Any of you got your favourite lines from Shakespeare, T. S. Eliot or
Great Expectations tattooed down your spines? Whether you have or not,
this article, and some of the comments, might amuse. Any suggestions for a good literary tattoo? Maybe it's time I got one.....
oh yes! not spines but I have the idea of getting a literary tattoo down my ribs for a long time now. I got my tattoo inked 2.5 years ago and since then have been craving for a new one. once you try you never want to stop. but the problem is, every time I decide on a quote I ask myself "is this THE ONE?". I die to get a literary tattoo but what if I encounter a better one after then? tattoo choosing is an important issue, it sticks to you forever (I'm not a laser-remover person). T. S. Eliot quote is a cool idea. frankly speaking I have been thinking about getting one of his quotations from the Waste Land. but how sincere is it then if you know only two poems of him and not yet be able to internalize entirely even one of them? maybe I should study a little bit more of him and visit a tattoo studio during my next visit to London or Berlin. for you Mr. Hart, I can not really think of something other than a modernist poem. could be a two line imagist one (then you can have the entire poem) or a few lines of T. S. Eliot, "owner Alex Binnie" is right at stating they are more likely to get someone asking for a T. S. Eliot quote. but then it's more likely to come across with a friend having the same tattoo...
ReplyDeleteI've tweeted a few suggestions - more to come! I don't think it matters if you only know a poem or two by the poet. It's whether those poems grab you that matters! Do they take the top of your head off? (to slightly misquote Emily Dickinson - "If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry", is what she actually said). A colleague in Glasgow, if I remember right, had tattoed on his forearm "The ghost of 'lectricity howls in the bones of her face"; it's a line from Bob Dylan's 'Visions of Johannah' that still takes the top of my head off every time I hear it, without fail.
ReplyDeleteI think, for me, the important quotation of Estella from Great Expectations: "I have been bent and broken, but - I hope - into a better shape." would be really cool. Well, of course, I don't know poems or quotations enough to choose one to carry with me all my life, but this one, apart from being related to literary, is more like a "moral lesson" or a pep talk for myself that every time I see it, I can feel better and forget about the "bent and broken" side of me. But anyways, I think I can never even get a tattoo because I can easily get bored of everything, I dont think I can stand to see a specific line or quotation all my life on my skin. If I decide to have a tattoo some day, I will get my brother's name inked through my skin. But really good idea, and I think you should get one Mr. Hart =) And I think your novel class and poetry class would have different suggestions for you =)
ReplyDeleteThat's a great quote! I think I'll never get a tattoo for the same reason - that, and on pasty anglo-saxon skin they look horrible anyway. Any suggestions still welcome, though.
ReplyDeleteI have found another one while I was reading Sir Philip Sidney, I can't stop myself sharing this quote on facebook and tweeter and I want to share it also on here because it is a suitable one for everything you can imagine in life: "...good is not good because better is better." Short and impressive enough to ink through your skin.
ReplyDeleteBut I prefer a dairy or notebook to put your favorite quotes in it so that you can read them whenever you want, not carry them all over with you on your skin.
Okay I am going to stop commenting on this subject and remember myself that this is the blog that we should be reading for the sake of litareture :)
I like the Sidney too. I think I'd probably go for a line from Petrarch, which I think you can read as a kind of 'answer' to Sidney, even if it was written over 200 years earlier: "veggio 'l meglio et al peggior m'appiglio" - I see the better but cling to the worse. It's in his development of this idea that Shakespeare's real Petrarchism can be found, as one of my favourite critics, Gordon Braden, has argued. As Braden says, "Clarity of sight is love's utterly ineffectual opponent".
ReplyDeleteabout getting bored of a tattoo: that does not happen at all if you do not get you lovers name inked of course. and if you think you decided well on what to get, go for it. tattoo becomes a part of your body and you remember that time/part of your life whenever you see it and it doesn't mean that you see it all the time. although my tattoo is on my forearm sometimes I even forget that I've got one... AND I think white skin is better for tattoos for it absorbs ink better and creates a very nice contrast on skin.
ReplyDeleteps. "The ghost of 'lectricity howls in the bones of her face" really? wow... what a line.
About tattoos... I've been thinking of non-latin alphabet for a long time. After visiting the charming Egypt, and after considering the fact that I have Egyptian heredity(I'm not sure if one can say it like this),I thought of getting hieroglyph tattoed on my back.
ReplyDeleteAs long as you have trust in what you wear-also on your skin- I think nothing can look stupid no matter if you are short, tall, fat,thin, pale or dark.
Selver