Travelling is a funny thing. It makes you contemplate things you normally don't think about. As you meet new people and old friends, as you visit places that lie beyond your imagination, you wonder.
Why do you do what you do. Why do you go so far, only to return back to your old life later. Why do you make the choices you make. What is it that you actually want to accomplish in life?
I'm not very young, nor am I very old. I've studied, I've got some degrees, I've fulfilled some of my dreams. Yet the future is still open. Uncertain. What is my path, how will I know what to do? Keep at it, struggle along, or change courses?
Today I came across two recollections from writers I greatly admire, in which they shared something about their own process of getting where they wanted to be.
Connie Palmen
The first is something written by Connie Palmen, a Dutch author and philosopher. I have been reading her for quite some years now, and would wish some more of her books would be translated into English, but 'The Laws', her debut, is generally available. I especially enjoyed her novel 'Jij zegt her' (you say it) published in 2015 which shows the relationship between Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes from Hughes' possible point of view.
The book I'm reading by Connie Palmen at the moment is a 'log book of a ruthless/merciless year' ('Logboek van een onbarmhartig jaar' published by Prometheus, 2011), a kind of diary of the first year after the passing of her husband (a well-known Dutch politician). It is personal, and makes me wonder about life and death, makes me reconsider what is valuable in my own life. And especially her thoughts on writing, the difference between writing and telling the truth, the way words work, are what stay with me throughout this book.
And all of a sudden she writes the following, which I have translated here to make available to English readers. All inaccuracies are mine.
"The life I led until my thirty-fifth, until my first novel was published and when shortly after I met the man I dares to love, that life with a best girlfriend, a best friend, and several lovers, was an exercise in love, a prelude to what was to come. It looked like love, but it wasn't. Until my thirty-fifth I prepared myself for the life I was longing for." Connie Palmen, Logboek van een Onbarmhartig Jaar (translation by)
Ezra Pound
And then I happened to read the Wikipedia page of Ezra Pound, as I wanted to know what time he actually lived. Sometimes you have this insatiable thirst for random knowledge like that, or at least I have. Thankfully there is the internet and an encyclopedia. What I read however, was so much more interesting than the dates of his birth...
Ezra Pound has been a very important writer in my life. Not only because of his poetry that has influenced me and I think it's safe to say every poet alive today. But also because of his study of Chinese, and language in general, his study of what it means to translate and to think linguistically.
I resolved that at thirty I would know more about poetry than any man living ... that I would know what was accounted poetry everywhere, what part of poetry was 'indestructible', what part could not be lost by translation and—scarcely less important—what effects were obtainable in one language only and were utterly incapable of being translated.
In this search I learned more or less of nine foreign languages, I read Oriental stuff in translations, I fought every University regulation and every professor who tried to make me learn anything except this, or who bothered me with "requirements for degrees".
~ Ezra Pound, 'How I Began' (1913)
Future
Both these authors seem to say something similar, in a way. That one's early life is a prelude. One to use to explore, to have lovers and adventures, to discover the world and to learn as much as possible.
And it shows that great writers need to be stubborn. Which can lead to stupidity later on, but we're not talking about Pound's later fascism or Palmen's difficult life loosing the love of her life to death twice. Being able to overcome these things, and remain that what they were above all... writers. As Pound said to Allen Ginsberg late in his life... 'Any good I've done has been spoiled by bad intentions—the preoccupation with irrelevant and stupid things,' [he] replied. Then very slowly, with emphasis, surely conscious of Ginsberg's being Jewish: 'But the worst mistake I made was that stupid, suburban prejudice of anti-semitism.' (Thanks Wikipedia.)
I can't say I know nine languages, but I am writing manuscripts in three and that seems about my absolute limit at the moment. I'm travelling, but also notice I need to be kind to myself, and trace my steps again and again so that I actually see more and not just see something and think I've seen it. Processing takes as much time as actually seeing something new.
And the future? Maybe I shouldn't worry too much about that. Especially when I get to publish my first novel by the age of 35... haha. Dreaming is allowed, right?
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