…or a reflection on the book called Fahrenheit 451…
Clarisse,
they’re racing on the route again,
they’re so fast,
that my last breath might be taken,
if in-between the white lines,
they hit me.
(They surround me, and) my knowing
about their shallow being
cuts off my happiness loaf
and therefore,
I promise you an oath:
Clarisse, I’m to pick up the crumbles,
I’m to feel those crumbles of love,
I’m not letting myself slip,
into the abyss of bliss.
Only a fool is to run across that street,
but
I am to run, I must run,
through the line,
through their lines,
to the other side of the route.
(a little poem of my feelings towards Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451)
To read Bradbury is to feel, his words cut the emotions out of your ice-cold iron heart, he melts you. He is the drop of water soaking down through the concrete of facts and you are the blade of grass pushing up, liberating your feelings buried down underneath.
Ray Bradbury was a self-educated man, therefore an intellectual, a man who admired beauty and love, therefore a poet, a writer. He would not have lived a single day without typing on a typewriter but in the main, a finder of the secret of living forever which he found in writing books. He himself believed that books are like people and when you open them they talk to you, they teach you, it´s education for free and all you need to do is not commit the crime of not reading them.
“I am Montag, I am Clarisse, I am all of my characters and therefore I live forever”
Ray Bradbury
It was a few years ago while reading Fahrenheit 451 when I first met Clarisse, a teenage girl who was classified by the government as antisocial, the one who does not mix, living in the dystopian world where books are burnt, not read. She said that there´s dew on the grass in the morning and asked whether I am happy, then she picked up a dandelion and asked whether I am in love. I didn´t know what to say. I mean, she was the first person ever who really made me think about those two things. What is happiness, what is love?
She never ran the answer at me. Yet, she inspired me with her character being so honest, so awakening, so real. Nothing like the rest of the society in Fahrenheit 451 which seemed to be more like living in a drop of water, separated from the sensations of the world by its watery wall knowing just the little it can fit there. Racing through their lives so fast like pouring rain from the sky, they only see the world in a blur, a green blur, a pink blur, a white blur. And there in the rain, among the “drops”, Clarisse stands still. She spilled my drop and let me out, all of a sudden I saw the blur reshape into grass, roses and houses. She invited me to shift from seeing to watching. From a vague touch to a deep feel. To listen rather than hear. To talk.
“But they all say the same things and nobody says anything different from anyone else. “
Clarisse
It is said that this book is frightening in its implications. The quote above alarms my mind tremendously. As one mindless chatter says “let´s shut our minds!” a useless jabber adds “and waste our time!” Endless blabber, all around. Listen to them numbly chatting about the same things, everybody heard so many times, over and over. Only to stay constantly distracted from the unpleasant reality they live in for to face the truth would simply be too hard to bear. In order to prevent this painful revelation they locked their emotion away, kept it behind the door, deep underneath, buried.
“Where’s your common sense? None of those books agree with each other”
captain Beatty
I couldn’t disagree more. Every book has the author’s philosophy inscribed within itself. It presents a unique collection of ideas and thoughts like a well-shuffled deck of cards. The author, when he´s a good one, is a remarkable collector of cards, he mixes them every now and then, looks for new ones, trades with other people or creates some on his own. How? Most of all, he keeps the door open for emotion to get out and sensation to get in, thus he’s able to feel the world, either real or the fictional one found in books. As a result, many different perspectives and feelings smash up within him and form ideas and thoughts which then become part of his mind – the unique deck of cards. If everybody’s cards were the same there would not be a need to mix them. There would be nothing to think about.
“And I thought about books. And for the first time I realized that a man was behind each one of the books”
Montag