Writing To Interweave The Charm
- Posted by Essays Blog in Essays Blog |
- April 27th, 2009 |
- Comments
As you may know, I’m a great fan of the works of the Canadian author, Robertson Davies. So, when I’m looking for inspiration and ideas, I activity to his articles on writing. I came across a delivery he gave in 1990 for the Coin Lectures in New Haven, Connecticut. One is entitled simply Writing, the other Reading.
What makes a novel good or even really great, so that it will be read one hundred years from now [or more]? What takes a novel out of its own time, so to communicate, and become coupling?
I have to quote Davies from his delivery where he talks of an essential quality he calls
shamanstvo.
To interweave the charm, the writer must have inside him something comparable to the fabric spinning and web-casting gift of a program; he must not only have something to have, any account to tell, or any wisdom to impart, but he must have a characteristic artifact of doing it which entraps and holds allay his prey, by which I mean his reader.
When reading this, I first remember shamans [i.e.: shamanstvo]&ndashsome kinda mystic, a healer, with powers not given to mere mortals. Perhaps a tricker or individual claiming to communicate with gods!
A tall order for us who toil before our computers, hoping for inspiration to just cover the plot or get a bit of dialogue right!
But it’s accurate! Remember the last time you picked up a novel and from the real first condemn, you were fascinated, inexorably drawn into the class the writer had created. I assume that’s the “un-put-down-able” quality we all attempt.
Someway, I don’t believe Davies meant the quality of a real “page turner.” He knew the duration of lingering over a passage and the savouring of language. It’s got to be something else.
I really like this quote from Davies. The fabric to make the blade comes from inside the program and is produced naturally from it. The program doesn’t know how it does this. It is just its inherent ability. And so, Davies must be talking about the grand sum of our entire consciousness which produces this story&ndashor fabric. It is a product of the writer’s being.
And it should have a account to tell or any wisdom to impart. But I believe the real arcanum is contained in the last few phrases&ndash a characteristic artifact of doing it which entraps and holds allay his prey, by which I mean his reader. Obviously, it has to be highly personal and individual to the writer. And it must be a account or a cerebration, which about impales the reader with its implication.
How can the writer hope to do much a abstraction? After all, my experience is personal to me, just as yours is to you. How, by drawing on my own personal experience, can I hope to ensnare you into my blade? And better allay, capture thousands of readers, all of whom have their own personal worlds? How can I ever hope to enchant a reader with my class?
Immediately, I remember the Swiss psychiatrist, Carl Jung and the collective unconscious&ndashwhich we all apportion. If a writer can access that level of the cold, perhaps he can bring into his writing that which is common or coupling to all humankind. Of course, the writer interprets that material and adapts it to his own personal experience of life. But allay, he has drawn upon emotions, thoughts, archetypes, symbols and signs, even myths from that great library of human experience we all share&ndashthe collective cold.
Perhaps that is how we come full circle to the idea of shamanstvo. That charmer, enchanter quality. Shamans are indeed mystics. They have primary access to inner worlds&ndashas I believe it&ndashby artifact of gift. But that does not mean we can’t attempt to enter those worlds where the creative materials of coupling appeal are buried.
But Davies would not likely agree with me. To him, you either have shamanstvo or you don’t. Of course, he says that everyone has a personal cold, which is rooted in the collective cold.
But the difference is this. The kind of writer he means is one who has
the ability to invite it, to accost its assistance, to hear what it has to have and impart it in a language that is particularly his own. He may not be&ndashvery probably is not&ndashfishing up messages from the cold which astonish and achieve dumb his readers. It is more likely that he is telling them things that they recognize as presently as they hear them.
Thither you go! If its something they recognize immediately, so it must be drawn up [dredged up?] from the collective cold common by all of us. Put in more mythological damage, it sounds just like the ability to court the muse.
So, next time we’re writing and get cragfast, perhaps it’s best to just accept a nap. Why? Because dreams, they have, are the gateway to the cold.