Episode 346: Finding the Education for Your Vocation with the Hornstra Sisters

This week on The Literary Life podcast, Angelina and Thomas sit down for another chat with Addison and Ella Hornstra to bring us an update on their literary lives and educational journeys. They open the conversation with some thoughts on how and why Addison and Ella changed their educational paths and goals. They discuss how the girls went about the search to find their vocations and how that affected their decisions on pursuing their education as adults. Thomas asks how Addison and Ella’s approach to reading in English has been affected by the process of learning foreign languages. Angelina also digs deeper into the process the girls went through in order to find the professors and departments that would serve their needs. Both the Hornstras also share how their current reading lives are different than they were the last time they were both on the podcast.

Join us back here next week when we begin discussing Lilith by George MacDonald.

Be sure to check out the upcoming webinars from both Thomas Banks and each of the Hornstra sisters over at House of Humane Letters!

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Commonplace Quotes:

When studying one should think only of studies; when wandering among hills and streams, one should think only of hills and streams. One rides on enthusiasm and abandons one’s mind to it. That’s why the first lesson in the Analects says, “To learn and then to practice when it is timely, isn’t that the meaning of pleasure?” Whether it’s studying or hiking in the mountains, it’s the same mind that applies itself to both. As soon as one knows how it is that studying is like hiking the mountains, studying itself becomes a wonderful form of recreation and proceeds rapidly. Otherwise one considers studying painful and hiking fun, and something is lost in both.

Qian Mu, from Qian Mu and the World of Seven Mansions by Jerry Dennerline

Generations of men, throughout recorded time, have always told and retold two stories–that of a list ship which searches the Mediterranean seas for a dearly loved island, and that of a god who is crucified on Golgotha.

J. L. Borges, from The Gospel According to Mark

Few people know how to be old.

Peu de gens savent être vieux.

La Rochefoucauld, from Maxims

Call him a snob if you like, but not the worst kind of snob; a hanger-on, but to the skirts of Art, not Society; a climber, but in the neighborhood of Parnassus, not Hay Hill.

A. A. Milne, from The Red House Mystery

To R. B.

by Gerard Manley Hopkins

The fine delight that fathers thought; the strong
Spur, live and lancing like the blowpipe flame,
Breathes once and, quenchèd faster than it came,
Leaves yet the mind a mother of immortal song.
Nine months she then, nay years, nine years she long
Within her wears, bears, cares and moulds the same:
The widow of an insight lost she lives, with aim
Now known and hand at work now never wrong.
     Sweet fire the sire of muse, my soul needs this;
I want the one rapture of an inspiration.
O then if in my lagging lines you miss
The roll, the rise, the carol, the creation,
My winter world, that scarcely breathes that bliss
Now, yields you, with some sighs, our explanation.

Books Mentioned:

Lilith by George MacDonald

Beowulf by Anon. trans. by Burton Raffel

The Romance of the Three Kingdoms by Luo Guanzhong trans. by Martin Palmer

The Pursuit of Love: with Love in a Cold Climate and The Blessing by Nancy Mitford

The Sittaford Mystery by Agatha Christie

The Honjin Murders by Seishi Yokomizo

The Painted Veil by W. Somerset Maugham

Helena by Evelyn Waugh

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You can find Angelina and Thomas at HouseofHumaneLetters.com, on Instagram @angelinastanford, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/.

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