Reading 3:       We live in a superficial, media-driven culture that often seems uncomfortable withtrue depths of feeling. Indeed, it seems as if our culture has become increasinglyintolerant of that acute sorrow, that intense mental anguish and deep remorse whichmay be defined as grief. We want to medicate such sorrow away. We want to divide itinto recognizable stages so that grief can be labeled, tamed, and put behind us. Butpoets have always celebrated grief as one of the deepest human emotions. To grieve isto lament, to let sorrow inhabit one's very being.       Robert Frost liked to distinguish between grievances (complaints) and griefs(sorrows). He even suggested that grievances, which are propagandistic, should berestricted to prose, 'leaving poetry free to go its way in tears." Implicit in poetry is thenotion that we are deepened by heartbreaks, that we are not so much diminished asenlarged by grief, by our refusal to vanish---to let others vanish--without leaving averbal record. Poetry is a stubborn art. The poet is one who will not be reconciled,who is determined to leave trace in words, to transform oceanic depths of feeling intothe faithful nuances of art.        I was initiated into the poetry of grief---of raw, heroic, aboriginal grief---on awindy autumnal moming in late October 1968. I was eighteen years old. I knew I hadfound what I was unknowingly seeking on the day my freshman humanities teacher--a petite woman with an immense vocabulary, the only person I'd ever met who spokein perfectly formed sentences--stood up in class and started talking about Achilles'sdesperate response to the death of his friend Patroclus. I felt something obscure opinginside me, I recognized some unknown, some unassuaged rage of feeling, a frenziedinternal sobbing, a delirium of grief. I looked out the window and saw the mad leavesswirling and falling everywhere. I was transported.        Here is the passage in Richmond Lattimore's translation. It is from Book 18 ofThe Tiad. Nestor's son Antilochus has just given Achilles the message that his closestfriend, his trusted ally and brother-in-arms, had been killed wearing Achilles's ownarmor. Now enemies were fighting over Patroclus's naked body:        He spoke, and the black cloud of sorrow closed on Achilles. In both handshe caught up the grimy dust, and poured it over his head and face, and fouledhis handsome countenance, and the black ashes were scattered over hisimmortal tunic. And he himself, mightily in his might, in the dust lay at length,and took and tore at his hair with his hands, and defiled it.       My teacher must have gone on to talk about Achilles's feelings of guilt and shame, hisdeep sense of responsibility over his friend's death. This is a pivotal incident in TheTiad because it triggers Achilles's reentry into battle and therefore assures the.destruction of Troy. It's the only way to account for his uncharacteristically savagerevenge on Hector. But I couldn't follow closely what she was saying because somepart of my mind was stuck on the primal image of Achilles smearing his face with dirtand tearing out his hair. I recognized the image from somewhere...
【題組】33.Which of the following is true according to the author of this passage?
(A) Robert Frost suggests that poetry is cssentially propagandistic.
(B) We should divide grief into recognizable stages so that we can label, tame andput it behind us.
(C) It is useless to let sorrow inhabit one's very being.
(D) Our culture which has become increasingly intolerant of grief is superficial.
(E) Robert Frost's distinction between grievances and griefs is pointless.