Great Literary Insights About Spring

LITERARY INSPIRATION: SPRING

Have you ever wondered what some of the greatest writers and poets had to say about spring? Read these beautiful quotations to your children and you’ll both be inspired.

(Pinterest.com)

“Spring is the time of plans and projects.”

–Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, 1877

Spring is in the Air

Even with uncertainties and doubts, it’s comforting to know that nature, when cared for, is our ally. With spring comes all sorts of new possibilities and fresh beginnings. This can be a time of year when parents and teachers introduce their children and students to great literary musings on the season. By doing so, you’ll introduce a little reader to some of the greatest writers of all time, such as Hemingway and Tolstoy.

• Ernest Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast is a memoir detailing his life in Paris during the 1920s as he struggled to become a successful writer. Even amidst the uncertainty, he wrote of the beauty in which spring brings:

“When spring came, even the false spring, there were no problems except where to be happiest. The only thing that could spoil a day was people and if you could keep from making engagements, each day had no limits. People were always the limiters of happiness except for the very few that were as good as spring itself.”

–Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast

Finding Deeper Meaning: Introduce Symbolism to Young Readers

• It’s very important to introduce elements of literary craft to young readers, if possible. The following excerpt from Willa Cather’s My Ántonia (1918) is a wonderful example of simile (when she compares spring to a puppy).

“After that hard winter, one could not get enough of the nimble air. Every morning I wakened with a fresh consciousness that winter was over. There were none of the signs of spring for which I used to watch in Virginia, no budding woods or blooming gardens. There was only—spring itself; the throb of it, the light restlessness, the vital essence of it everywhere: in the sky, in the swift clouds, in the pale sunshine, and in the warm, high wind—rising suddenly, sinking suddenly, impulsive and playful like a big puppy that pawed you and then lay down to be petted. If I had been tossed down blindfold on that red prairie, I should have known that it was spring.”

–Willa Cather, My Ántonia

Introducing Metaphor

Charlotte Brontë’s 1847 classic novel Jane Eyre explores the use of metaphor and symbolism when referring to spring as “her”: as if the season were an animate object, a woman.

“Spring drew on…and a greenness grew over those brown beds, which, freshening daily, suggested the thought that Hope traversed them at night, and left each morning brighter traces of her steps.”

–Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

Everything is New Again

(Photo courtesy of The Morgan Library and Museum)

Mark Twain is the writer who invented some of the greatest characters in literary history: Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. His musings on spring are absolutely delightful!

“It’s spring fever. That is what the name of it is. And when you’ve got it, you want—oh, you don’t quite know what it is you do want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so!”

– Mark Twain

For more information on the writers and books mentioned in this blog, consult the websites mentioned below:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4631.A_Moveable_Feast
https://literatipulp.com/2017/04/12/19-great-literature-quotes-about-spring/
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17150.Myantonia
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/18823/jane-eyre-by-charlotte-bronte/
https://www.cmgww.com/historic/twain/
https://literarydevices.net/simile/
https://literarydevices.net/metaphor/

#traveltheworld #teachyourkids #kidslit #fullcyclepublications #books #bookshelves #OnTheBlog #greatliterature