i adore this quote from fulk and cain, the editors of the copy of history of old english literature that i'm using. talking of allegorical readings of the old english elegies being overdetermined, fragmented, and requiring the poems to be drawing from far too many sources without context, fulk and cain write that the result was that “the poets seem at once both deeply learned and woefully distracted."

i would like to grow up to be deeply learned and woefully distracted.