fieldus

Found this from GK Chesterton after searching for essays on Great Expectations (of which, more to follow).

Nothing is important except the fate of the soul; and literature is only
redeemed from an utter triviality, surpassing that of naughts and crosses,
by the fact that it describes not the world around us, or the things on the
retina of the eye, or the enormous irrelevancy of encyclopaedias, but some
condition to which the human spirit can come.

from Chesterton’s intrdoduction to The Old Curiousity Shop

This has some resonance with what Coetzee had to say about literature and its capacity to offer relief for the extreme soul. See earlier post.