Epigraphs - Paratextual Activity

I write about books a lot. Well, more accurately I often write about the text of books. I wanted to take some time to write about the non-textual parts of books, from the pictures on the front covers to the blurbs on the back cover. We have a kind of mind-body dualism for books. Either books are exclusively physical and aesthetic objects used for decoration, or they are only text. You can see the aesthetic argument show up in the analysis of ‘credibility bookshelves’ we got at the beginning of the pandemic, or the trend before the pandemic of arranging books by color and size. On the other hand there are various literary movements that assert that the text is the only thing that matters. Everything else, the identity, personal history, or purpose of the author, or the ‘paratext’ of introduction and interpretation that surrounds and supports the work, are mere distractions from the real meaning of the text. While some authors, such as George Saunders, still try to maintain that textual formalism, I think it’s somewhat reductionistic and certainly boring. I have judged many books by their cover, and by book reviews, and author interviews, and people make intentional decisions trying to get me to judge books by everything other than the text itself. So, I want to appreciate those decisions starting with epigraphs.

Epigraphs are those brief quotes you sometimes find at the beginning of books. Often, they’re quotes from a different book, poem, or religious text. Epigraphs are to books as overtures are to musicals. They set the stage for what’s to come, and for me their most important role is giving an idea of how a work should be understood. I wrote an article a couple months ago called What’s the Point of Fiction? This is, unfortunately for my past self, a naïve question. There is no single point of literature, just as there is no single purpose in cooking. Sometimes, people cook to convey an aesthetic experience to another person, and sometimes they cook because their kids are hungry and something needs to be on the table in an hour. There are maybe as many points to literature as there are works. Epigraphs are essentially a note from the author to the reader suggesting how the work should be understood and how it relates to previous literature.

T.S. Eliot’s poem the Hollow Men begins with an epigraph taken from Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. The epigraph is a sort of suggested reading, as well as suggesting a thematic link between Conrad and Eliot’s work. Both invoke journeys to an unknown kingdom of death, and both dwell on the emptiness of life. Similarly, Nicola Barker begins her novel I AM SOVEREIGN with a quote from Eliot, “Where is the life we have lost in living?” Both Barker and Eliot try to come to terms with the transcendent infiltrating and being lost in the mundane. In H(A)PPY, Barker uses an epigraph to state the entire theme in a single sentence from St. Augustine, “Indeed, man wishes to be happy even when he lives as to make happiness impossible.” But not every author is trying to connect to the literary canon. Brandon Sanderson is much more interested in worldbuilding than responding to dead poets. His epigraphs are quotes from fictional books which hint at things happening in other corners of his fantasy worlds. Naomi Alderman does something really fun at the beginning of the Power. She has an epigraph from the Book of Samuel and an epigraph from the fictional Bible, the Book of Eve, that exists within the world of the Power, simultaneously participating in the tradition of using the Bible as an epigraph and using epigraphs for world building. A great nonfiction example is Esau McCaulley’s Reading While Black. The book begins with a quote from Andre 3000 of Outkast and a quote from 1 Corinthians. The juxtaposition of these quotes serves as a microcosm for the book: the Bible read from and alongside Black culture gives unique insights into biblical interpretation.        

As I’ve been writing more, my appreciation for epigraphs has only grown. I know only too well how hard it is to get ideas out of your head into someone else's head, especially when you’ve been thinking about that idea for a long time and everyone else is coming to it relatively fresh. Because I want people to understand me, I really want to understand authors. It’s fun to take stories and ideas where authors don’t intend, but one of my primary goals in reading is to understand the author. Epigraphs are a direct statement of intent. They’re a message to me to help me stay on the interpretive track they intend. I wrote about my uncertainty about the meaning of Piranesi, by Susanna Clarke, but it has an epigraph from the Magician’s Nephew which helps me feel more sure of my understanding of the novel along Lewisian lines. 

I often feel bad for Dostoevsky because of how he is misinterpreted by later writers like Albert Camus and Sigmund Freud. Camus writes about Dostoevsky through his own philosophy of absurdism, but Dostoevsky is absolutely not trying to write absurdist work, and I know this because of the epigraph. There’s a lot of dialogue between Christianity, hedonism, atheism, and absurdism in Dostoevsky’s the Brothers Karamazov. I think it’s a testament to the imaginative capacity of the Russian author that he can compellingly make the argument of each case, compellingly enough that existentialism, a misreading of Dostoevsky, grew out of his writing (along with the writing of Soren Kierkegaard). Many readers make the Brothers Karamazov about Ivan Karamazov’s rejection of God on humanitarian grounds, but Dostoevsky begins the novel with a quote from the Book of John, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, except a head of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.” Even before the novel begins we know that Doestoveky is thinking about resurrection, and while Ivan makes interesting points, the author intends the book to be about the power of resurrection. Doestovesky doesn’t write Ivan as the hero (even though he’s probably the most compelling character), the hero is Alyosha, his meek and mild brother who maintains his belief in the resurrection despite everything that transpires.  

Epigraphs tend to get skipped over when people crack open a book, just like the preface and the dedication line. It’s understandable, but epigraphs are important parts of books. They help us to understand what the author is trying to do with the text. They’re a way for the author to tip their hand, alerting us to themes to pay attention to as the work progresses. They’re also a way for authors to connect their work to the broader literary world. Or, like Albert Camus, who doesn’t have an epigraph for his novel the Stranger, they can be a way to reject everything that came before. If nothing else, the author spent probably an enormous amount of time thinking about what the epigraph should be. So even if they’re just a short line or two before the book ‘really starts,’ I want take the time to appreciate them.