A Visionary

A few months back I read Irene Nemirovsky's Suite Francaise. She wrote the work of fiction while living the horrors of World War II in France. It was meant to be a saga of life during the war, but she was only able to complete the first two novellas. Because of her Jewish heritage, she was taken to Auschwitz and killed. I often find myself still thinking about how accurate her interpretation and treatment of reality are in her novel. I'm just in awe at how clearly she saw the future.

"He wasn't made for the world that would be born of this rotting cadaver...A brutal, ferocious, dog-eat-dog world." (p. 35)

In one line she sums up a lot of the changes in society since World War II. Everything from Feminism to our culture's obsession with celebrity to the increase in senseless mass shootings could be traced back to the reactions of society at large after World War II. Now it's ridiculous to blame these things on history and the actions of brutal men long-gone, but I see a connection. After the wars of the mid-Twentieth century, many people were better able to take care of themselves and their families. The Baby Boomers grew up with parents who understood sacrifice and wanted to provide their children with hope. In one line Nemirovsky interestingly defines a large part of what became part of the American Dream in the last half of the Twentieth century: the need to succeed monetarily and climb the career laddder. Then I think the Baby Boomers took this hope too far when they taught their children to care for the self too much. Our day to day lives have become so removed from hardship, fear, and the need to rely on others that we can love ourselves too much. We place too much value on self-esteem. It makes us selfish and ultimately delusional.

That was a paragraph that I wasn't intending to write in this post because this was going to be about writing. It was going to be about how I want to work at seeing things as they are. I remember wanting to write about the attacks on September 11th a few months after they occurred. I was still in Sixth grade, and I was going to write a fictional journal from the perspective of a girl whose parents died in the towers. I was so young and naive, but I recognized that it was an event that would radically change the world. I never wrote that story because even though my thinking was juvenile, I saw that I didn't know enough about the nature of man or the attack to do it justice. I want to be able to write about the important things now. I firmly believe that I have to be more realistic to affect anyone with the stories I want to tell. Because important things are happening every day, and I'm lucky enough to have the time and ability to write them.

Sometimes I have a great fear that my whole way of thinking is incorrect. That I will wake up one day and realize I've built up too many false ideas and that the way I've constructed the world has to change. I know I'm not completely wrong about everything. I have my faith in God and His Son to lead me in the right direction. And I can be wrong about things; it means I can change. It means I can be who I aspire to be. My hope is that my main thought process holds up over time though. I want my words to mean something to me in 50 years. I hope that I tell the stories that need to be heard. I hope I can see the world clear enough to know them.

I learned a lot about writing from Irene Nemirovsky. Her notes and outlines are published in the back of the book, and I love the way she was able to critique herself. I'd like my journaling to be more like that. I also love that she wrote things just for herself, especially this poem:

The Wine of Solitude

by Irene Nemirovsky for Irene Nemirovsky

To lift such a heavy weight

Sisyphus, you will need all your courage.

I do not lack the courage to complete the task

But the end is far and time is short.