41: Professor Viola, Peer Gynt, and Me

41 

Professor Viola, Peer Gynt, and Me         

I have a retired high school teacher friend who calls me up every month or so and we talk for well over an hour, sometimes two—or rather, he does most of the talking, as though having a willing ear to listen to him he has to tell me everything he can because it might be a long time before anyone else will be so indulging of his quirky way of thinking; but something he said the last time we talked has inspired today’s spiritual musing.

What he said was simple enough, given the context of our conversation on the subtle nature of spiritual paths to erode one’s capacity for thinking freely (we both belonged to the same spiritual path for many years, which we had outgrown but I left and he didn’t); it was his Faustian conviction that disturbed me. A very talented and resourceful man who built his retirement home in the country that is practically self-sustaining (with a passive solar heating system that he designed himself which a country magazine wanted to feature but he refused because he didn’t want to draw attention to himself), he has made it his life’s mission to be as independent as he possibly can be, especially in his own thinking—among many good words that he has discarded from his vocabulary, he no longer uses the word “God” because it’s too anthropomorphic for his liking and has replaced it with the much safer word “consciousness,” which is fine with me; but the last time we talked he justified his idiosyncratic thinking by declaring that he was simply being true to himself, to which I replied, with a spontaneous ironic chuckle, “But which self are you true to?”

“What do you mean?” he reacted, affronted by my unexpected laughter that always put him on his guard. “We only have one self. What other self are you talking about?”

“Have you ever heard of the concept of the shadow self?” I asked, but he hadn’t; and I had to explain what Jung meant by the repressed side of our personality which has been the dominant theme of all my writing, especially my literary memoir The Lion that Swallowed Hemingway in which I explored how Hemingway’s shadow destroyed his life.

When we finally ended our conversation I left my friend with something new to think about, which in our next conversation he’ll introduce as his own thought (he has a habit of doing this); but that’s just the foraging habit of his survivalist nature. But I love him for it, because he dares to be his quirky self despite what people think of him (he never goes anywhere, even to the grocery store, without his emergency survival kit); that’s why I was inspired to write today’s musing, because the human personality cries out for resolution.

I could have spent another hour or two expounding upon the book I had just written that tells the incredible story of how I found my true self; but The Summoning of Noman would have been too much for him, and I didn’t bother. Besides, my friend is a talker, and not a listener; and I left it for him to figure out the mystery of his own personality.

Strangely enough however, it wasn’t until I came upon a copy of Henrik Ibsen’s play Peer Gynt the other week when I unpacked the remaining boxes of books in our basement and stacked them onto the shelves that I thought of my friend’s comment about being true to himself, because Peer Gynt is the archetypal story of man’s inauthentic self that is the very premise of my memoir The Summoning of Noman; and this, I suspect, is why I was called to shed some light on our false personality in today’s spiritual musing… 

I was in high school when I met Professor Viola from Cornell University in the Nipigon Memorial District Hospital one day. He and his wife had an accident with their vehicle as they explored Ontario on their summer vacation, but I don’t remember the details; all I remember is that he was a Professor of Literature and I tried my best to impress him.

I visited him several times and told him that I wanted to go to Cornell University, and he indulged my unfathomable naiveté by telling me to write him when I graduated from high school, which I fully intended to do but didn’t because my destiny called me to another path; a path that Professor Viola foresaw by recommending that I read Peer Gynt. 

I had a passing familiarity with the author Henrik Ibsen (I had read that James Joyce, whose Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man I read with fascination, plus some of his stories from Dubliners, learned Norwegian just to write Henrik Ibsen a letter telling him how much he admired his work); but I had not heard of Peer Gynt. I did know that he had written An Enemy of the People and The Master Builder, and I fully intended to read him.

Professor Viola was very kind to me, and so was his wife; but now that I reflect upon my experience, I can’t help but recall the curious smile of his wife’s face as Professor Viola indulged me. Her smile revealed much more than I was capable of discerning.

I guess it was because I was a young Italian boy that Professor Viola indulged me the way he did, knowing very well how hard it was for an immigrant boy from Calabria to make good in a new country like the United States of America and Canada; but the sage advice that he gave me, I failed to act upon because something about Peer Gynt frightened me.

I could never explain what it was, but in my soul I knew that if I read Peer Gynt I was going to learn something about myself that I didn’t want to know; and, believe it or not, I never read one of Ibsen’s plays, fleeing in panic at the mere thought of reading Peer Gynt. But there I was, half a century later in the basement of our new home in Georgian Bay unpacking my many boxes of books when I came across a copy of the dreaded play; and I brought Peer Gynt upstairs because I no longer had any fear of reading it.

I had found my true self. That was my life’s quest, which I wrote about in my book The Summoning of Noman. Peer Gynt on the other hand travelled the world and came home to die never knowing his true self, which was why in his wisdom Professor Viola wanted me to read Ibsen’s sibylline play; but in all my years of reading (and I went through many books) I could never bring myself to read Peer Gynt because I sensed that if I read it I would have to face a truth about myself that I did not want to face, and I had to learn the hard way that my life was just as inauthentic as the quixotic Peer Gynt’s; and once I realized this, Professor Viola’s wife’s kind but curious smile spoke to me: “Oh young man, my heart goes out to you…”

I went online and researched Ibsen and Peer Gynt, and I smiled to myself at Professor Viola’s compassionate wisdom; and then I sat on my front deck and finally read the play that haunted me my whole life. But as I read the play, I thought of my retired high school teacher friend who justified his eccentricity by saying that he was true to himself, and I wondered if the next time he called I shouldn’t recommend that he read Peer Gynt.  

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