"I think there are perhaps two ways in which one can begin"
About this Quote
A sentence this tentative is usually hiding a dare. Fitzgerald opens with a shrug - "I think", "perhaps", "two ways" - as if he’s politely clearing his throat, but the real move is to reframe beginnings as a problem of method rather than inspiration. It’s craft-talk disguised as modesty: the writer isn’t waiting for lightning, he’s laying out a choice architecture.
The key word is "begin". Not "start", not "launch", not "introduce". "Begin" is quieter and older, closer to ritual than to marketing. Fitzgerald, a celebrated translator as well as an author, lived in the world of origins in the literal sense: how epics open, how authority gets established in the first line, how you step into an inherited story without pretending you invented language. For a translator, "beginning" is doubly charged - you’re beginning a work that already began centuries ago, and your first decisions telegraph your entire philosophy: fidelity to the source or readability for the present.
The phrase "two ways" is a sly constraint. By limiting the options, he invites the reader into an argument - not about whether to begin, but how. It implies there are recognizable schools of opening: plunge into action or lay down context; start with the concrete or with the abstract; enter through voice or through event. The unfinished feel is the point: he’s performing the threshold moment, that suspended second before commitment, when a writer converts possibility into form.
The key word is "begin". Not "start", not "launch", not "introduce". "Begin" is quieter and older, closer to ritual than to marketing. Fitzgerald, a celebrated translator as well as an author, lived in the world of origins in the literal sense: how epics open, how authority gets established in the first line, how you step into an inherited story without pretending you invented language. For a translator, "beginning" is doubly charged - you’re beginning a work that already began centuries ago, and your first decisions telegraph your entire philosophy: fidelity to the source or readability for the present.
The phrase "two ways" is a sly constraint. By limiting the options, he invites the reader into an argument - not about whether to begin, but how. It implies there are recognizable schools of opening: plunge into action or lay down context; start with the concrete or with the abstract; enter through voice or through event. The unfinished feel is the point: he’s performing the threshold moment, that suspended second before commitment, when a writer converts possibility into form.
Quote Details
| Topic | New Beginnings |
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