Elie Wiesel, a Nobel prize winning author and Holocaust survivor, has written many books most of them semi-autobiographic.
This is an exerpt from his article about writing. In it, he expresses difficulty in describing truth.
The idea that one can glean from this passage is thus: if truth is so hard to grasp and articulate, how then are we to grasp at the images in our imagination to properly articulate them?
Yet, as Wiesel says "it was neccesary to continue" and hopefully, we can learn from this man how to add truth and imagery into our stories, no matter how difficult the subject matter...
Enjoy reading!
"Acutely aware of the poverty of my means, language became obstacle. At every page I thought, "That's not it." So I began again with other verbs and other images. No, that wasn't it either. But what exactly was that it I was searching for? It must have been all that eludes us, hidden behind a veil so as not to be stolen, usurped and trivialized. Words seemed weak and pale.
Which ones could be used to tell of the long journey in sealed cattle cars toward the unknown? And of the discovery of a twisted and cold universe where some people came to kill and others to die? And of the separation, during nights engulfed by flames, the brutal disruption of families, what words could describe them? And the disappearance of a small Jewish child so wise and so beautiful when she smiled, killed together with her mother the very night of their arrival? Before these images, all words disintegrate and fall lifeless into the ashes.
And yet it was necessary to continue. And speak without words; more precisely, without the proper words. And to try to trust the silence that surrounds and transcends them, while knowing, "That was still not it."
Writing, however, is getting more and more difficult. Not to repeat oneself is every writer's obsession. Not to slide into sentimentality, not to imitate, not to spread oneself too thin. To respect words that are heavy with their own past. Every word both separates and links; it depends on the writer whether it becomes wound or balm, curse or promise. It would be simple and comfortable to play with words and win; all it takes is to play the game and practice a bit of self-delusion.
But for my generation, playing games is not an option. We need to bear witness, we need to hope, with Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav, that with a measure of luck, some of our testimonies will safeguard the essence of our prayer.
Ultimately the Jewish boy from my little Jewish town was wrong: writing is anything but easy. "
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5 comments:
Well-chosen, poignant and compelling.
Reminds me of another holocaust-survivor, Viktor Frankl, who wrote the books on Logotherapy.
Shafiq
"Not to repeat oneself is every writer's obsession. Not to slide into sentimentality, not to imitate, not to spread oneself too thin. To respect words that are heavy with their own past."
I like this particular segment of it, because this articulates the way I personally feel when I write.
There is always a part of us that we stamp into our work when we write.
I feel that as writers, when we express ourselves through our writing, we consciously, or subconsciously, portray our version of what we feel is Truth and Reality into our fiction...
Thank you for posting this Yoelit! =D
Luigi
This is such a beautifully written passage; so full of sad truth and brutal honesty. Thanks so much for posting this, Yoelit; I’m not sure I would have come across it otherwise.
Although I couldn’t possibly begin to imagine the horror and suffering that the Holocaust left in its wake, in a strange way, I feel like I can relate to what Wiesel is saying in terms of writing about truth.
Most of the time, I generally find writing pretty easy—it doesn’t take much to come up with an idea for a character, and a journey for that character to take. However, the conjuration of a story has always been far easier for me than trying to write the truth. I find most of my stories are laced with bits and pieces of truth—things I have seen or done, or people that I have met or encountered. But I’ve never written a story that is based entirely, more or less, on something true, something that I have experienced. It’s easy to take small parts of the truth and employ them in a story, but as soon as it comes to taking a big, true event, I can’t do it.
Like Wiesel, if I try to describe huge events in my life through written word, all of the words I use seem “weak and pale” in comparison to the magnitude of the event. I start to feel like it’s almost as if I couldn’t possibly do the event justice through the words I’m trying to use. When your best friend passes away, how do you talk about it? How can you write about it without over-doing the topic with fancy images and metaphors about death? When your parents are talking about divorce, how can you do the magnitude of the situation justice with a few specific words? How can you write without feeling like everything you are writing is wrong? How can you tell when you’re saying too much, too little?
Writing truth is a scary process. It’s intimidating and terrifying, but when it’s finished, it can be painstakingly beautiful. In this sense, Wiesel is exactly right: “writing is anything but easy,” but it is “necessary to continue.”
[I would also like to add that the line “To respect words that are heavy with their own past” is one of the most beautiful single lines I have ever read!]
Not to imitate.
I like that. There is nothing more boring than a piece of writing that is redundant. The type of work that make you say, "Hey, I swear I read this book before!". lol. And I think being original should never be an issue because every writer is a unique individual. The problem comes with the "how". How to tell your story in a way that's unique to you. We all admire authors out there but you want to imitate as a didactic tool, not to a level where all originality is lost.
But what I think makes writing so hard is finding that "it" she talks about. You can come up with an idea, have it all mapped out. And then when comes the time to put it on paper, if it doesn't look or follow the image in your head, it's just not "it"! And that's where it gets complicated; matching the work with the vision.
And finding words to fit every single human emotion... writing is anything but easy indeed!
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