Spots of Time

My friend and colleague Debbie, a scholar of the Romantic and writer, has a blog about the moments that become stories at Spots of Time.  Her most recent book is Romantic Liars—stories of women in the Romantic era who were impostors, choosing lives that weren’t theirs. At Spots of Time, Debbie’s most recent post is on collecting, an idea and activity that interest me as a museum director and botanist.  And as a collector, I am a character, which is a little like being an impostor.

Comments

[Peter Frank]

"And as a collector, I am a character, which is a little like being an impostor."
Why exactly-!?
Peter, Germany

[Debbie Lee]

Maybe the problem with describing people rather than landscapes is one always ends up attributing to real human beings a fabricated identity--an imposture--but, then again, maybe landscape writing does the same thing, insofar as landscapes are characters, too, both of them, people and landscapes, arbitrary collections of things until we order and give them meaning, as Shelley said of Mont Blanc: "and what were thou, and earth, and stars, and sea, If to the human mind's imaginings, Silence and solitude were vacancy?"