The Human Spirit

I know that my dear friend, Beth (with whom I took creative writing classes back in the eighties), will not mind that I share her recent e-mail to me regarding William Faulkner and how meaningful she found the following speech of Faulkner's:

Dear Theresa,

For some reason, I have been “into” Faulkner lately.  It came to me that I should re-read “Barn Burning.”  So I took out a Faulkner audio from the library, and on the CD was Faulkner, giving this speech.  It struck me to the bone, went to the core of me, I hurt when I heard it.

I am collecting some quotes and such that aid me at my desk and I wanted the entire text of this short speech.  I thought you might enjoy it, if you have not heard or read it.  Love, Beth

William Faulkner: Nobel Prize Speech

Stockholm, December 10, 1950

 

I feel that this award was not made to me as a man, but to my work — a life's work in the agony and sweat of the human spirit, not for glory and least of all for profit, but to create out of the materials of the human spirit something which did not exist before. So this award is only mine in trust. It will not be difficult to find a dedication for the money part of it commensurate with the purpose and significance of its origin. But I would like to do the same with the acclaim too, by using this moment as a pinnacle from which I might be listened to by the young men and women already dedicated to the same anguish and travail, among whom is already that one who will some day stand where I am standing.

Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only one question: When will I be blown up? Because of this, the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat.

He must learn them again. He must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid: and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed — love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice. Until he does so, he labors under a curse. He writes not of love but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, of victories without hope and, worst of all, without pity or compassion. His griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars. He writes not of the heart but of the glands.

Until he learns these things, he will write as though he stood among and watched the end of man. I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal simply because he will endure: that when the last ding-dong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking. I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet's, the writer's, duty isto write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.

I have underlined what is most meaningful to me.  "The human heart in conflict with itself" is what I try to write about.  It is what interests me most, beyond artifice, beyond plot, beyond technique.  Just the crisp, clear ringing of the heart. 

Faulkner believed people had ceased to ask questions about the problems of the human spirit.  I have found myself thinking about this idea ceaselessly since I have read it because it is a belief I also have entertained. 

It is the writer's work to keep asking those questions, the ones about the problems of the human spirit, the ones that really matter.

Thanks, Beth.

Dream

Dream by The Hungarian-born artist Ralph Fabri (1894-1975)

I don't usually tell many people about my dreams.  I have a vivid, rich dreamlife, full of imagery and hidden meanings.  But generally dreams make sense only to the dreamer.  And everyone else bores of the dreamer's ruminations--quickly.  Have you ever been held captive of someone telling you his or her dream? And it goes on and on?

But here I go.  I will preface the dream with one shared by Mircea Eliade in his journal, No Souvenirs: 

Last night's dream.  Two old men who are dying, alone, each in his own way.  Disappearing forever with them, without witnesses and without leaving a trace, was an admirable story (which I knew).  Terrible sadness.  Despair.  I withdrew to a room on the side, and I prayed.  I said to myself, If God does not exist, all is finished, all is absurd.

I awoke with the taste of ashes.

I love the sensory nature of this dream, especially the last impression, the taste of ashes. 

I include Eliade's dream as a crutch, as a way of saying it's okay for me to tell you my dream.  It's a way of saying, please don't be bored.  Read on.  It may not be as bad as you think!  

But I also include Eliade's dream because he says something so important about writing our stories, about getting them down.  We cannot let our "admirable" stories perish with us.

Sometimes our personal mythology merges with the universal in intriguing ways.

I told Vicky (Vicky is a perceptive woman I've recently met online--we  found each other not through this journal but as a result of a common experience we had, one I had expressed in a recent short story) about this dream a few days ago.  At the time I didn't understand its meaning.  She hinted I should look at my own journal for the answers.  (Vicky is so patient and never tells me my dreams bore her).  The dream: 

I was standing in the kitchen with my boys, who were small, around ten or under.  They are all men now, the youngest 20, almost 21. I opened the refrigerator and said, "We're going to color Easter eggs today."  They all gasped, happily, and said,"Really?"  It was the kind of joy children express when you've truly surprised them in a good way.

I said, "Yes, really!"  I opened the refrigerator and took out a huge carton of eggs.  More than two dozen, more than three dozen, perhaps.  The eggs in the top rows of the carton were whole, but in the bottom rows of the carton, they were merely shells.  The eggs had been cracked, used, and the discarded shells placed back into the carton.

The used eggs had white shells; the unused eggs had brown shells.  "Oh no!" I said to the children.  "Brown eggs!  We can't color brown eggs!"

I felt tremendously let down.  I felt I had let my children down.  That is all of the dream. 

My interpretation: 

I had recently done an entry in my journal on the cosmic egg.  In the entry I had typed out the story of Eurynome, who changed herself into a bird and laid the cosmic egg, which became the world and the sky, the egg from which came all life.  Not long after the entry, I did a presentation at the Northwest Ohio Writers Forum.  I talked about mythology, symbols, and icons.  I read the Eurynome myth in conjunction with an excerpt from my own novel in which the mother is not strong like Eurynome, but dependent on her abusive husband.  I talked to my audience about how I changed the imageof the powerful woman who dances on the waters to a weak, frightened woman who says what she needs to quietly, speaking into the drain of the sink.  (In contrast to Eurynome, who drives the male out of her presence after buising his head with her heel!)

I think doing the journal entry and then doing the public speaking, which always makes me nervous, drove the cosmic egg idea home, and triggered some memory--or memories--deep in my unconscious, and it had to come out in dream form.  I was forced to think about my own life and how the egg myth relates to my life. 

I think the white shells represented my spent years and the lost potential of those years.  I could no longer color these eggs.  I think these eggs represented not only my artistic life, but my life as a mother.  I think I was mourning all the lost opportunities in my creative life (my art), and lost opportunities with my children.  In a sense, both are my "children."  That is why I was brokenhearted when I saw the white eggs were spent. 

The remaining eggs were brown, and these represented my middle-years.  These years are not the bright canvas that the early years were.  Anyway, how do you color a brown egg?  It isn't the same in terms of brightness, of beauty.  There aren't as many possibilities with a brown egg, or so I thought.

I believe I'm meant to take from the dream that I should not give up the idea of coloring the eggs altogether.  I must find a way to color the eggs, to make my art, to do what I can for my children.  Despite the lost opportunities, there are still ways to connect with my children.  There are still ways of showing my love.  I can't magically make them happy, like I could when they were children.  Their needs, and my own needs, seem more complicated now.  It is more difficult to get the desired result now.  My art is a slightly different situation; something about the doing of it seems easier than it did when I was younger, but it also seems harder because I no longer have the innocent belief that "success" will happen simply because I am somehow "special," and it is destined to happen to me. 

Vicky told me I should also consider the Spinoza quote, which I had written in my AOL journal earlier:  "I do not attribute to nature either beauty or deformity, order or confusion. Only in relation to our imagination can things be called beautiful or ugly, well-ordered or confused."  I think Vicky was right; the Spinoza quote is relevant.  The  brown eggs were only substandard because my imagination considered them so.  I had not yet found a way to envision the brown eggs as beautiful and useful in my life.

 

 

Whose Dreams Are Perished

Argos recognises Odysseus
17th century etching
Theodor van Thulden (1606 - 1669)
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco

Once again I've been inspired by one of Robert Brimm's poems.  In his entry for December 1, he includes a poem about a dog named Houdini, along with a beautiful photograph of the shadow of a tree stretched upon the ground.  Robert's poem is called "Old Dog Asleep."

Below is part of my post to Robert's journal entry.  To read Robert's poem, go here.

In my response to "Old Dog Asleep," I included the following excerpt from The Odyssey:

There the dog Argos lay in the dung, all covered with dog ticks.
Now, as he perceived that Odysseus had come close to him,
he wagged his tail, and laid both ears back; only
he now no longer had the strength to move any closer
to his master, who, watching him from a distance, without Eumaios
noticing, secretly wiped a tear away, and said to him:

"Eumaios, this is amazing, this dog that lies on the dunghill.
The shape of him is splendid, and yet I cannot be certain
whether he had the running speed to go with this beauty,
or is just one of the kind of table dog that gentlemen
keep, and it is only for show that their masters care for them."

Then, O swineherd Eumaios, you said to him in answer:
"This, it is too true, is the dog of a man who perished
far away..."

And this was my comment on the excerpt from the Odyssey (and by extension, Robert's poem):

How those last words ring true for most of us.  Are we not sometimes human beings whose dreams are perished; are we not so often looking again for our true selves?  

I'm very interested in how our pets come to represent hidden aspects of ourselves.  The story of Odysseus and Argos brings me close to tears every time.  Robert's poem is powerful, as well.

Odysseus and Argos
Engraving and etching on paper
John Flaxman
1805

I have quoted the following excerpt from the journal of Mircea Eliade before, his journal entry from 1 January 1960.  I have repeated it here because it relates so well to Robert's poem (Odysseus and Ulysses are the same):

Every  exile is a Ulysses traveling toward Ithaca.  Every real existence reproduces the Odyssey.  The path toward Ithaca, toward the center.  I had known all that for a long time.  What I have just discovered is that the chance to become a new Ulysses is given to any exile whatsoever (precisely because he has been condemned by the gods, that is, by the "powers" which decide historical, earthly destinies).  But to realize this, the exile must be capable of penetrating the hidden meaning of his wanderings, and of understanding them as a long series of initiation trials (willed by the gods) and as so many obstacles on the path which brings him back to the hearth (toward the center).  That means:  seeing signs, hidden meanings, symbols, in the sufferings, the depressions, the dry periods in everyday life.

My point is that it is ever so easy to see ourselves inside the work of others.  Robert's life is like the life of Homer's hero.  So is mine.  So is yours. 

 

Road to the Interior

Painting by Sesshu

Weather-beaten bones,

I'll leave your heart exposed

to cold, piercing winds

 

After ten autumns,

it is strange to say Edo

speaking of my home

--Basho

This entry was inspired by Robert Brimm's poetry and art Journal, Chosen Words.  Robert,the author of Chance of Rain, a poet twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize, writes Haiku and reading his excellent work made me want to read Basho again.  So I picked up my copy of Narrow Road to the Interior, translated by Sam Hammill.

Narrow Road to the Interior is a collection of prose and poetry travelogues written by Basho (1644-1694).  Basho undertook several contemplative travels during the last ten years of his life.  The title is a wonderful metaphor for the journey each writer must make within.

The following excerpt from "The Knapsack Notebook" speaks eloquently of the writer's spirit, which Basho calls "Windblown": 

Within this temporal body composed of a hundred bones and nine holes there resides a spirit which, for lack of an adequate name, I think of as windblown.  Like delicate drapery, it may be torn away and blown off by the least breeze.  It brought me to writing poetry many years ago, initially for its own gratification, but eventually as a way of life.  True, frustration and rejection were almost enough to bring this spirit to silence, and sometimes pride brought it to the brink of vanity.  From the writing of the very first line, it has found no contentment as it was torn by one doubt after another.  This windblown spirit considered the security of court life at one point; at another, it considered risking a display of its ignorance by becoming a scholar.  But its passion for poetry would not permit either.  Since it knows no other way than the way of poetry, it has clung to it tenaciously.

Saigyo in poetry, Sogi in linked verse, Sesshu in painting, Rikyu in the tea ceremony--the spirit that moves them is one spirit.  Achieving artistic excellence, each holds one attribute in common:  each remains attuned to nature throughout the four seasons.  Whatever is seen by such a heart and mind is a flower, whatever is dreamed is a moon.  Only a barbarian mind could fail to see the flower; only an animal mind could fail to dream a moon.  The first task for each artist is to overcome the barbarian or animal heart and mind, to become one with nature.

Truly, Basho's "home" became his art:  That is where I want to live, my art. 

Heaven On Earth

If there ever has been a person who has had the experience of heaven while living on this earth it would have to be William Blake.  Just thinking about him, just letting his name run through my mind (let alone reading one of his poems or looking at one of his drawings or paintings!) makes my pulse gallop.  I believe there is so much mystery about the man and his works.  If he were all we devoted ourselves to, we would never reach the bottom of the experience.

According to the Writer's Almanac, his birthday was Sunday, the 28th:

It's the birthday of poet and artist William Blake, (books by this author) born in London (1757). When he was 25, he married an illiterate girl named Catherine Boucher, who was a devoted wife, although she once remarked, "I have very little of Mr. Blake's company. He is always in Paradise." A friend once dropped by to find them sitting in their garden, naked, reciting passages from Paradise Lost. "Come in!" cried Blake. "It's only Adam and Eve, you know!" Blake and his wife printed and bound his books, including Songs of Innocence and Experience.

Being A Writer: In Perspective

The following information comes from the Writer's Almanac:

It's the birthday of writer James Agee, (books by this author) born in Knoxville, Kentucky (1909). He was 16 when his father was killed in a car accident, and as an adult he worked for nearly two decades, on and off, on a manuscript that tried to recreate, as he put it, "my childhood and my father, exactly as I can remember and represent them." He never finished it; but after he died it was published as the novel A Death in the Family, and won the Pulitzer Prize (1957). He's also the author of the book Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (1941), generally considered to be a masterpiece. He was an obsessive person, an insatiable talker, addicted to cigarettes, alcohol, and Benzedrine. He died of a heart attack in a New York cab in 1955, with no will, no insurance, and $450 in the bank. 

I had to put this in my journal because James Agee's A Death In The Family is one of the first books that made a big impression on me.  I still have the copy I bought from the Scholastic Book Club back when I was in the 7th grade.  It's a paperback with pages that are now brown and brittle.  I'm not sure how much of the book I understood at age 13, enough that I remembered the haunted feeling it had given me, the realization of the temporariness of life.  The beauty of Agee's prose is something I would discover many years later.  

The common manner of Agee's death reminds me of another situation involving a writer I admire:  Dorothy Allison.  I participated in the Southern Festival of Books in 2002 by doing a presentation of my novel, and Allison was also at the festival that year.  I went to her presentation (I was a lowly first novelist; to me she has "rock star" status), and the presentation was very powerful.  I learned a lot by watching her that day about the power one's voice should have during a reading, about how to act out one's story (I had not thought of a reading as a "performance" before I saw Allison). And then I practically ran to the signing collonade so I wouldn't have to wait in a long line to have her sign my books.  When I got there, my heart fell because a long line already snaked from the table.  But then I realized the line was for Garrison Keillor, and no one was in Dorothy Allison's line.  Indeed, only two of us had books signed by Allison that day.  I couldn't believe it! 

What the death of Agee and the Dorothy Allison signing show me is that "being" a writer has got to be enough. There can't, there shouldn't, be an expectation of reward greater than that.  

From A Death In The Family:

We are talking now of summer evenings in Knoxville, Tennessee, in the time that I lived there so successfully disguised to myself as a child.  It was a little bit mixed sort of block, fairly solidly lower middle class, with one or two juts apiece on their side of that.  The houses corresponded:  middle-sized gracefully fretted wood houses built in the nate nineties and early nineteen hundreds, with small front and side and more spacious back yards, and trees in the yards, and porches.  These were softwooded trees, poplars, tulip trees, cottonwoods.  There were fences around one or two of the houses, but mainly the yards ran into each other with only now and then a low hedge that wasn't doing very well.  ...

But it is of these evenings, I speak.

Supper was at six and wasover by half past.  There was still daylight, shining softly and with a tarnish like the lining of a shell; and the carbon lamps lifted at the corners were on in the light, and the locusts were started, and the fire flies were out, and a few frogs were flopping in the dewy grass, by the time the father and the children came out. ...

It is not of the games children play in the evening that I want to speak now, it is of a contemporaneous atmosphere that has little to do with them:  that of the fathers and families, each in his space of lawn, his shirt fishlike pale in the unnatural light and his face nearly anonymous, hosing their lawns.  The hoses were attached at spiggots that stood out of the brick foundations of the houses.  The nozzles were variously set but usually so there was a long sweet stream of spray, the forearm and the peeled-back cuff, and the water shishing out a long loose and low-curved cone, and so gentle a sound. ...

...By some chance, here they [my family] all are, all on this earth, lying, on quilts, on the grass, in a summer evening, among the sounds of night.  May God bless my people, my uncle, my aunt, my mother, my good father, oh, remember them kindly in their time of trouble; and in the hour of their taking away.

After a little I am taken in and put to bed.  Sleep, soft smiling, draws me unto her:  and those receive me, who quietly treat me, as one familiar and well-beloved in that home:  but will not, oh, will not, not now, not ever; but will not ever tell me who I am.

 

Is It Alive?

I had a discussion with a friend recently about writing.  She said she had trouble writing because she had trouble with plotting.  I will share what she said because I think her opinion of her writing life is illustrative of the way a good many people feel:

I  think that for me, the main problem is having a plot.  That is what it really comes down to.  When I have something to write about, the words come easily and flow out in style.  But I am very bad at thinking up stories

My advice to her was not to worry about plot, then. This is what I wrote to her:

A wonderful book by Jerome Stern called Making Shapely Fiction teaches that fiction needs a "shape" to exist in.  That's a perfect description for me to wrap my mind around, because my thoughts and energies are so fluid.  So I have to find a shape to pour the liquid into.  You discover the proper shape through imitation or trial and error.  So what if it takes a while to find the right shape?  You can let your ideas flow on paper however they want to.  The shaping can come later.

The main thing for her--and for the rest of us--is to get thoughts down. The main thing is just to write. 

Stern writes:  "A shape invites you to fill it.  The shapes of fiction inspire by presenting ways to embody your experiences, memories, and imaginings" (3).  This is a useful book for anyone seriously engaged in the writing of stories.

Sometimes a "shape" comes to me right away when I write.  Sometimes my stories come out in a whoosh; the organization is associative, very right-brained.  Sometimes I have bits and pieces that must be arranged and shaped, like a puzzle.  My process varies from writing to writing. 

Recently, I ran across something that Emily Dickinson is supposed to have said.  I read that when she sent her poems to her editor, she didn't want to know whether or not her poems were "good."  She wanted to know if they were "alive."

That's the question my friend can ask herself.  Is her writing alive?  I know she can write works that are alive; she does so when she writes to me of her experiences, longings and dreams.    

Dickinson's question to her editor:  Are my poems "alive" is the question I want to ask myself regarding the stories I write. 

It's the perfect question for any writer to ask herself or himself.