Beginnings (8)—Beginnings Said

Click here for an introduction to the Round and Square series "Beginnings."

Edward Said, Beginnings

He wrote the (a) book on beginnings. I also like the word-play possibilities (“Said Beginnings”).—华

[a] First Lines

I

[b] Said reading (Said)

The problem of beginnings is one of those problems that, if allowed to, will confront one with equal intensity on a practical and on a theoretical level. Every writer knows that the choice of a beginning for what he will write is crucial not only because it determines much of what follows but also because a work’s beginning is, practically speaking, the main entrance to what it offers. Moreover, in retrospect we can regard a beginning as the point at which, in a given work, the writer departs from all other works; a beginning immediately establishes relationships with works already existing, relationships of either continuity or antagonism or some mixture of both. But the moment we start to detail the features of a beginning—a moment likely to occur in examining many sorts of writers—we necessarily make certain special distinctions. Is a beginning the same as an origin? Is the beginning of a given work its real beginning, or is there some other, secret point that more authentically starts the work off? To what extent is a beginning ultimately a physical exigency and nothing more than that? Of what value, for critical or methodological or even historical analysis, is “the beginning”? By what sort of approach, with what kind of language, with what sort of instruments does a beginning offer itself up as a subject for

study?[1]

---

[1] Edward W. Said, Beginnings: Intention & Method (New York: Columbia University Press, 1975), 3.

Various

http://www.lehigh.edu/~amsp/2007/10/two-paragraphs-from-edward-saids.html

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v25/n20/michael-wood/on-edward-said

[c] Edward Said Memorial Lecture, 2011

Images

[a] First Lines (courtesy of Ann Davies, 1999)
[b] Reading

[d] Last Lines

[c] Edward Said Memorial Lecture
[d] Last Lines (courtesy of Ann Davies, 1999)