Harry Potter: An elegy

[saffronlie]

Harry Potter and I go back some way, as the earlier years of this journal attest. I wasn’t quite in the throes of pubescent adolescence when I discovered the books, as I was when I discovered Hanson, the first of my three great teenage obsessions (Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles being the third, and, perhaps, the most enduring). There was a time

Comments

[saffronlie]

That's a lovely quote. I think there's something to be said for such a belief, or at least, for a belief in cyclicality. I mean, I'm Catholic, so not really into reincarnation or anything, but Christianity's sense of time is at once linear (Creation ----> Apocalypse) and very very circular, based as it is on the concept of resurrection. Anyway! Yes, the impossibility of return is something we can't ever truly confront as it's too devastating.

I've struggled a bit with nostalgia studies because I want to adhere so fully to the word's roots. If it wasn't home, or wasn't your time, then can you truly feel nostalgic about it? For example, someone who obsesses about the 19th-century and wishes they could live there: are they nostalgic, or something else? Unfortunately I'm not sure there's another word for that something else, so it has to be nostalgia nonetheless.

Oh, Dawn Treader! I watched the movie on a plane trip a few weeks ago and considered writing about it. I loved Narnia also, but I've consistently reread them, the last time being as an undergraduate and so I'm probably overdue for another go. It had been too long for me to remember how accurate the film was to the book (except one scene that I know they did horribly wrong and it didn't work), but the movie really reminded me how fun the book was. It's just such a cracking adventure story! And so consciously medieval, with all the mythical places and races.

HP7: yes, that scene is brilliant. I'd forgotten that Harry's realisation actually comes from Snape's memories in the Pensieve, which is a brilliantly powerful montage, and the movie really hits an emotional high at that point. They did add one thing that I didn't like, but the scene at the edge of the forest where he turns over the stone and the shadows appear is pretty much all that I hoped for. Very well done.

Haha, I have, but thank you! Mmm.