“Stories die and recede from collective memory merely for not having been told. Or a single version thrives because other versions are silenced. Imaginative retellings matter. Literature does truly instruct and delight – or at least it can. Literature keeps the faith and tells the story as reminder, as witness, as testament. Stories help us see ourselves and talk about ourselves. As Seamus Heaney writes, citing Neruda on the art of the Dutch Masters, “The world’s reality will not go unremarked.”
