From Eliot Weinberger's great book Karmic Traces:
Sanskrit poetics applied the theory of karmic traces to the act of reading. One responds to a poem because it speaks directly to one's experience, but that experience need not have occured in this life. (...) Poetry, then, in India, is not only the place where we may hear the dead speak, it is the place where we hear our dead selves speak. (151)
And one of my dead selves responds joyously to the passage.
