“Dante had doubtless learned from experience how soporific a long narrative could be. He also firmly believed that the senses were the avenues to the mind and that sight was the most powerful (“noblest,” he would have said) of these. Hence, his art is predominantly visual. He believed also that the mind must be moved in order to grasp what the senses present to it; therefore he combines sight, sound, hearing, smell, and touch with fear, pity, anger, horror, and other appropriate emotions to involve his reader to the point of seeming actually to experience his situations and not merely to read about them.” (The Inferno, Introduction, Archibald T. MacAllister)
This is basically what my goal is each time I write something. Granted, I write more about traumatic things than happy ones, but suffering is the thread of commonality that ties us all together, or so it seems. The raw materials of a traumatic experience are richer when it comes to writing about them. When I’m happy, in love, or whatever, it’s much harder to put those emotions to words that are as powerful without crossing over into the world of greeting cards and drugstore romance novels.
I imagine my writing grabbing the reader by the throat and forcing them to feel something that may be somewhat painful for them. (How very sadistic…) If someone reads something I wrote, without knowing the story or situation, and they shed a tear, that is the greatest compliment.
I’m not a very good artist in the literal sense of the word. I can’t draw to save my life, nor can I paint or sculpt, nothing. So to be able to use my words to paint a picture, form an image, create a scene, is pretty damn cool.
So, I’ve begun reading Dante’s inferno. I have only gotten a few pages in, but that paragraph right there struck me, because I had never witnessed something I’d felt for so long about my own writing, being phrased so well.
Back to reading for now.
PS. Let it be said that I am not comparing myself to Dante Alighieri. Dante is like the Edvard Munch of writers. I am merely finger-painting.
This is basically what my goal is each time I write something. Granted, I write more about traumatic things than happy ones, but suffering is the thread of commonality that ties us all together, or so it seems. The raw materials of a traumatic experience are richer when it comes to writing about them. When I’m happy, in love, or whatever, it’s much harder to put those emotions to words that are as powerful without crossing over into the world of greeting cards and drugstore romance novels.
I imagine my writing grabbing the reader by the throat and forcing them to feel something that may be somewhat painful for them. (How very sadistic…) If someone reads something I wrote, without knowing the story or situation, and they shed a tear, that is the greatest compliment.
I’m not a very good artist in the literal sense of the word. I can’t draw to save my life, nor can I paint or sculpt, nothing. So to be able to use my words to paint a picture, form an image, create a scene, is pretty damn cool.
So, I’ve begun reading Dante’s inferno. I have only gotten a few pages in, but that paragraph right there struck me, because I had never witnessed something I’d felt for so long about my own writing, being phrased so well.
Back to reading for now.
PS. Let it be said that I am not comparing myself to Dante Alighieri. Dante is like the Edvard Munch of writers. I am merely finger-painting.
