Two "Clips" from J.M. Coetzee's "Disgrace"

There were certainly many more "clips," but I read it quickly and was perhaps a bit lazy. I also watched the film (for the first time), trying to compare. Though I love Coetzee for his language, his stories always seem a bit too contrived. But who am I to criticize.

***

Although he devotes hours of each day to his new discipline, he finds its first premise, as enunciated in the Communications 101 handbook, preposterous: ‘Human society has created language in order that we may communicate our thoughts, feelings and intentions to each other.’ His own opinion, which he does not air, is that the origins of speech lie in song, and the origins of song in the need to fill out with sound the overlarge and rather empty human soul.
*
He continues to teach because it provides him with a livelihood; also because it teaches him humility, brings it home to him who he is in the world. The irony does not escape him: that the one who comes to teach learns the keenest of lessons, while those who come to learn learn nothing. It is a feature of his profession on which he does not remark to Soraya. He doubts there is an irony to match it in hers.


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