A Quoter--The Echoer

“For I was ever commonplace,

Of genius never had a trace;

My words the world has never fed—

Mere echoes of the book last read.

I have always been a “quoter,“ a communicator (speaker or writer) who uses or echoes the words of others.  Why?  Because I know I am a commonplace writer, not a literary genius.  I wish I were a creative writer who could use words the way Shakespeare, Samuel Johnson, Mark Twain, and Nikos Kazantzakis did, but alas, I am just me.  But as “me” I have always wanted to lift up what I think are great thoughts, inspired writings—the works of the geniuses whose words speak to that which I have inside me, but cannot articulate.  

I’m a amateur woodcarver.  How can I express what I see looking at a log or a piece of wood?  How in the world would I find the words to tell what happens to me spiritually as the chisel begins its work?  How to explain the emotion that wells up as some little feature emerges from the wood?  Let me, therefore, echo the words of Kazantzakis given to Odysseus in The Odyssey, A Modern Sequel:

“One night while sleeping in my workshop all alone I heard a marble block cry out in the still night; it was my own enslaved soul crying, choked in stone. At once I leapt from sleep, seized all my sharpest tools and in the lamp’s dim light began to hew the block and crash through the thick prison walls to free my soul, till finally at dawn the godly head emerged, cool and rejoiced, and deeply breathed the crystal air.

Slowly I freed its breast and shoulders, its lean loins, and as it rose from stone to light, my own jailed head, my shoulders, chest, and loins were also slowly freed; and when my soul had form my hands wholly emerged it raised its eyes to the sky and soared like a giddy bird!”

Never could I write or speak such expressive words.  So I echo them.  You may never have opportunity to read Kazantzakis, but I can share him with you as I echo his words which articulate what I feel but cannot express.