William Shakespeare - Willa Cather - The Gleaners & I 2000 - Leviticus 19:9&10 - Jeremiah 8:20 - Matthew 9:37 - Galatians 6:7 -
To glean the broken ears after the man
That the main harvest reaps. William Shakespeare, As You Like It III v 102
While the train flashed through never-ending miles of ripe wheat, by country towns and bright-flowered pastures and oak groves wilting in the sun, we sat in the observation car, where the woodwork was hot to the touch and red dust lay deep over everything. The dust and heat, the burning wind, reminded us of many things. We were talking about what it is like to spend one’s childhood in little towns like these, buried in wheat and corn, under stimulating extremes of climate: burning summers when the world lies green and billowy beneath a brilliant sky, when one is fairly stifled in vegetation, in the color and smell of strong weeds and heavy harvests; blustery winters with little snow, when the whole country is stripped bare and gray as sheet-iron. We agreed that no one who had not grown up in a little prairie town could know anything about it. It was a kind of freemasonry, we said. Willa Cather, My Ántonia
G as in gleaners: to glean is to gather after the harvest … The original painting is at the Orsay. The Gleaners & I, 2000
A whole day in the sun with gnats and mosquitoes biting. ibid.
Urban and rural gleaners all stoop to pick up … To bend down is not to beg. ibid.
In paintings they were always in clusters, rarely alone. ibid.
‘But 25 tons [of potatoes] are rejected.’ ibid.
‘We’re better off working in the fields than shoplifting.’ ibid.
These vintage wines have been entirely harvested and the surplus has been deliberately left on the ground. ibid.
‘I’ve always like the world of dumps and salvage.’ ibid.
‘People collect the oysters that have come loose.’ ibid.
‘Salvaging is a matter of ethics for me.’ ibid.
And when ye reap the harvest of your land, thou shalt not wholly reap the corners of thy field, neither shalt thou gather the gleanings of thy harvest.
And thou shalt not glean thy vineyard, neither shalt thou gather every grape of thy vineyard; thou shalt leave them for the poor and stranger: I am the Lord your God. Leviticus 19:9&10
The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved. Jeremiah 8:20
The harvest truly is plenteous, but the labourers are few. Matthew 9:37
Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. Galatians 6:7