In Elaine Scarry’s On Beauty and Being Just, I came across Gerard Manley Hopkins on what happens when a poem once considered beautiful ceases to be so:
“Is this made plain? What have I come across
That here will serve me for comparison?
The sceptic disappointment and the loss
A boy feels when the poet he pores upon
Grows less and less sweet to him, and knows no cause.”
What are the books once loved that now hold no beauty? Is this memory accompanied by a sense of loss?
>Hmm. When I was in high school and college I loved Thoreau's Walden. If asked what my favorite book was I would inevitably name it. Now, a good many years later, the bloom is off the rose so to speak.
>I'm with you on Walden, Stefanie, my infatuation only lasted until a second reading.