Read "Independent People" by Halldor Laxness online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
AND the light of learning began to shine.
The distinctive features of the world's civilization are not simply and solely the giraffe and the city of Rome, as the children may perhaps have been led to imagine on the first evening, but also the elephant and the country of Denmark, besides many other things. Yes, every day brought its new animal and its new country, its new kings and its new gods, its quota of those tough little figures which seem to have no significance, but are nevertheless endowed with a life and a value of their own and may be added together or subtracted one from another at will. And finally poetry, which is greater than any country; poetry with its bright palaces. Over all flies the soul, viewing the heavenly light, like an eagle in the vestibule of the winds.