What is the Gilded Page?
Some words are just words, and other words are beautiful. Some jump off of the page as if they are adorned with elaborate paint, gilded with gold leaf. You can’t see it at first in the block of text, from that distance they could be anything. But after you have read them, the page looks different.
When you come upon a pivotal passage, a favorite quote, it shines for you. Each time you read it, it takes on a different sheen, and as your understanding of it grows and changes so do the layers of its color.
A favorite book, if you annotate, takes on the aspect of an illuminated manuscript: the margins fill up and become animated, the pages are shaped by these designs. Passages are pulled out and honored, and the eye moves over the text not as a uniform block but as over a piece of art, pulled by lines and circles, whirled about among connected phrases. Stars rather than gargoyles creep along the margins. Exclamations march along in succession, unable to shout any louder, even when the reader wants to indicate that they are completely bursting with the glow of understanding. Thus the book becomes messy, and yet beautiful. While we scratch out notes on its precious open spaces, it gilds us with insight. It is we who become the illuminated page.
The project of this blog is to look for this illumination in various works, to hopefully find at least a glimmer in most, and to share what shines most brightly.
