"A young musician plays scales in his room and only bores his family. A beginning writer, on the other hand, sometimes has the misfortune of getting into print"
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Yourcenar lands the joke with a novelist's precision: practice is harmless until it becomes public. The young musician grinding through scales is an emblem of private apprenticeship, a necessary ugliness contained by four walls and a family's begrudging tolerance. The "beginning writer" doesn't get that insulation. Print turns raw exercise into an event, and the misfortune isn't simply embarrassment - it's exposure with consequences: reviewers, reputations, and the permanent record of early work that should have stayed in the drawer.
The wit hinges on an inversion of the usual artistic fantasy. We imagine publication as reward, proof of arrival. Yourcenar flips it into bad luck, a premature coronation. In her world, the dangerous moment isn't failure but success too early, when craft hasn't caught up to ambition and the market confers legitimacy before the writer has earned it. There's also a quiet jab at the literary ecosystem: music has a clear pedagogy (scales, repetition, measurable progress), while writing is a field where gatekeepers, fashion, and opportunity can catapult the unready into visibility. The "sometimes" is doing heavy lifting - it admits that print can be deserved, while keeping the knife sharp.
Context matters. Yourcenar, a rigorous stylist with a long view of history and form, treats writing as slow formation, not content generation. The line reads like a warning against debut fetishism: early publication can freeze a developing voice into a product, turning what should be apprenticeship into an identity. The family may suffer a bored evening; the writer risks a lifetime of being defined by their scales.
The wit hinges on an inversion of the usual artistic fantasy. We imagine publication as reward, proof of arrival. Yourcenar flips it into bad luck, a premature coronation. In her world, the dangerous moment isn't failure but success too early, when craft hasn't caught up to ambition and the market confers legitimacy before the writer has earned it. There's also a quiet jab at the literary ecosystem: music has a clear pedagogy (scales, repetition, measurable progress), while writing is a field where gatekeepers, fashion, and opportunity can catapult the unready into visibility. The "sometimes" is doing heavy lifting - it admits that print can be deserved, while keeping the knife sharp.
Context matters. Yourcenar, a rigorous stylist with a long view of history and form, treats writing as slow formation, not content generation. The line reads like a warning against debut fetishism: early publication can freeze a developing voice into a product, turning what should be apprenticeship into an identity. The family may suffer a bored evening; the writer risks a lifetime of being defined by their scales.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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