Ring of Fire

Cynthia, in her blog, Sorting the Pieces, recently shared:

In A Moveable Feast , Hemingway wrote, "Write the truest sentence you know."  It worked pretty well for him, and it's advice I've always tried to follow.  It's both a cliche' and yet another paradox that the more personal one gets, the more universal one becomes.  It's also how we connect to one another. 

I would like to take a stab at illustrating what she says about the personal becoming universal.

Sometimes, in order to write "the truest sentence you know," you have to go through fire.   I can remember my mother frequently saying of someone she admired that he or she would "go through fire" for someone.  In the film, On Golden Pond, Ethel tells her daughter, Chelsea that Norman would go through fire for either of them.  This trial by fire is one of the most heroic gestures you can make. 

Today, I was reading the Norse myth of Sigurd and Brynhild, and, because I'm always trying to think of ways of explaining what it means to be a writer, I thought the myth said something about writing the truth.  This is how the myth goes:

Brynhild, a Valkyrie, disobeyed Odin and was punished by being put to sleep within a circle of fire until some man would wake her.  Sigurd forces his horse through the flames for Brynhild.  She awakes and gives herself to him because he has proved his valor in reaching her.  Then Brynhild is left by Sigurd in the circle of fire again.

Later, Sigurd swears brotherhood with a king named Gunnar.  Gunnar's mother, wanting Sigurd for her daughter, Gudrum, gives Sigurd a potion to make him forget Brynhild.  Sigurd marries Gudrum. 

Then Sigurd by magic takes on the appearance of Gunnar and rescues Brynhild.  Sigurd must do this because Gunnar does not have the courage to go through the fire himself.  Sigurd and Brynhild spend three nights together, but Sigurd places a sword between them in the bed.  Sigurd returns and takes his real identity again.  Brynhild marries the real Gunnar, thinking Gunnar heroic and Sigurd faithless. 

However, Brynhild discovers the truth and gets revenge by having Sigurd slain.  She lies, telling Gunnar that Sigurd broke his oath to the king by sleeping with her after, in the guise of Gunnar, he rescued her from the circle of flames.  After Sigurd is killed, Brynhild, in her grief, tells her husband that she lied, that she and Sigurd had not really slept together.  Then she kills herself.

This story, I think, says a lot about being a writer and telling the truth as a writer.  First, in order to get to the truth, we usually have to go through an ordeal.  In this case, the ordeal is fire.  Fire is purifying and transformative, but we often fear transformation.  Nevertheless, the determined writer forces his horse through the flames.

You, the writer, are Sigurd, going through the fire to awaken your love, your writer's heart.  As writers, we must awaken what lies in the center of the flames.  We must awaken the truth.  Only the truth can transform us and, as Cynthia says, connect us to one another.

Second, once the task of rescuing the truth is accomplished, the writer's task isn't over.  The writer, prone to life's betrayals, can "forget" that truth; the writer can still lose the prize.  The writer's creative life can die. 

So you have to keep going into the fire again and again.  Each time you are transformed and renewed.  You awaken your love again and again.

But you have to go through the fire as yourself, not as anyone else--not in the guise of a "King."  Psychologists tell us that the king in many myths and tales is your ego.  If you go dressed as a "King"  you may fall prey to the King's expections, the king's cowardice, and the King's pride.  Fire, like all forces of nature, can be both transformative and destructive. 

After Sigurd's death, he is burned upon the pyre, consumed.  The ring of fire that burns within can be destructive to us if we enter falsely.  Not only that, the treasure within the ring of fire can self-destruct.

And what of poor Gudrum?  She, too, lost her love.  She lost him because he didn't enter the flames as his "true" self.

Writing can be enjoyable, but writing the truest sentence you know is can also be an ordeal. 

 Photo credit from Edith Hamilton's Mythology.

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