Over the half-term, I was set to read Birdsong, by Sebastian Faulks. I am supposed to be reading it with an eye as to spotting wider themes in first World War literature. Why is this at all interesting?
I have had two reactions to the book which I don't think were included in any part of the English syllabus. The first reaction is a problem which I've been having with more than one book, and which has resulted in more than one being laid aside, never to be finished. I did, in fact, have to pause for quite a while with this one, following Isabelle's abandonment of Stephen. It is the same reason why I can rarely complete any Margaret Atwood novel, and why another novel I'm reading, Sons and Lovers, is proving quite a mountain. What is this reason? Pain.
Pain in relationships. I can read books with gruesome death scenes in them. I can read books with murder and rape in them, vast battles that result in truly monumental death-tolls, and, in Birdsong, all of the horrors of the first World War. But, to me, get a couple of flawed human beings and place them in a relationship together, and that's more painful than anything else. Hang them in a white space as just a pair of talking heads and have one of them a flying rabbit and the other a talking pig, and it's still a work of art, because the pain of it is going on all the time, and it needs to be written about, even if it's too much for cowards like me.
And there's the second reaction, merged with the first: This is why I chose to study English Literature. These things need to be expressed, this universal pain needs to be written about, and therefore, if not conquered, then at least understood. If mathematicians work with numbers and values, then writers work with souls. Literature is synonymous, to me, with both the heights and depths of human passion. You cannot get passionate about Geography. Nobody is ever moved to tears in Economics. Few other things can reach into you at all, let alone create a flame which burns in ecstasy. To read is to commune with not just the author but something greater than yourself; a subjectivity which is universal yet speaks to the individual. This is also why I chose, from around the age of four, to set my sights on becoming a writer.
"His nerves stilled in the sensuous repletion of the moment that precluded thought." A line from Birdsong. Here's another: "She dreamed of pale faces beneath rose-coloured lights; Lisette at the corner of the stairs, the bloodless features in the red glow, a lost girl, and other like her caught in some repeated loop of time, its pattern enforced by the rhythmic motion of the train; many white-skinned faces with dark eyes, staring in disbelief." Exquisite prose! The kind I long to write. The best I've ever written?
Abercrombie flung off his robes, bared his shining white body to the pale face above. A delightful contrast played over his lithe form, light accompanied by shadows which darkened between his legs. One steps, two steps - the dance that wasn’t a dance, but more a way of speaking without using the tongue, a language which unrobed them all, so that an observant teacher would have spotted naked youths leaping in ecstasy in the shadow of the trees…I am not exaggerating when I say that, to me, writing is a spiritual experience. Understanding comes with words. Words are inadequate alone, but there is always a mind reading them. I believe it is that communion which can get as close to anything resembling God as it is possible to get.
Had they believed it?
No, belief was too specific a word. One did not believe in a heart-beat, one could not have so fragile a thing as faith in the forces which had urged them outdoors and demanded their surrender. He could perhaps rationalise it only hesitantly, as an outpouring of youthful fervour that could find no other outlet; the breaking of a dam behind which waters swirled and boiled…
3 comments:
I'm ecstatic to see such passion for something that I too prize so highly. Those who say that English is a waste of time should have nasty things done to them until they change their minds. I'm currently too tired to attempt to express the power that words and literature can have over me, but Birdsong is one of the few novels that has actually reduced me to tears - real, physical tears.
What an impressive post.
English doesn't have a monopoly on emotion, though. Music and art can probably get close. I'd find Law a very important subject: a cross between the mathematics of logic and the soul of Justice. But then I would.
P
You don't know me, but I feel that there are heights (or depths) of mystical experience that go well beyond what language is able to codify. Nevertheless, artistic writing that makes an attempt at this is an important exercise.
I cried reading George Orwell's "Coming Up for Air", which is odd.
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