At Harvard, 'Harry Potter' Author Casts Spell
Associated Press
Friday, June 6, 2008; C11
CAMBRIDGE, Mass., June 5 -- J.K. Rowling extolled the crucial importance of imagination during a speech Thursday at Harvard University's spring commencement, saying, "We do not need magic to transform our world."
The "Harry Potter" author also stressed the benefit of failure, recalling the humiliations of her time in poverty before her career took off with her string of novels about a bespectacled boy wizard.
Before the speech, some members of Harvard's class of 1936 paid tribute to Rowling by carrying brooms during an alumni procession.
President Drew Gilpin Faust also welcomed witches, wizards and Muggles -- non-magical people in Rowling's books -- to the commencement. Faust noted that there was a larger number of young children than normally expected for a Harvard graduation and that she knew she was the just "the warm-up act."
Rowling, who was given an honorary doctor of letters degree, urged the Harvard grads to use their influence and status to speak out on behalf of the powerless.
"We do not need magic to transform our world," she said. "We carry all the power we need inside ourselves already; we have the power to imagine better."
Imagination gives one the ability to empathize with others, she said.
"Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation," Rowling said. "In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathize with humans whose experiences we have never shared."
Rowling described a low point seven years after graduating from college, when she was a poor single mother.
"The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are ever after secure in your ability to survive," Rowling said. "You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity."
She called such knowledge "a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more to me than any qualification I ever earned."
- Re: At Harvard, 'Harry Potter' Author Casts Spellposted on 06/06/2008
哈佛授予《哈里*波特》作者荣誉文学博士。咖啡里有读《哈里*波特》的吗?感觉如何? - Re: At Harvard, 'Harry Potter' Author Casts Spellposted on 06/06/2008
好像阿姗在读,说是很好看,象金庸。 - Re: At Harvard, 'Harry Potter' Author Casts Spellposted on 06/06/2008
是啦,我从四月起基本在读 Harry Potter。读了第一本后,其它正经书都读不进去了,只好一本接一本读。现在读到第六本了。好在她已经把七本写完,我不用象当年的读者那样等她一本本的写。我时间不多,每天只能读两三章。真的挺好看,情节精彩,线索繁复,又不象很多畅销书那样手法暴露。总之,读起来很上瘾,象当年读金庸的感觉。适合休闲读。因为写的是中学生,他们的 attention span 本来也不是很长,所以每节都有好看的情节,更象金庸(他当年是在报纸上连载,所以情节要每天有新发展)。对了,Dickens 也是连载,但有的书也挺 boring 的 。
Please paste HTML code and press Enter.
(c) 2010 Maya Chilam Foundation