"Two more years were to go by before I knew anything about William Blake. Many years later, when his wife died, my godfather gave me the two books as a remembrance"
About this Quote
Time stretches strangely in this line: not as a neutral timeline, but as a slow fuse that only later reveals what it was connected to. Housman’s “Two more years were to go by before I knew anything about William Blake” frames knowledge as belated initiation. Blake isn’t discovered through blazing revelation; he arrives after a delay, as if art must wait for the self to catch up. The passive construction (“were to go by”) keeps agency hazy, suggesting that influence often begins before we can name it.
Then the quote pivots into a second kind of timekeeping: death, inheritance, and the rituals that bind private grief to cultural transmission. The godfather’s gift of “the two books” isn’t just generosity; it’s a handoff of meaning. The books become more than texts - they’re charged objects, transformed by the wife’s death into a memorial token. That transformation is the subtext: literature here is not merely read, it’s kept, carried, and repurposed as a substitute for presence.
As a playwright, Housman instinctively stages this as a small domestic drama with big implications. There’s an offstage wife we only meet through her absence; a godfather who becomes a curator of memory; a younger self who “knew nothing” until the world’s contingencies - time, loss, a gift - conspire to make Blake available. The intent feels quietly autobiographical but also tactical: to show how an artistic lineage is rarely linear. It’s braided through families, patronage, and mourning, so that “remembrance” names both the dead and the moment art finally sticks.
Then the quote pivots into a second kind of timekeeping: death, inheritance, and the rituals that bind private grief to cultural transmission. The godfather’s gift of “the two books” isn’t just generosity; it’s a handoff of meaning. The books become more than texts - they’re charged objects, transformed by the wife’s death into a memorial token. That transformation is the subtext: literature here is not merely read, it’s kept, carried, and repurposed as a substitute for presence.
As a playwright, Housman instinctively stages this as a small domestic drama with big implications. There’s an offstage wife we only meet through her absence; a godfather who becomes a curator of memory; a younger self who “knew nothing” until the world’s contingencies - time, loss, a gift - conspire to make Blake available. The intent feels quietly autobiographical but also tactical: to show how an artistic lineage is rarely linear. It’s braided through families, patronage, and mourning, so that “remembrance” names both the dead and the moment art finally sticks.
Quote Details
| Topic | Legacy & Remembrance |
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