been possible to determine the source, I’ve annotated the entry to give that information. A few quotes, however, have managed to elude me. I’ve chosen to include a handful of epigraphs that originally appeared in Latin, French, or Italian without English translation. In The Art of the Epigraph, these quotes appear in their English translations only.

Translations aside, a conscious choice was made not to standardize spelling, punctuation, styling, and other authorial idiosyncrasies that turn up in epigraphs. Except for variations in line breaks, epigraphs appear exactly as they do in the original editions of the books they were drawn from.

Finally, the publication dates listed herein represent the date of first publication in book form, be that in America or abroad.

LIFE

One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh; but the earth abideth forever . . . The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to the place where he arose . . . The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to his circuits . . . All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again.

—ECCLESIASTES

In The Sun Also Rises (1926), Ernest Hemingway

Taking it slowly fixes everything.

—ENNIUS

In The Red and the Black (1830), Stendhal

One of the many pleasures of reading Stendhal is his liberal use of epigraphs, which offer wry commentary on the chapters they announce. The great translator Burton Raffel warns that Stendhal had a notorious habit of writing the epigraphs himself and ascribing them to elevated or otherwise unlikely sources. We could be skeptical, but why not play along? Hailed as the Homer of Rome, Quintus Ennius (239–169 BC) was born in southern Italy, in what is today Calabria, where Greek was then the language of the upper classes.