A Circle of Quiet

by L'Engle, Madeleine;

  Alan wrote me from England, “Madeleine, you were so good about not reminding people about your birthday this year.”

  I wrote back, “Never again. My birthday is the twenty-ninth of November and next year I will be fifty-one and I want people to DO something about it.”

  The fortieth. The fiftieth. And the sixtieth? It’s still almost a decade off. It’s not up to me to think about it. Or where I may be.

  7

  The title of a book is as important as one’s right and proper signature on a check. A book may have a Library of Congress number, as a check may have that cybernetic salad, but a book, like Emily Brontë, like you, like me, must have its own name. Some books get born with names: The Arm of the Starfish. The Young Unicorns. We had to search for the proper name for A Wrinkle in Time, and it was my mother who came up with it, during a night of insomnia. I went into her room with a cup of coffee in the morning, and she said, “I think I have a title for your book, and it’s right out of the text: A Wrinkle in Time.” Of course! It’s perfect.

  But what to call this book? It’s gone through a number of names, some proposed by me, some by friends. The final title was brought up by Bob Giroux, right out of the text. But before he came on it, there were several other names which we considered. The Burning Bush. Not bad. In a sense it’s what the book is about. But it sounds too philosophical, and as though I were about to come up with answers to unanswerable questions. No; it’s out.

  The full first draft of the book was written during a Crosswicks summer. Crosswicks means where the two roads meet. What about that as a title? Hugh and I rather liked it. F S & G didn’t.

  Then Hugh suggested, also out of the text, On the One Hand. That, too, was vetoed.

  Tallis, sitting in the Crosswicks living room, resplendent in his kilt, proposed Word, Words, and the Word. Yes, that’s a fine title, but it seems too big, too grand, for this book which is essentially small and personal: a letter.

  My Letter from Crosswicks. (That’s how I think of it.)

  A letter to the world? In a sense, yes. But that’s still too big, too general. And this, like all letters, is particular.

  To whom, then, is it addressed?

  It is first and foremost a letter to Hugh, my husband who has put up with me for almost twenty-five years. And then it’s a letter to all the librarians, teachers, students, who have been so warm and generous and giving with me during these past few years as I’ve traveled about the country on speaking and teaching jaunts. And it’s to Clare Costello and Liz Nichols and Martha King, who asked me to write it, Clare and Liz several years ago; Martha, just this past July at O.S.U. To them all I replied, brushing it off, “It’s a lovely idea, but not for me. I’m a storyteller. I have a hard enough time writing a twenty-minute lecture, much less a whole book of non-fiction.”

  But I hadn’t been home from O.S.U. for more than a few days when the book woke me up in the middle of the night, clamoring to be written. As usual, I had no choice.

  And it is also a letter of love to my mother and my children and the friends of my right hand, like Tallis, those who have made me know who I am, who have taught me the meaning of ontology, who, like my husband, bear with me, pick me up when I fall down, literally and figuratively, for I frequently do both; who shove me back into a sense of proportion and a sense of humor.

  My dears: here: to you.

  8

  Once, when I was very unhappy, Hugh and I had to go to a large cocktail party. There was nothing I wanted to do less than get dressed up and have to radiate charm to swarms of people. But we went, and I tried. There was a woman at the party who very quickly had too much to drink because she was lost; she had been widowed; she had not been able to find a new life which was valuable, or in which she felt she had any value. She talked to me and cried into her drink and suddenly she said, “You’re a very happy person, aren’t you?”

  I had, at that point, legitimate reason to be miserable. But her question stopped me in my tracks. I looked at her in surprise and gratitude and said, “Yes. I am.”

  This was ten years ago. But the answer is still the same. The better word, of course, is joy, because it doesn’t have anything to do with pain, physical or spiritual. I have been wholly in joy when I have been in pain—childbirth is the obvious example. Joy is what has made the pain bearable and, in the end, creative rather than destructive.

  To be fifty-one in the world of today and to be able to say, “I am a happy person,” may seem irresponsible. But it is not. It is what keeps me capable of making a response. I do not understand it, or need to.

  Meanwhile, I am grateful.

  And the unknown woman who gave me the revelation is one of the people to whom I am writing this letter.

  9

  Like all love letters, it is personal; there isn’t any other way for me to write it. Just as I realized, that first morning at O.S.U. that I was standing in front of a group of people all of whom were experts in the field in which I was supposed to lecture to them, and my only hope was not to try to be an expert but to offer them myself and all that writing has taught me in the past half century, so my only hope in this book is to do the same thing.

  In thinking about my reservations I fall over a kind of false humility which is really only pride. My job is to write the book. That is all. Nothing else.

  But pride comes in. Tallis asked me, about a book I had just finished, “How is it?” “I don’t know. I never know.” I never do know. He pushed me, “But what do you really think of it?” “I think it’s good.” And this was true, too. If something deep within even the most tentative and minor of artists didn’t think his work was good, he would stop, forever.

  H. A. Williams (and what an extraordinary world this is: we met and became friends long after I had copied down these words which he wrote while he was at Trinity College in Cambridge) says: “Because the Holy Spirit is within us, because He can be known only subjectively, only, that is, by means of what I am, we shall never feel absolutely certain that it is in fact the Spirit who is working. This is the price that has to be paid for inspiration of every kind. Is it all nonsense after all? I suppose that’s why an artist or writer is so sensitive about the reception of his work. If the critics tear it to pieces, they echo his own inevitable doubts of his validity.” Yes.

  My husband is my most ruthless critic. Tallis runs him a close second. Sometimes he will say, “It’s been said better before.” Of course. It’s all been said better before. If I thought I had to say it better than anybody else, I’d never start. Better or worse is immaterial. The thing is that it has to be said; by me; ontologically. We each have to say it, to say it our own way. Not of our own will, but as it comes out through us. Good or bad, great or little: that isn’t what human creation is about. It is that we have to try; to put it down in pigment, or words, or musical notations, or we die.

  While I was at Smith, Mary Ellen Chase gave a morning talk to the entire college in John M. Greene Hall. What I remember of this particular talk is that she said that literature could be divided into three categories: “Majah, minah, and mediocah.” Majah, minah, and mediocah became passwords on campus. I’m sure that all of us who were young and arrogant could not bear the idea that we would ever be either minah or mediocah. When I am thinking straight I know that it is not important. I don’t always think straight. There is still in me the childish child who wants to “show” all the teachers, editors, good housewives, or the socially graceful, that I can—as the jargon goes—compete.

  Yesterday while I was down by the brook I read the following lines from the fourth chapter of Ecclesiasticus, or the Book of Wisdom, and it could not have been better timed, because I had been feeling deprecatory about my words; I had, in a sense, already been protecting myself against any rejection later on, protecting myself by that destructive false humility. These words took me by the scruff of the neck and threw me back into better perspective:

  … do not be over-modest in your own cause,

>   for there is a modesty that leads to sin,

  as well as a modesty that brings honour and favour.

  Do not be untrue to yourself in deference to another,

  or so diffident that you fail in your duty …

  for wisdom shows itself by speech

  and a man’s education must find expression in words.…

  Do not let yourself be a doormat to a fool

  or curry favour with the powerful.

  Fight to the death for truth,

  and the Lord God will fight on your side.

  Majah, minah, mediocah: it is not my problem.

  10

  But what about that self-image?

  We talked, this July in Columbus, about how you can be walking down the street and you will catch a glimpse of yourself reflected in a store window and think: who is that? Oh, no, it’s not!

  But it is.

  We really don’t know what we look like. We are moderately careful to spend a certain amount of time in front of the mirror; we choose the mirror before which we comb our hair, shave, or put on lipstick or eyeshadow, with a good deal or attention. We don’t use a distorted mirror, or ones like those in the fun houses at fairs and carnivals. The bathroom mirror tells us a certain amount about our outside selves.

  But the inner, essential self?

  I don’t know what I’m like. I get glimpses of myself in other people’s eyes. I try to be careful whom I use as a mirror: my husband; my children; my mother; the friends of my right hand. If I do something which disappoints them I can easily read it in their response. They mirror their pleasure or approval, too.

  But we aren’t always careful of our mirrors. I’m not. I made the mistake of thinking that I “ought” not to write because I wasn’t making money, and therefore in the eyes of many people around me I had no business to spend hours every day at the typewriter. I felt a failure not only because my books weren’t being published but because I couldn’t emulate our neighboring New England housewives. I was looking in the wrong mirrors. I still do, and far too often. I catch myself at it, but usually afterwards. If I have not consciously thought, “What will the neighbors think?” I’ve acted as though I had.

  I’ve looked for an image in someone else’s mirror, and so have avoided seeing myself.

  We did manage, that morning in Columbus, to delete the word image. “All right,” Yetta said, “I think I understand. But I still think we need to give the child a self.”

  But when I was getting ready for bed that night it occurred to me that no teacher can hope to give the child a self unless the teacher knows what a self is, unless the teacher is a self. Here we are, living in a world of “identity crises,” and most of us have no idea what an identity is.

  Half the problem is that an identity is something which must be understood intuitively, rather than in terms of provable fact. An infinite question is often destroyed by finite answers. To define everything is to annihilate much that gives us laughter and joy. I found that I could think about this strange thing, the self, only in terms of the characters in the novel I was writing, or in terms of other people, never of myself. If I try self-consciously to become a person, I will never be one. The most real people, those who are able to forget their selfish selves, who have true compassion, are usually the most distinct individuals. But that comes second. Personhood comes first, and our civilization tempts, if not teaches, us to reverse the process.

  As usual, we bump into paradox and contradiction.

  The people I know who are the most concerned about their individuality, who probe constantly into motives, who are always turned inwards towards their own reactions, usually become less and less individual, less and less spontaneous, more and more afraid of the consequences of giving themselves away. They are perhaps more consistent than the rest of us, but also less real.

  When Alan first started reading his thesis to me, he was concerned that Herbert Kelly, about whom he was writing, came out as a contradictory character. But Kelly was contradictory, and I said, “Why shouldn’t he be? The deeper and richer a personality is, the more full it is of paradox and contradiction. It’s only a shallow character who offers us no problems of contrast.” A perfect person would be inhuman. I like the fact that in ancient Chinese art the great painters always included a deliberate flaw in their work: human creation is never perfect.

  We find the same thing in literature. The truly great books are flawed: The Brothers Karamazov is unwieldy in structure; a present-day editor would probably want to cut the Grand Inquisitor scene because it isn’t necessary to the plot. For me, The Brothers Karamazov is one of the greatest novels ever written, and this is perhaps because of, rather than in spite of, its human faults. Hamlet is usually considered Shakespeare’s finest play, and yet nobody has ever satisfactorily, once and for all, been able to analyze or pin down Hamlet’s character.

  When I start a new seminar I tell my students that I will undoubtedly contradict myself, and that I will mean both things. But an acceptance of contradiction is no excuse for fuzzy thinking. We do have to use our minds as far as they will take us, yet acknowledging that they cannot take us all the way.

  We can give a child a self-image. But is this a good idea? Hitler did a devastating job at that kind of thing. So does Chairman Mao. To settle for this because we can’t give a child a self is manipulation, coercion, and ultimately the coward’s way out.

  I haven’t defined a self, nor do I want to. A self is not something static, tied up in a pretty parcel and handed to the child, finished and complete. A self is always becoming. Being does mean becoming, but we run so fast that it is only when we seem to stop—as sitting on the rock at the brook—that we are aware of our own isness, of being. But certainly this is not static, for this awareness of being is always a way of moving from the selfish self—the self-image—and towards the real.

  Who am I, then? Who are you?

  11

  I first became aware of myself as self, as Pascal’s reed (“Man is only a reed, the feeblest reed in nature; but he is a thinking reed”), when I was seven or eight years old. We lived in an apartment on East 82nd Street in New York. My bedroom window looked out on the court, and I could see into the apartments across the way. One evening when I was looking out I saw a woman undressing by her open window. She took off her dress, stretched, stood there in her slip, not moving, not doing anything, just standing there, being.

  And that was my moment of awareness (of ontology?): that woman across the court who did not know me, and whom I did not know, was a person. She had thoughts of her own. She was. Our lives would never touch. I would never know her name. And yet it was she who revealed to me my first glimpse of personhood.

  When I woke up in the morning the wonder of that revelation was still with me. There was a woman across the court, and she had dreams and inner conversations which were just as real as mine and which did not include me. But she was there, she was real, and so, therefore, was everybody else in the world. And so, therefore, was I.

  I got out of bed and stood in front of the mirror and for the first time looked at myself consciously. I, too, was real, standing there thin and gawky in a white nightgown. I did more than exist. I was.

  That afternoon when I went to the park I looked at everybody I passed on the street, full of the wonder of their realness.

  12

  I could share this experience with my friends in Ohio, although I still could not tell them how to give a child a self, or what a self is. And I had another experience to share with them, one which helps me to get a glimpse of the burning bush out of the corner of my eye.

  We hadn’t spent more than one winter at Crosswicks when I found myself the choir director in the village church. I had no qualifications as choir director beyond a passionate love of music, and I knew nothing about church music; in fact, since the crisis in faith (more jargon) that so often comes during college, I had seldom darkened the doors of a church when a service was going on. Neither had my hus
band.

  But when our children were born, two things happened simultaneously. We cleaned up our language; we had been careless about four-letter words—I’d been rather proud of those I’d picked up from stage hands; we no longer used them indiscriminately. And we discovered that we did not want our children to grow up in a world which was centered on man to the exclusion of God. We did know that bedtime prayers were not enough and that it made no sense whatsoever to send the children to Sunday School unless we went to church ourselves. The inconsistency of parents who use the church as a free babysitting service on Sunday mornings, while they stay home and read the Sunday papers, did not have to be pointed out to us. I found myself earnestly explaining to the young minister that I did not believe in God, “but I’ve discovered that I can’t live as though I didn’t believe in him. As long as I don’t need to say any more than that I try to live as though I believe in God, I would very much like to come to church—if you’ll let me.”

  So I became the choir director. Grandma was the organist and she had been the organist since she started playing for Sunday School when she was eleven years old, and she was, when we first knew her, up in her eighties. She had had a large family, and in all those years had missed only two Sundays. Hugh and I visualized Grandma rushing through the last hymn just in time to go have her baby so she could be back in church the following Sunday.

  Grandma and I loved each other. She had been distressed because the church had been for so long without a choir, and would bring in occasional soloists. But the standard of music was low, what I called “Blood of the lamb-y.” When I was asked to get together a group of people in the village who might like to sing on a few Sundays during the year, I replied, “No, but I’ll start a choir, if you like. And we’ll sing every Sunday. Summer, too. God doesn’t take the summer off, and if we have a choir, neither will we.” I might not believe in God, but I knew that much about him.