Thursday, March 1, 2012

Bad snowfall and worse speeches

Once again, it appears that I'm writing for this class as the snow falls.  Somehow, I find it less pretty and majestic here, perhaps because of the scenery behind the snow, perhaps because of the snow itself.

I'm slightly confused by this entire selection.  The top of it states that it is an oration or speech given to the Phi Beta Kappa society, an honors society.  It starts off like a speech as he addresses  the group gathered before him and talking about why he feels that educational excellence is important for the coming world. It is a person speech with quotes such as: "who can doubt, that poetry will revive and lead to a new age," and "In this hope, I accept the topic which not only usage, but the nature of our association, seem to prescribe to to this day" (1st/2nd paragraph)  The sentences are informal in composition and use the pronouns 'I' and 'you'.  By the second paragraph, it had dissolved to the same content witnessed in Nature: rambling philosophic content that surprises me out of my haze with a sudden and unaccounted-for reference to the fact that he's speaking to someone.  By the end, I had completely forgotten about the existence of an audience until I turned the paper back to the beginning so that I could begin highlighting.  The last sentence in the entire article didn't even allude to the fact that there were people watching him.  I have never seen a speaker that I attended do that.

2 comments:

  1. So do you mean to say that if someone addressing you, an eager student, said, "A nation of men will for the first time exist, because each believes himself inspired by the Divine Soul which also inspires all men," you wouldn't be excited about it?

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  2. I don't know that I agree with you here, Alexa. While his style can be a little all over the place and he changes the subject a lot (someone else mentioned that this speech was very "filling" and that they could definitely see the Emerson "talking in topic sentences" coming through here), I felt extremely inspired which is what the point of this speech was in my opinion. While reading this, I though back to the only commencement speech I've ever heard which was at Harvard and given by JK Rowling. She talked about a lot of different things and some could argue she covered too many topics and waxed too philosophical, but it was one of the most inspiring things I've ever heard. I felt similarly about Emerson's "Scholar".

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