Exactly As It Is

Wislawa Szymborska

In my previous entry I raised the specter of numbness, that feeling of being stuck, unable to move forward with our art.  I'm not finished with the topic by a long shot, but I won't be discussing it in this entry.  I also want to address the temperament of the artist later, too, as I've been doing quite a bit of reading lately about that--views of Becker, Rank, Jung and Freud.

I ran across a poem today as I was cleaning off my desk here at home, and the poem really spoke to me.  A few months ago, I went through stacks of New Yorker magazines and cut out poems, stories, and cartoons that I liked.  This is one of the poems I cut out, "First Love" by Nobel Prize winner (1996) Wislawa Szymborska:

They say

the first love's most important.

That's very romantic,

but not my experience.

 

Something was and wasn't there between us,

something went on and went away.

 

My hands never tremble

when I stumble on silly keepsakes

and a sheaf of letters tied with string--

not even ribbon.

 

Our only meeting after years:

the conversation of two chairs

at a silly table.

 

Other loves

still breathe deep inside me.

This one's too short of breath even to sigh.

 

Yet, just exactly as it is,

it does what the others still can't manage:

unremembered,

not even seen in dreams,

it introduces me to death.

 

Of course I have no idea what the author's intent was, but, as I'm prone to do, I relate the poem to the writing process, especially storytelling.   I've found more than anything that students get tangled up in their notions of plot, what it is, what it's for, and in their fears that they can't create sufficient plots for their stories.  Interestingly, the definition of plot is: 

Main Entry: [1]plot
Pronunciation: 'plät
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, from Old English
Date: before 12th century
1 a : a small area of planted ground <a vegetable plot> b : a small piece of land in a cemetery c : a measured piece of land : LOT
2 : GROUND PLAN, PLAT
3 : the plan or main story of a literary work
4 : a secret plan for accomplishing a usually evil or unlawful end : INTRIGUE
5 : a graphic representation (as a chart)
 

So really all a plot is, is a plan.  But plans change all the time, don't they?

Do our lives ever happen as planned?  Of course not.  So why should our stories, then?

I'm not the kind of writer, or reader, that's much interested in heavily plotted pieces--detective stories, who-done-its, mysteries, thrillers, action pieces.  My idea of plot is simple:  it follows John Gardner's notion that it only exists as a way to show off your characters.  The character is all.

Rather than creating zingy, complicated plots, I like  to do a close analysis of the interior lives of my characters.  That's why, surprisingly, the first definition of "plot" really works for me:  "a small area of planted ground," or "a small piece of land in a cemetery," or "a measured piece of land."  I like to think of my stories as, metaphorically, a small area, a postage-stamp of land, as Faulkner once said, where something happens to somebody.  Where a character steps through a metaphorical door, crosses a threshold, and is now in a new room, a new awareness. 

I think that's why I'm really drawn to poems like Szymborska's.  To me, what she is describing is a new awareness that the speaker has come to: what her first love taught her--that loving another is a form of death because you become absorbed into each other.  Submerging yourself in another is a form of death; it is a transformation of experience.  It is at once wonderful, a grand feeling of transcendence, and it is terrifying, because change is always unknown territory. 

I love her poem for its truth and its simplicity.   Because it blows to smithereens a common stereotype:  that first love is best love.  It lays that old dog to rest.  I love the poem for its vague eroticism:  "Other loves / still breathe deep inside me."

The poem is not static; it breathes and moves.  (To me, a plot should also breathe and move; the epiphany should happen not by plan but it should be discovered.  The plot should be, in a sense, organic, growing out of memory, intent, and present experience.)  It takes the speaker and the reader to a moment of realization.  It shows us life, strange as it may sound, exactly as it is.