Sarah Giorgi's Paragraph on Place: The view is awe inspiring, like something out of a painting in the Louvre. You can touch the clouds, smell of pine, hear the birds. Surrounded by all this magnificence, you feel as small as an ant. The land spreads out in all directions from beneath your feet. And although you are at peace, you can’t help but feel fear: fear of bears, fear of loneliness, and fear misdirection. Yet all these emotions are nothing compared to the beauty that surrounds you.
Close Reading Analysis: By opening the piece with the words “the view,” Sarah Giorgi allows us to believe she is already present at the location, observing it. At first, our position to the author is one of an observer who does not have direct access to the view itself, but has access to the author’s experience of it. This abruptly shifts, however, when the second sentence begins with the second person pronoun, “you.” The pronoun drags us into the piece. In fact, we find ourselves replacing Giorgi. She is not observing us as we engage with this view. However, we cannot yet visualize what is before us. Giorgi offers us visual details by way of the auditory, olfactory, and touch senses, and not by way of sight. In other words, the view materializes before us through our experience of it and not just our ability to see it. We realize there are clouds because, she tells us, we can “touch” them. We learn there are “birds” because we can “hear” them. We imagine “pine[s]” because we can “smell” them. The piece is packed with opposites. “Magnificence” is perceived by way of embodying an “ant.” Land moves “out[ward]” despite being “beneath [our] feet.” We experience “peace” while we also feel “fear.” We are isolated, yet surrounded by birds and the possibility of bears. And so, the movement back and forth between opposites and extremes leaves us unsettled. She asks us to respond to the sublimity of the place, of the unknown and unreliability of the place by settling into it, by immersing ourselves in it. But perhaps what is most interesting in this piece is that Giorgi likens a very sensory experience of a place to “a painting in the Louvre.” While a painting in a museum can be beautiful and even awe-inspiring, there are few ways we can experience a painting other than seeing it. We cannot touch it, or smell it, or hear it. This comparison, then, redefines the way we understand Giorgi to experience artwork in a museum as much, if not more, than it portrays her experience of the world at large. In fact, there is no better way to understand Giorgi’s view of the world than to unpack her final sentence: “Yet all these emotions are nothing compared to the beauty that surrounds you.” “Emotion” is compared directly to “beauty.” For Giorgi, experiencing the beautiful moves well beyond the visual. It is an all-embodied experience.
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Dear all,
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October 2017
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