From the 2-28-2020 issue of
the Times Literary Supplement: “Clouds Left Far Behind, the impulse to
transcend physical limitations through writing,” an article by Darran Anderson,
the author of Imaginary Cities, 2015, and Inventory: A River, a city,
a family.
The title had me thinking of
Tolkien who literally got so caught up in the world he had created that he
transcended his limitations, but the author has in mind prisoners who transcend
their circumstances by writing. His first prisoner wrote, ‘Come then,
let us start! Follow me, all ye whom the ‘pangs of despised love’ or
slights of friends keep within doors – follow me far from the meannesses and
unkindnesses of men. Be ye unhappy, sick, or weary, follow me. Ye
idle ones, arouse ye, one and all.’
Anderson tells us, “These
exultant words are to be found in A Voyage around my Room (1794) by the
aristocrat and military man Xavier de Maistre. Placed under house arrest
in Turin for forty-two days after a duel. De Maistre kept his spirits up
by imagining his navigations between the walls around the furniture as a great
journey. His ‘voyage’ is like an Oulipian attempt to exhaust a place and
poetically reframe the familiar. This ‘travel writer’ thinks of his bed,
for example, in universal terms; it ‘sees us born and sees us die. It is
the ever-changing scene upon which the human race play by turns interesting
dramas, laughable farces, and fearful tragedies. It is a cradle decked
with flowers. A throne of love. A sepulchre’. Though it is an
intentionally absurdist work, A Voyage Around My Room is a testimony to
the transporting power of writing. ‘Be he miserly or prodigal, rich or
poor, young or old, born beneath the torrid zone or near the poles’, de Maistre
tells his readers, ‘he may travel with me.’ It was a best-seller, and he
eventually wrote a follow-up, charting his room at night – a ‘cell’ to which,
this time, he voluntarily confined himself.”
Feeling a need to transcend
physical limitations during 42 days of house arrest does seem absurd. De
Maistre knew it was absurd and never expected that it would be published.
His brother did that on his own, but De Maistre lived to be 88 so perhaps he
later on became physically limited for a longer period of time.
While disappointed with the
article, I did look about at my house and yard and think about the limitations I now face as a consequence of covid-19. I have a very nice library and
can have books delivered to my door in a very short time, or immediately by
means of Kindle. I don’t have TV but I have a wide variety of movies and
TV programs on Amazon Prime and Netflix.
Or . . . I could write.
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