Reading & Writing, continued

There are a few authors you read that seem to compel you to write. You read slowly, softly, feeling every word. And then you nod, you agree. The emotions are beautiful, at times you believe you too have some of them, but those words, that language, the way to weave all those things together, beautifully, poetically is a gift! After reading those authors, you feel compelled to try to write even though you feel short of words to express yourself adequately. And then it hits you well and truly that writing is difficult. And the more you read, the more you realize your limitations.

This must sound selfish -  this reading of books and constantly comparing, measuring myself against the level or intensity or clarity of their thoughts. Does it hint towards a deeper desire of being able to express myself as precisely and beautifully as all those writers that I read and admire? Or is it not just a way to appreciate the nuances better? Isn't it that when you pick up the pencil to sketch, you observe better and recognize the effort in a painting? When you begin to learn a sport yourself, you better appreciate the performance of its top players, and the super-heroic stuff that they manage to do. When you yourself try to cook, you better appreciate the mastery of certain recipes and chefs and the way they can make food intensely flavorful yet retaining its lightness. Or trying to learn chords on a guitar, you open up new heightened senses to the music you hear. May be, it is about walking in their shoes for a little distance.  May be, it is just that trying to write, makes you appreciate the terrain from where the writers send their messages better. Or helps you recognize that what seems effortless, is not really so.

It is ironic that these thoughts were inspired by a translated book. A few weeks ago, I read ‘Autumn’ by Karl Ove Knausgaard. It is a collection of little personal essays on objects, written to his unborn daughter. The collection is part of a Quartet. Perhaps the first one to be translated. He decided to write about something every day to introduce the unborn child to different things in this world. A sort of personal notebook, a mini encyclopaedia, a personal take on everyday objects. Most of the time the objects are sort of departure points to convey other thoughts. And it is beautiful.

Other couple of authors that evoked similar feelings recently are Elizabeth Von Arnim (my recent reads include Elizabeth and her German Garden, Vera, Solitary Summer, The Benefactress) and Simone De Beauvoir (Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter, again, a beautiful translation). Both of them are new discoveries for me, and very pleasing ones. With Knausgaard, Von Arnim and De Beauvoir, I can (somewhat) identify with the feelings they go through. Even if I have not felt it expressly, I seem to know what they are saying. Some of those emotions might be around me as a fog, but they have converted them into something physical, actual, real, tangible by verbalizing it. They speak to me, and they seem in a similar realm and world, although on a much different plane.

Contrast them with two other writers I revere, and read recently more from. Against a similar backdrop as Knausgaard's Scandinavien landscape, I recently read Isak Dinesen's collection of stories, Winter's Tales. A superb book. Similar to her Babette's Feast, the stories are not commonplace. They are filled with a lot of wisdom, and level of feeling and insights that make you wonder about how intensely a human being can feel, observe and recreate that reality for you. And you wonder whether you can ever do even a little bit of that?

Similarly, another of my recent reads - a collection of stories by AS Byatt – Elementals, was another other-worldly sort of writing. A unique set of stories, rich and colorful - a beautiful collection. It is similar to her Matisse Stories, delectable morsels of short stories.  There are water nymphs, ice princesses, people walking out of their own lives, and people lost in nightmarish realities. Dream-like low-probability sequences. The starkness of these stories pretty much keeps the excitement up throughout. Every emotion is heightened, deeply felt and seemingly new.

Where the first three (Knausgaard, De Beauvoir and Von Arnim) talk about life as we know it, or even if we don’t know it, my pattern-seeking mind finds enough in these authors to paint corresponding instances from my own life and colors in its paintbox. Smaller, much smaller emotions/experience, may be quite dull and blunt against their sharpness but corresponding nevertheless. However with Dinesen and Byatt, there is no pattern I can fit them in. And throughout the stories, my mind keeps working frenetically in the background, looking through the repository of lived experiences to find anything corresponding; but nothing emerges. Except perhaps a few dreams. But dreams are received, not lived through with any control of your own reactions, they are quite random, and weird and alien. So is in Dinesen's and Byatt's stories, there is so much alien emotion. And hence it is all the more wonderful. It is all the more engrossing because the mind has to work a lot to create the new frameworks and reference points for the worlds they portray.

Another way of looking at it could be that Von Arnim, Knausgaard and De Beauvoir are talking about personal experiences. About life as it happens to you, me or them. About the inner human landscape. While Dinesen and Byatt go into these specific realities, and worlds, that, I am sure could exist, but in a low probability/ unlikely sort of way. In the way that I am sure one could perhaps come across a beautiful blossoming pink tree while on a walk through the bush. You’ll be intrigued, delighted, full of wonder when you spot one. But more often, you'll be looking at greens of different hues, shapes and sizes. And green is what you end up calling the forest.

Elizabeth Von Arnim

I stumbled across ‘Elizabeth and her German Garden’ while reading about one of those year-end weekend newspaper wraps where people talk about what notable or recommendation-worthy books they read in 2017. I had noted down the name in one of my many to-read lists. I eventually found the book at the library, in what they call ‘the Stack’. The Stack is where they keep those old or limited-edition books. This beautiful book was a 1915 reprint. So, over a century old! Bound, like a little notebook.

Intrigued and hooked, I read more about the author after finishing Elizabeth and her German Garden. As I was reading about her, and around her, I came across an interesting trivia that Katherine Mansfield is her cousin. (More on Katherine Mansfield later). Small world. And Von Arnim was born in Sydney; Kirribilli to be precise. So, there is the nexus element.

The book is a diary. An interesting one. It talks about her effort to make herself home in Germany. About her struggle with her garden and her gardeners, and her love of reading and writing along with her norm of being a sort of outsider, although a countess, in a foreign culture. And above all, her thoughts, her views of the world.

I wanted more. I found her books on Project Gutenberg. And then I had a new favourite open page on my phone. I read Solitary Summer which is in a way sequel to Elizabeth and her German Garden. I loved both of them. There are passages which I have clipped and saved. There is an articulation of feelings that I can completely nod and agree with. And feeling that nobody could have perhaps expressed better.

And then I read the next book, The Benefactress. Where the first two were inspired directly from her life, this one was fiction. The book tested my patience. Still, I wanted to read to the end because (a) It was an easy quick flip. And (b) I was hoping that it will redeem itself as it moves forward. I was genuinely surprised to think that people can have such saintly, unbounded generosity as shown by the heroine, accompanied with extreme naïveté. However, in the book, I did like the author’s meditation on what makes people happy, and lets them stay happy. It echoes with my own thoughts around human flexibility. I agree and believe that human beings get used to comforts and discomforts pretty quickly and re-adjust their norm, and what they define as happiness. It is during the bit when things are being adjusted where most of the emotional upheaval lies, or where lie the peaks of happiness or unhappiness, after which they lose the newness and become part of the for-granted. [1] [2]

After The Benefactress, I tried to read one of her later books, Vera. Like The Benefactress, I didn’t enjoy this one as well. But it was interesting to see where Daphne du Maurier draws her inspiration for Rebecca. It has been years since I read Rebecca, but it was an unforgettable sort of book. Where Vera revolves more around the couple, Rebecca was more about the new Mrs de Winter and the old one. Vera had a sarcastic, satirist comic element. Dark humour. A brat-boy-man who controls everything (a different shade of Huntingdon from the Tenant of Wildfell Hall: more about it later). One recoils at the dependence of women on men. You feel like wanting to reach through the boundaries of time, space and fiction to shake the person out of her misery, and to make them see for what things are.

And that is where I stopped reading Von Arnim. Delightful diaries. Loved her reflections and thoughts in her fiction books as well (though not the fiction per se). I would recommend the diaries to anyone who loves that sort of writing.

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[1] A tangential thought:  Can we hence say that our quest should be to maintain the intense colors of new happiness and to not let them dim to the for-granted palette of beige and brown? Else, to match our previous levels of happiness, we'll always need something bigger, better, more colorful or new. Given the human capacities, perhaps we can say that to continue to derive high level of happiness from things that supposedly makes one happy, to preserve the intense personal happiness, you need to relive or invoke the initial encounter, the very first feelings of joy – to bring in the delight of the newly privileged, of the child. Being grateful definitely helps and should be a good starting point. As for the discomforting, and the not-so-happy things, may be, one needs to do nothing. Perhaps, just give ourselves some time. And the new realities will gradually become the new normal. There seems to be enormous flexibility and capacity in human beings to get used to just about anything. Perhaps that is what makes life bearable for many.

One of myriad ways of interpreting reality.

On a similar note, somewhere, in a poem (For E.R., translated) Joseph Brodsky notes,

“The future has arrived and it is not

unbearable"

[2] I was discussing this view ([1] above) with K. And he has a different view of things. He believes more in the stoical way of looking at things - to let emotions pass through you, wash over you completely, and to not resist them or push them, but let them take their course. That things shouldn't make you too happy or too sad. He is a believer in equanimity. About looking at the happy as well as unhappy stuff in life with a detached, a bit removed point. Somewhat like the poem If (Rudyard Kipling). 

"If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

And treat those two impostors just the same;"

A worthy aspiration to live like that. 

Not so simple, is it? - This trying to interpret life and happiness.

Reading & Writing

Reading is ephemeral, momentary, a transient joy. It is a journey, an experience that leaves you with memories, impressions, thoughts and questions. Compared to that, writing is much more work (for me), but after the arduous journey of sentence forming, you are left with something tangible. A completed piece of writing. To top it off, there is this beautiful feeling of the joy of achievement.

In a way, writing completes the journey that reading begins. Through the process of sentence forming, it crystallizes some of those vague impressions that reading leaves you with. 

A joy of its own class. All yours for a bit of effort and some discipline.