I Cannot Wait The Day I Get To Major In English. I Want To Immerse Myself In Shakespeare And Other British

dark academia tips:

reading Byron with the glass of red wine

staying up all night listening to Chopin and Vivaldi

having a big library and borrowing your favourite books to your friends

laying on the grass and looking at the stars at midnight

spending a lot of money on fashionable clothes

having dates in theatres

rewatching old movies

attending museums and exhibitions

drinking champagne with your friends while reading poems

William Wordsworth

+ 0952 by Ólafur Arnalds (archive moodboard for @voltaiire)

i really like being pretentious and all but what i actually like even more is that i'm genuinely so invested in this hunt for knowledge that i'm on. like,,,, i do wanna know every work of shakespeare by heart and i do wanna read the night away draped over second hand philosophy books and a worn out volume of the illiad and i do wanna quote french poetry and oscar wilde at social events and i wanna be what history would call an intellectual and i wanna live and breathe these things i care about because i have a deep and consuming passion for them and i want to be as immersed in them as possible.

mbti types as oddly specific books i was forced to read

infj: animal farm, the alchemist

infp: frakenstein, metamorphosis, catcher in the rye

intj: crime and punishment, dune

intp: 1984, slaughter-house 5

entj: macbeth

entp: don quixote, catch-22

enfj: les misérables

enfp: alice in wonderland

isfj: anne of green gables

istj: sherlock holmes

isfp: the night circus, where the red fern grows, the hobbit

estj: the art of war, the fountainhead

estp: great gatsby

esfj: pride and prejudice, little women

esfp: the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy

istp: the girl with the dragon tattoo, fight club

M E T A N O I A

[GREEK]

(n.) The journey of changing one's mind, heart, self, or way of life; spiritual conversion.

Medusa in culture

(Medusa c. 1618 Peter Paul Rubens, Medusa: Solving the Mystery of the Gorgon - Stephen Wilk, Medusa On Her Throne Reza Sedhi, Female Rage: Unlocking Its Secrets, Claiming Its Power - Mary Valentis and Anne Devane, Medusa c. 1640 Gian Lorenzo Bernini, The Laugh of the Medusa - Helene Cixous, Medusa Robin Isley)

idk who needs to hear this but when your english teacher asks you to explain why an author chose to use a specific metaphor or literary device, it’s not because you won’t be able to function in real-world society without the essential knowledge of gatsby’s green light or whatever, it’s because that process develops your abilities to parse a text for meaning and fill in gaps in information by yourself, and if you’re wondering what happens when you DON’T develop an adult level of reading comprehension, look no further than the dizzying array of examples right here on tumblr dot com

already well into november but i thought i’d post (with pdfs included of course) some things i read (& loved) in october b/c it was a hard month & these writings held my hand the whole way through 

‘by grand central station i sat down and wept,’ elizabeth smart (!)

‘life and death,’ andrea dworkin 

‘seam,’ tarfia faizullah (!)

‘play it as it lays,’ joan didion 

‘war of the foxes,’ richard siken

‘midwinter day,’ bernadette mayer

‘in the pines,’ alice notley

‘death is not an option,’ suzanne rivecca (!)

‘the dead and the living,’ sharon olds

‘the melancholy of anatomy,’ shelley jackson

‘edinburgh,’ alexander chee

‘the woman destroyed,’ simone de beauvoir (!)

‘monster: poems,’ robin morgan

‘how we became human,’ joy harjo

‘ayiti,’ roxane gay (!) 

‘our andromeda,’ brenda shaughnessy

‘second childhood,’ fanny howe

‘the lady in the looking glass,’ virginia woolf