“To our joy or to our misery, the contingencies of reali=
ty
have a great influence on what we write,” says Natalia Ginzb=
urg
in her book “It’s Hard to Talk About Yourself,” in the chapter in
which she discusses her life and her writing in the wake of personal disaster.
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It is hard to talk about
Indeed,
after many years of living in the extreme and violent reality of a politica=
l,
military and religious conflict, I can report, sadly, that Kafka’s mouse was right: the world =
is,
indeed, growing increasingly narrow, increasingly diminished, with every day
that goes by. And I can also tell you about the void that is growing ever so
slowly between the individual human being and the external, violent and cha=
otic
situation within which he lives. The situation that dic=
tates
his life to him in each and every aspect.
And
this void never remains empty. It is filled rapidly —
with apathy, with
cynicism and, more than anything else, with despair: the despair that fuels
distorted situations, allowing them to persist on and on, in some cases even
for generations. Despair of the possibility of ever changing the prevailing
state of affairs, of ever being redeemed from it. And the despair that is
deeper still — despair of what this distorted situation exposes,
finally, in each and every one of us.
And
I feel the heavy toll that I, and the people I know and see around me, pay =
for
this ongoing state of war. The shrinking of the “surface
area” of the
soul that comes in contact with the bloody and menacing world out there.
Most
of all, I’m better off not feeling too much — at least until this
shall pass. And=
if it
doesn’t, at least I relieved my suffering somewhat, I developed a useful numbness, I protec=
ted
myself as best I could with the help of a bit of indifference, a bit of
sublimation, a bit of intended blindness and large doses of
self-anesthetization.
In
other words: Because of the perpetual — and all-too-real
— fear of being hurt,
or of death, or of unbearable loss, or even of “mere”
humiliation, each and
every one of us, the conflict’s citizens, its prisoners, trim
down our own
vivacity, our internal mental and cognitive diapason, ever enveloping ourse=
lves
with protective layers, which end up suffocating us.
Kafka’s
mouse is right: when the predator is closing in on you, the world
Actually,
this process is all too understandable: after all, the natural riches of hu=
man
language, and their ability to touch on the finest and most delicate nuances
and strings of existence, can hurt deeply in such circumstances, because th=
ey
remind us of the bountiful reality of which we are being robbed, of its true
complexity, of its subtleties. And the more this state of affairs goes on, =
and
as the language used to describe this state of affairs grows shallower, pub=
lic
discourse dwindles further. What remain are the fixed and banal mutual
accusations among enemies, or among political adversaries within the same
country. What remain are the clichés we use for describing our enemy=
and
ourselves; the clichés that are, ultimately, a collection of
superstitions and crude generalizations, in which we capture ourselves and
entrap our enemies. The world is, indeed, growing increasingly narrow.
My
thoughts relate not only to the conflict in the
In
this reality we authors and poets write. In
As=
for
me, in recent years, in the fiction that I wrote, I almost intentionally tu=
rned
my back on the immediate, fiery reality of my country, the reality of the
latest news bulletin. I had written books about this reality before, and in
articles and essays and interviews, I never stopped writing about it, and n=
ever
stopped trying to understand it. I participated in dozens of protests, in
international peace initiatives. I met my neighbors —
some of whom we=
re my
enemies — at every opportunity that I deemed to offer a chance for dialogue. And yet, out o=
f a
conscious decision, and almost out of protest, I did not write about these
disaster zones in my literature.
Why?
Because I wanted to write about other things, equally important, which do n=
ot
enjoy people’s complete attentiveness as the nearly
eternal war thunders.
I
wrote about the furious jealousy of a man for his wife, about homeless chil=
dren
on the streets of
About
four years ago, when my second-oldest son, Uri, was to join the army, I cou=
ld
no longer follow my recent ways. A sense of urgency and alarm washed over m=
e,
leaving me restless. I then began writing a novel that treats directly the
bleak reality in which I live. A novel that depicts how
external violence and the cruelty of the general political and military rea=
lity
penetrate the tender and vulnerable tissue of a single family, ultimately
tearing it asunder.
“As soon as one writes,”
Natalia Ginzburg says, “one miraculously ignores the current circumstances=
of
one’s life, yet our happiness or misery leads us to write in a certain way. Whe=
n we
are happy, our imagination is more dominant. When miserable, the power of o=
ur
memory takes over.”
It
is hard to talk about yourself. I will only say what I can at this point, a=
nd
from the location where I sit.
I
write. In wake of the death of my son Uri last summer in the war between
Writers
know that when we write, we feel the world move; it is flexible, crammed wi=
th
possibilities. It certainly isn’t frozen. Wherever human existence=
permeates, there is no free=
zing
and no paralysis, and actually, there is no status quo. Even if we sometimes
err to think that there is a status quo; even if some are very keen to have=
us
believe that a status quo exists. When I write, even now, the world is not
closing in on me, and it does not grow ever so narrow: it also makes gestur=
es
of opening up toward a future prospect.
I
write. I imagine. The act of imagining in itself enlivens me. I am not froz=
en
and paralyzed before the predator. I invent characters. At times I feel as =
if I
am digging up people from the ice in which reality enshrouded them, but may=
be,
more than anything else, it is myself that I am =
now
digging up.
I
write. I feel the wealth of possibilities inherent in any human situation. I
sense my ability to choose between them. The sweetness =
of
liberty, which I believed that I had already lost. I indulge in the
richness of true, personal, intimate language. I recall the delight of natu=
ral,
full breathing when I manage to escape the claustrophobia of slogan and cli=
ché.
Suddenly I begin to breathe with both lungs.
I
write, and I feel how the correct and precise use of words is sometimes lik=
e a
remedy to an illness. Like a contraption for purifying the air, I breathe in
and exhale the murkiness and manipulations of linguistic scoundrels and
language rapists of all shades and colors. I write and I feel how the
tenderness and intimacy I maintain with language, with its different layers,
its eroticism and humor and soul, give me back the person I used to be, me,
before my self became nationalized and confiscated by the conflict, by
governments and armies, by despair and tragedy.
I
write. I relieve myself of one of the dubious and distinctive capacities cr=
eated
by the state of war in which I live — the capacity to be=
an
enemy and an en=
emy
only. I do my best not to shield myself from the just claims and sufferings=
of
my enemy. Nor from the tragedy and entanglement of his =
own
life. Nor from his errors or crimes or from the knowledge of what I
myself am doing to him. Nor, finally, from the surprising similarities I fi=
nd
between him and me.
All
of a sudden I am not condemned to this absolute, fallacious and suffocating
dichotomy — this inhumane choice to “be victim or aggressor,”=
without having any third, m=
ore
humane alternative. When I write, I can be a human being whose parts have
natural and vital passages between them; a human who is able to feel close =
to
his enemies’ sufferings and to acknowledge his just claims without relinquishin=
g a
grain of his own identity.
Sometimes
when I write, I can recall what we all felt in Israel, for one singular mom=
ent,
when the airplane of the Egyptian president Anwar Sadat landed in Tel Aviv =
30
years ago, after decades of war between the two nations: then, all of a sud=
den,
we discovered how heavy is the load we carry all our lives — the load of enmity and fear=
and
suspicion. The load of permanent guard duty, the heavy burden of being an
enemy, at all times.
And
what a delight it was, to remove for one moment the mighty armor of suspici=
on,
hate and stereotype. It was a delight that was almost terrifying
I
write. I give intimate private names to an external and foreign world. In a
sense, I make it mine. In a sense, I return from feeling exiled and foreign=
to
feeling at home. By doing so, I am already making a small change in what
appeared to me earlier as unchangeable. Also, when I describe the impermeab=
le arbitrariness
that signs my destiny — arbitrariness at the hands of a human<=
/span> being, or arbitrariness at =
the
hands of fate — I suddenly discover new nuances, subtleties. I discover that=
the
mere act of writing about arbitrariness allows me to feel a freedom of move=
ment
in relation to it. That by merely facing up to arbitrariness I am granted
freedom — maybe the only freedom a man may have against any arbitrariness: =
the
freedom to put your tragedy into your own words. The fr=
eedom
to express yourself differently, innovatively, before that which threatens =
to
chain and bind one to arbitrariness and its limited, fossilizing definition=
s.
And
I write also about that which cannot be brought back. And about that which =
is
inconsolable. Then, too, in a manner I still find inexplicable, the
circumstances of my life do not close in on me in a way that would leave me
paralyzed. Many times every day, as I sit at my desk, I touch on grief and =
loss
like one touching electricity with his bare hands, and yet I do not die. I =
cannot
grasp how this miracle works. Maybe once I finish writing this novel, I will
try to understand. Not now. It is too early.
And
I write the life of my land,
We
writers go through times of despair and times of self-devaluation. Our work=
is
in essence the work of deconstructing personality, of doing away with some =
of
the most effective human-defense mechanisms. We treat, voluntarily, the
harshest, ugliest and also rawest materials of the soul. Our work leads us =
time
and again to acknowledge our shortcomings, as both humans and artists.
And
yet, and this is the great mystery and the alchemy of our actions: In a sen=
se,
as soon as we lay our hand on the pen, or the computer keyboard, we already
cease to be the helpless victims of whatever it was that enslaved and
diminished us before we began to write. Not the slaves of our predicament n=
or
of our private anxieties; not of the “official
narrative” of our country, nor of
We
write. The world is not closing in on us. How fortunate we are. The world is
not growing increasingly narrow.
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