12.7.2015 THE SPEAKING AND WRITING OF WORDS by frederick buechner (#17, p182 in book quoted in previous blog)

177 in his autobiography, anthony trollope says this about himself as a writer:
178 i have always desired to 'hew out some lump of earth' and to make men and women walk upon it just as they do walk here among us-with not more of excellence, nor with exaggerated baseness-so that my readers might recognized human beings like to themselves, and not feel themselves to be carried away among gods or demons. if i could do this, then i thought i might succeed in impregnating the mind of the novel-reader with a feeling that honesty is the best policy; that truth prevails while falsehood fails;  that a girl will be loved as she is pure and sweet and unselfish; that a man will be honored as he is true and honest and brave of heart; that things meanly done are ugly and odious and things nobly done beautiful and gracious...there are many who would laugh at the idea of a novelist teaching either virtue or nobility - those, for instance, who regard the reading of novels as a sin and those who think it to be simply a pastime. they look upon the tellers of stories as among the tribe of those who pander to the wicked pleasures of a wicked world. i have regarded my art from so different a point of view that i have ever thought of myself as a preacher of sermons and my p0ulpit as one which i could make both salutary and agreeable to my audience. i do beleive that no girl has arisen from the reading of my pages less modest than she was before and some may have learned from them that modesty is a charm well worth preserving. i think that no youth has been taught that in falseness and flashness is to be found the road to manliness; but some may have learned from me that it is to be found in truth and a gentle spirit.

words like Trollope's are in many ways out of fashion now. to speak of women as pure, sweet, unselfish and to be loved and of men as tru, honest, brave of heart and
179  to be honored smacks of a view of things that we no longer find palatable. for a novelist to speak of himself as a preacher of sermons puts everybody off. but when Trollope-than whom i believe there is no greater novelist in english-says that the calling of a writer is to teach virtue and nobility and when he expresses the hope that people will learn from his words that true manliness, true humanness, is to be found not in falseness and flashness but in truth and a gentle spirit, that is something else again.

the truth of it seems to be that it is not only that literature contains metaphors but that literature essentially IS metaphor. writers (note: or speakers) travel through life like the rest of us, seeing the sights and responding to them in all sorts of inner ways and then, like the rest of us, they need, in their loneliness, to put it into words. like God saying 'Let there be light' so that by nameing it He can bring it into being, the writers of literature (note: and all speakers of words!) say, 'let there be this -this putting into words of their experience of (note: or response to) life - so that it can more fully and effectively be both for themselves and for the rest of us.

in a letter to a friend about The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky wrote, 'the chief problem dealt with throughout this particular work is the very one which has, my whole life long, tormented my conscious or subconscious being: the question of the existence of God. clearly the question was not an academic one for D but a question that arose out of what he calls his tormenting experience and to put that experience into words he did on a far larger scale what Shakespeare, for instance did when he wrote 'How like a winter hath my absence been from thee'. my experience of God and of no-God, D says, is like...and then the whole
180  complex structure and treasury of The Brothers Karamazov comes forth as a single metaphor which enable us to participate in the depths of that experience as no academic disquisition could ever do.

and what is the effect upon us, as readers, of sharing that experience?  in what way and to what end does that work of literature speak to our lives out of D's life?  the book could hardly be less didactic in any narrow sense. it is full of darkness and ambiguity. the characters are continually lacerating themselves and each other through their terrible pride. ivan's devastating attack on belief in an all-powerful and loving God nearly overwhelms us as it nearly overwhelms his brother Alyosha, and Al himself, whose whole live is supposed to speak for the defense, is in many ways the least convincing character in the book. it teaches no easy lesson about virtue and nobility and yet to read it as seriously as it asks to be read and as it it was written, is to emerge from it in some profound way the better for it in the sense of closer to that truth and gentleness of spirit that Trollope names. and so it is, i think, with any work of literature that is worth the time it takes to read it.

...words written (note: spoken) 50 years ago, 100 years ago, 1000 years ago, can have as much of this power today as ever they had it then to come alive for us and in us and to make us more alived within ourselves. that, i suppose, is the final mystery  as well as the final power of words: THAT NOT EVEN ACROSS GREAT DISTANCES OF TIME AND SPACE DO THEY EVER LOSE THEIR CAPACITY FOR BECOMING INCARNATE. and when these words tell of virtue and nobility, when they move us closer to that truth and gentleness of spirit by which we b ecome fully human, the reading of them is sacramental; and a library is as holy a place as any temple is holy because through the words which are treasured in it the Word itself becomes flesh again and again