Wounded with Wonder
Three years ago I
wrote The Lion that Swallowed Hemingway,
a memoir which I thought would bring resolution to my lifelong fascination with
Ernest Hemingway who called me to writing in high school, but apparently I
wasn’t done with him yet because on March
1, 2017 I was called to write a sequel which I completed on June 7, 2017, a private journal called My Writing Life, Reflections on My High
School Hero and Literary Mentor Ernest
“Papa” Hemingway, and now I’d like to write a spiritual musing on my
experience…
In her book A Woman Looking at Men Looking at Women,
Siri Hustvedt explores the question of where authors get their ideas in an
essay called “Why One Story and Not Another?” And the conclusion she came to,
as tentative as it may be because it seems to her that nothing is ever
conclusive when it comes to the body-psyche relationship, was that “there are
clearly unconscious processes that precede the idea, that are at work before it
becomes conscious, work that is done subliminally in a way that resembles both
remembering and dreaming,” further adding: “I argue that a core bodily, affective,
timeless self is the ground of the
narrative, temporal self, of autobiographical memory, and of fiction and that
the secret of creativity lies not in the so-called higher cognitive processes,
but in the dreamlike configurations of emotional meanings that take place
unconsciously” (A Woman Looking at Men
Looking at Women, pp. 388-9). And I don’t disagree, but with
qualifications.
But why one story
and not another? Why was I called to write The
Lion that Swallowed Hemingway and then a sequel three years later? Why did
the idea for my literary memoirs come to me when they did, and with such a compelling
need to write them?
“Every good novel is written because it has to be
written. The need to tell it is compelling,” writes Siri Hustvedt; but this can
be said of any genre, be it novels, short stories, poetry, plays, memoirs, or personal
essays like my spiritual musings: when an idea comes to me, depending upon the
urgency of the need to give it expression, the compulsion is determined, and my
compulsion to write The Lion that
Swallowed Hemingway possessed me with such daemonic intensity that I HAD to write it just to get it out of my
system, just as I was compelled to write the sequel My Writing Life.
But why? Why was I
possessed by the idea to write these books? Siri Hustvedt is a novelist and
essayist with cross-disciplinary interests, and her compulsion to write
possesses her as it does every writer who is called to their art; and herein
lies the mystery, the call to one’s life path which speaks to the individual
nature of one’s destined purpose…
Over coffee the
other morning, Penny and I got into a discussion on this mystery of being
called to one’s life path, because it was my conviction (drawn from years of
being possessed by ideas that had to be given expression through novels, short
stories, poetry, memoirs, and spiritual musings, not to mention the countless
books that I read in my quest to find my true self that spoke to this issue) that
to be called is to be ready to begin the journey of self-reconciliation, and to
Penny’s disconcertment, I said: “Not everyone is called to their life path. I
was called to writing in high school by Hemingway, but my call to writing was
supplanted by a higher calling to become a seeker when I read Maugham’s novel The Razor’s Edge in grade twelve; but I
was ready to be called. Not everyone is ready—”
“I don’t agree,”
Penny jumped in, contending that every person is on their own path no less than
any writer, artist, doctor, or whatever the discipline; and I spent the next
twenty minutes of our coffee time before she got ready for work explaining that
a calling to one’s life path presupposes many lifetimes of experience in one’s
calling. “It took many lifetimes for Mozart to become Mozart, and the same with
Albert Einstein. Reincarnational memory and genetics work together. This is the
mystery of being called,” I explained, which just happened to be the
preoccupying theme of My Writing Life
that I had just completed; but Penny still couldn’t see it, which is why I was
called to write today’s spiritual musing…
My fascination
with Ernest “Papa” Hemingway called me to writing in the early grades of high
school, but in grade twelve our English teacher assigned our class to read
Somerset Maugham’s novel The Razor’s
Edge, and so moved was I by Maugham’s hero Larry Darrell’s quest for the
meaning and purpose of life that I was inflicted with what Professor Harold
Bloom called an “immortal wound” which set my soul on fire, a wound of wonder
that supplanted my call to writing and launched me on my quest for my true
self; and I devoted my best and most creative energies to my quest until I
found the “pearl of great price” which I finally wrote about two years
ago in my most intimate memoir, The Pearl
of Great Price.
Despite my calling
to find my true self, I never gave up on writing, and whatever energies I had
left over from earning my daily living (I started my own contract painting
business after I left university where my quest had taken me) and seeking the “pearl
of great price,” I spent on writing; and my fascination with Hemingway grew in proportion
to what he taught me about the craft of writing. He was my high school hero because
he called me to writing, and he became my literary mentor because I never
stopped learning from him; but my quest for my true self initiated me into the sacred
mysteries of the secret way of life that parted the veils that shroud poetry
and literature, and my two callings became one.
So I owed a debt
to Hemingway who called me to writing, and to Somerset Maugham whose novel The Razor’s Edge inflicted me with the
immortal wound of wonder; and though I thought I had resolved my obligation to
my high school hero and literary mentor with my memoir The Lion that Swallowed Hemingway (in which I did my level best to
shed light on his paradoxical personality), I had not done with him yet, nor
had I even addressed my debt to Somerset Maugham for writing the novel that set
my soul on fire; that’s why I was called back to Hemingway when I received an Indigo Hemingway Notebook for Christmas from
Penny’s sister three years after I had written The Lion that Swallowed Hemingway, and I HAD to write a sequel and
resolve my debt to these two great writers who affected the course of my life and
set me on the path to my true self.
I would never have
parted the mystifying veils that shroud poetry and literature had I not found
my true self, but the quest for the “pearl of great price” opens up pathways to
one’s destined purpose, which is to become one’s true self; and in my
journey of self-discovery so many pathways opened up to me that I finally came
to see the archetypal pattern of every soul’s journey through life, which is to
realize one’s own individual identity.
Jesus called this final
phase of soul’s journey through life being “born again,” but this is much too abstruse
for today’s scientifically oriented mind, and the only way to convey the
gnostic wisdom of the secret way of life would be through what C. G. Jung
called “the process of individuation,” the natural course of soul’s evolution to
wholeness and completeness, as Emily Dickinson implied in one of her most mystical
poems:
Adventure most
unto itself
The Soul condemned to be;
Attended by a Single Hound—
Its own Identity.
Maugham’s novel The Razor’s Edge launched me on my quest
for my true self, and in my quest I discovered the secret way to the most
precious treasure in the world, the secret way of self-reconciliation. Jesus
called it making the two into one, our inner and outer self that psychologist
call our essence and personality, philosophers call our being and non-being, and mystics and poets call our real and false self,
which was a price much too dear for the shadow-afflicted Ernest “Papa” Hemingway
to pay, and way beyond the reach of William Somerset Maugham who did not
believe in God or the immortal soul; that’s why I had to write a sequel to The Lion that Swallowed Hemingway. I had
to thank them both for their life-changing inspiration with the incredible story
of my own journey of self-discovery.
This is the
mystery that shrouds poetry and literature, the incomprehensible journey of
self-discovery that we are all condemned to by the archetypal pattern of our
essential nature, a journey that takes us through one lifetime to the next
until we are ready to take evolution into our own hands and complete what
nature cannot finish; only then will one be called to the life path that will
initiate them into the sacred mystery of their own identity…
I finally got Penny
to see that a call to one’s path is a call to one’s own life, but a life that
has evolved in its essential nature
and is ready to begin its journey of self-reconciliation; and it doesn’t matter
what path one is called to—religion, art, science, medicine, psychology, politics
or whatever, that’s the path that one has earned over the course of many
lifetimes, the path that Socrates referred to as “soul gathering and collecting
herself into herself.”
“As each
plant grows from a seed and becomes in the end an oak tree, so man must become
what he is meant to be. He ought to get there, but most get stuck,” said Carl
Jung, and we all get stuck despite our best efforts. Ernest “Papa” Hemingway
got so stuck in his shadow-afflicted personality that he blew his brains out
with his favorite shotgun, and William Somerset Maugham got so mired in the soul-crushing
nihilism of his hedonistic philosophy of life that he got tired of life altogether
and just wanted to fade away into oblivion; but I prefer Emily Dickinson’s poetic
perspective over Carl Jung’s, because it’s a little closer to the mark: we are
all condemned to become our true self, and getting there is what life is all
about. That’s what I tried to say in my literary memoir The Lion that Swallowed Hemingway, and what I tried to bring to
resolution in My Writing Life.
——
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