Quotes of the Week 17 ~ All Was Well
This post is really 180 degrees from my last post, which was pretty negative. Thankfully there are other things in the world to talk about besides the bad economy!
I often get inspired by John Granger's group on Hogwarts Professor, and this time I found an interesting post about the words "All Was Well," which is the last line of the last book, Deathly Hallows. So the first quote is what JKR said about the line, the next four quotes here are Granger's ideas for the inspiration for that line, and the last quotes are lines that I thought of when I read DH.
We can't really know what the true inspiration for that line was - maybe all of these!
So it was- is the scar still really there? But I changed it because I wanted a more- when I came to write it, I wanted a very concrete statement that Harry won. And that the scar, although it’s still there, it’s just- it’s now just a scar. And I wanted to say it’s over. It’s done. And maybe a tiny bit of that was to say to people, “No, Voldemort’s not rising again. We’re not going to have Part Two. Harry’s job is done.” So that’s why I changed it.
MV: To “All was well.”
JKR: “All was well.”, yeah.
MV: And you knew when you came up with that line, that was it.
JKR: It just felt … I felt a kind of [sighs]. And that- that felt right. Yeah…. And I really wanted Harry to have some peace.
~ JKR, Dateline Interview with Meredith Vieira, 2007
Sin is Behovely, but
All shall be well, and
All manner of thing shall be well.
If I think, again, of this place,
And of people, not wholly commendable,
Of no immediate kin or kindness,
But of some peculiar genius,
All touched by a common genius,
United in the strife which divided them;
If I think of a king at nightfall,
Of three men, and more, on the scaffold
And a few who died forgotten
In other places, here and abroad,
And of one who died blind and quiet
Why should we celebrate
These dead men more than the dying?
It is not to ring the bell backward
Nor is it an incantation
To summon the spectre of a Rose.
We cannot revive old factions
We cannot restore old policies
Or follow an antique drum.
These men, and those who opposed them
And those whom they opposed
Accept the constitution of silence
And are folded in a single party.
Whatever we inherit from the fortunate
We have taken from the defeated
What they had to leave us-a symbol:
A symbol perfected in death.
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
~ T. S. Eliot from "Little Gidding," part of the Four Quartets (Granger)
But Jesus, who in this Vision informed me of all that is needful to me, answered by this word and said: It behoved that there should be sin; but all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.
~ Julian of Norwich, Medieval British Mystic and inspiration for T. S. Eliot (Granger)
And because love lives forever in the heart, all shall be well.
~ Elizabeth Goudge, one of JKR's favorite writers, author of The Little White Horse, but also several Christian treatises such as "The Two Caves" quoted on John Granger's blog Here, from an email written by Odd Sverre Hove from Bergen, Norway
Death is nothing at all. It does not count. I have only slipped away into the next room. Nothing has happened. Everything remains exactly as it was. I am I, and you are you, and the old life that we lived so fondly together is untouched, unchanged. Whatever we were to each other, that we are still. Call me by the old familiar name. Speak of me in the easy way which you always used. Put no difference into your tone. Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow. Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes that we enjoyed together. Play, smile, think of me, pray for me. Let my name be ever the household word that it always was. Let it be spoken without an effort, without the ghost of a shadow upon it. Life means all that it ever meant. It is the same as it ever was. There is absolute and unbroken continuity. What is this death but a negligible accident? Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight? I am but waiting for you, for an interval, somewhere very near, just round the corner. All is well. Nothing is hurt; nothing is lost. One brief moment and all will be as it was before. How we shall laugh at the trouble of parting when we meet again!
~ Henry Scott Holland, early 20th Century Divinity Professor at Oxford,quoted by the poster Red Rocker on Granger's blog.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Now for my own thoughts on reading that line in Deathly Hallows - the last quote here from the hymn is the one that immediately came to mind after reading DH, and then later I thought of Shakespeare.
The quote from George Washington just struck me as having a similar theme of not fearing death, and the Morrissey quote is a plausible inspiration because JKR has said she is a fan of his and even appears in the video about him!
Armed with wealth and good health
The best of health
In the future when all's well
I will lie down and be counted
In the future when all's well
I thank you
I thank you with all of my heart
~ Morrissey from the 2006 song "In the Future When All's Well" ~ this fits DH because JKR wrote about Morrissey's group The Smiths as her favorite group when growing up - which she talks about in the Documentary The Importance of Being Morrissey. JKR: You imagine...Morrissey being the slightly odd boy in the corner who some people really got but most people just left well alone."
Click to viewHELENA. Yet, I pray you:
But with the word the time will bring on summer,
When briers shall have leaves as well as thorns
And be as sweet as sharp. We must away;
Our waggon is prepar'd, and time revives us.
All's Well that Ends Well. Still the fine's the crown.
Whate'er the course, the end is the renown.
~ William Shakespeare, from the play "All's Well That Ends Well," ACT IV SCENE 4
Of that and all the progress, more and less,
Resolvedly more leisure shall express.
All yet seems well; and if it end so meet,
The bitter past, more welcome is the sweet. [Flourish]
EPILOGUE.
KING. The King's a beggar, now the play is done.
All is well ended if this suit be won...
~ William Shakespeare, from the play "All's Well That Ends Well," Epilogue
When thou wakest,
Thou takest
True delight
In the sight
Of thy former lady's eye:
And the country proverb known,
That every man should take his own,
In your waking shall be shown:
Jack shall have Jill;
Nought shall go ill;
The man shall have his mare again, and all shall be well.
~ William Shakespeare, from the play "A Midsummer's Night Dream," Act III
"Tis well. I die hard but am not afraid to go."
~ George Washington's last words
When peace like a river, attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea billows roll;
Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say,
It is well, it is well, with my soul.
~ From the hymn "It is Well With My Soul" by Horatio Spafford, written in 1873 after the untimely death of his five children
Jars of Clay Contemporary Version of the Song
Amy Grant's Version - nice but only uses the first verse