There are two ways of spreading light: to be the…
Quote
There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.
The story behind this quote
“Vesalius in Zante” is a dramatic monologue spoken by Andreas Vesalius, the Renaissance anatomist whose illustrated treatise of 1543 founded modern anatomy, as he lies dying on the Greek island of Zante in 1564. He thinks of Padua, where he taught, and of the anatomists who carried on his work. Truth, he concludes, is “many-tongued”: what one man failed to say, another will find another word for. “No matter whence the light falls, so it fall!”
The two lines follow as his final lesson. His own wick has burnt out, but he can still be a mirror, spreading “an answering surface to the flame / That others kindle”. The poem closes as he asks to face westward “as my sun goes down.”
Edith Wharton, better known for novels such as The House of Mirth and The Age of Innocence, published the poem in Artemis to Actæon in 1909. Quoted alone, the image has become a popular saying about teaching and influence, far from its origin in a dying scientist’s farewell.
The source
Vesalius in Zante (Artemis to Actæon), 1909
Checked word for word in the work itself.
Author
Edith Wharton
Edith Wharton chronicled the New York upper class in The House of Mirth and The Age of Innocence, which made her the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. She also published poetry, including Artemis to Actæon (1909).
Quotes by Edith Wharton