Ode to Joy

As I work through the shockingly hard process of writing the Statement of Academic Interests/Intent/Stuff You Like to Study that every reputable graduate program demands of its applicants, I've found my mind wandering to more and more abstract places. Which is where it generally likes to reside anyway, but this is something of an impediment to writing an essay that satisfactorily explains why I would prove an asset to a particular graduate school. Because, really? There is never a 'good', concrete reason to spend money that one doesn't even have extensively studying Modernist British Literature. Never.

And this is what brings me to the abstract thing. Pondering questions like "Why do you want to pursue a graduate degree in English? What is your area of interest? Why do you want to study that?" has only served to bring to mind a concept on which C.S. Lewis focused in his 1955 spiritual autobiography, Surprised by Joy: his definition of joy itself. Inspired by the German concept of Sehnsucht, which literally means "longing" but refers more to the relationship between longing and addiction (thanks, Wikipedia!), Lewis used the word 'joy' to refer to the longing for some distant, totally other place, a longing inspired by some odd thing: a line of poetry, a piece of music, something in nature, to cite a few examples. This intense longing, which Lewis perceived to be a longing for God and Heaven, is more desirable than achievement of any earthly desire.

Well, that was wordy. But the point to which I've been trying to get is that I know joy. It's what I felt as a child upon looking at fairy tale illustrations of castles and forests; in 7th grade, opening my first book about the British monarchy; in 11th grade, reading T.S. Eliot's "The Hollow Men" and, a few years later, his "Little Gidding." It's the very experience of listening to anything J.S. Bach composed for cello, or (to take the music thing in a whole different direction) to a good percentage of the B&S catalogue (but especially the outro to "Like Dylan in the Movies" and "Ease Your Feet in the Sea," if you want to get specific). This pursuit of joy is the primary reason that I want to devote the next year-and-a-half of my life to the literature, history, and theological/philosophical thought of England in the 1920s through '40s.

And that is an unnervingly nonsensical reason to offer to a graduate admissions office.