The writer.

[MANICHAEAN]

THE WRITER.

PART 1:

Sigmund wept, and the large tears that were flattened against his cheeks, had their progress impeded by the wind that blew off the sea. His tongue tasted in equipoise of the salt of the elements and of his despair. He sat hunched alone at a cafe table outside of Dinard and what other few patrons there were, remained inside on this January day, coddling their drinks behind the large plate windows.

Out to sea, protruding rocks were assaulted by uneasy waves and white intermittent spray dispersed upwards from them into a bullet grey sky.

Moments of great inward despair seemed to come to this man every ten years or so and crept up, without form or without meaning, to privately reduce him in content and in spirit.

The promenade adjacent to the sea wall was empty but along the beach, absorbed in his transient progress between the changing frontier of sand and foam, a lone jogger ran.

Sigmund remembered what Nicole had told him of the promenade. It was where some walked, in the hope of finding a solution to an emotional void. She had explained how so many women in France were not married, and how the prospects of finding a mate, with warm human qualities and the material bonus of a steady job, were slim.

[MANICHAEAN]

PART 2:

As a young man Sigmund had experienced failure as a priest, not so much in his love of God, but in his additional love of women. Initial deep feelings had been resolutely held in restraint, but the later stern moral discipline of the seminary had still not sufficed to prepare his nature for the soft caress that lay outside. He had been unwittingly a lover of beauty, who had never met with it, and thus when it cast its spell, he knew instinctively he was unable to sustain a deficit of feeling.

She had visited him in private, a young girl whose heart was not in her own keeping. It had been summer in Nantes, and the priest’s house had been behind the church with spacious rooms and a high hall with beams stained red; a little closet in the southern part reached by a private stair. There came the sharing of the pillow and the bed, the time of perfect loyalty and deepest tenderness.

If a man has goodness in his heart, and his gaze and weaknesses have fallen upon the humble and insignificant, till the day of his death will he continue the affections of his life. Such too, was the sum of Sigmund’s hopes and fears, akin the dew that the wind had shaken from the tree, which still looks for kindness from the dust.

But in the case of Sigmund and the young girl, like that of Nature itself, whatever has perfect beauty is either itself liable to sudden transformations or else is the cause of them in others. And thus both felt the other had caused this loss of beauty in their beings, and they arrived at a state of shame in each other.

[jajdude]

Good stuff. More to come I reckon..

[MANICHAEAN]

Thanks jajdude.
Your wish shall be granted.
Regards
M.

[MANICHAEAN]

PART 3:

From being a failure as a priest, he became a failure as a womanizer, a role in which you might have thought he would excel. Initially Sigmund felt he was able to dip in and out with a facility that would bring no concern.

Women entered his life with red lips and dazzling teeth; fit sharers of play-time, so soft their flesh and delicate their bones. And he responded and was accepted well, for he was an extremely tall and very friendly, though a rather cadaverous man. There entered in succession; other ladies with laughter and sidelong glances; whose cheeks were fresh; ladies long of limb, small waists and necks as slender and white as crafted Limoge vases. Every action contrived to draw attention and stimulate on their part; black-tinted eyebrows, the fragrance of scent, the sleeve that loosely brushed the face upon passing.

There was a pull of Germanic paganism that made him relish this style of life, yet imperceptibly he realised there was also a remoteness, perhaps, even, a bit of caricature, in his treatment of them.

[sweety]

"There was a pull of Germanic paganism that made him relish this style of life" <-- I love this line M, can't wait for the rest.
S

[MANICHAEAN]

Sweety. I thought for a minute you were going to rebuke me for my poor Irish Catholic upbringing!

Best wishes
M.

[MANICHAEAN]

PART 4:

It was at this juncture that he began to write, initially for his own reflection process, and then on a more professional footing. Like returning steps home that still hesitate, he sought to establish through the immortality of writing, the basis for whatever time he had left.

Dostoyevsky he knew had sought purification through suffering, an indispensible article of his faith. Tolstoy, on the other hand, had sought the salvation of mankind in a return to the primitive life and primitive Christian religion. By definition, Sigmund’s case was the reverse of the latter, as he approached his writing from the other side of the secular/spiritual divide.

Sigmund commenced at first to write in his native German, because for him it represented one of the most poetic, euphonious and liberating languages of the world- not just in the sound, but in its very formulation, most significantly the word structure that demands a mixture of independent, off-the-leash creativity and thunderous literal-mindedness, captivating in itself. He realised also early on, that his off-piste attitude towards, and sometimes clunky coinage of, compound-nouns along with compulsive comma-usage, could be blamed on the many formative years he had spent immersed in German prose.

He dived back headlong into the German classics and accompanying reviews with critical and exegetical notes, prolegomena and copious indexes. A special favourite was Heinrich Heine, who so loosened the corsets of the German language that even callow youths were encouraged to fondle her breasts.

As he gradually broke loose from the circuit of women that he courted, he compensated himself in drink, but realised it was yet another prop he was obliged to dispense with. Too many times whiskey had warmed his tongue and the back of his throat, but it did not change his ideas any, and suddenly, looking at himself in the mirror behind a bar, he knew that drinking was never going to do any good to him now. Whatever he had now he had, and it was from now on, and if he drank himself unconscious when he woke up, it would be there.

He could indulge, but that which mattered was to maintain an active mind. Hell, he knew he was a good man once!

As his writing progressed, he was not afraid of losing himself in the larger flight of novels. Earlier endeavours had sustained within him an existence of jumpiness and apprehension. It was almost as if sitting on the edge of the chair of Literature that he had never taken off his overcoat. He had been constrained within the limitations of others’ conventions, and was unable to move on, to make mistakes in the process, but yet to strive.

[MANICHAEAN]

PART 5:

But he sat that day outside, with the storm brewing above, and he was afflicted in the unfairness of life. That one should live so long to experience and learn, and then to die.

A wayward rush of spray struck his face, startling him out of his torpor and reawakened the deadened senses. He realised then the deceptively simple complexity and the accompanying peace in writers, who accept that they cannot give easy answers to the question of what it is to be human. He felt he could go on; an independent spirit, breathing a broad humanity, an unstudied belief that proceeds not from an intellectual conviction that to understand all is to forgive all, but from an instinctive feeling that no person has the right to set themselves up as a judge over another. One can only observe and record.

Things are both; trivial than they ever were, and more important than they ever were, and the difference between the trivial and the important doesn’t matter.

Nicole approached him at his table from inside the cafe. She must have been worried and had left L’Isle Besnard to seek him out. She approached, wrapped up well in her long brown coat and shawl, her hair red tinted like the passion within her French soul, and she held him close like a child, out there on the terrace with the wind blowing in from the sea.

[paperastronaut]

I think the image of a lonely man projecting and gathering emotion on and from the weather and other people (like the jogger) is super great, it strikes a cord with me that rings as being deep and true.

Part 2 adds some interesting depth to part 1 that changed the way I imagined (in a good way) the scene the second time I read through it. 1st time through I related it with my own experience, 2nd time through I had a connection with the man, but was interested in his experience, it went from pulling memories to the surface to pushing my thoughts to curiosity. Part 2 also added some age to the whole story.

-Oliver

[drago]

As a young man Sigmund had experienced failure as a priest, not so much in his love of God, but in his additional love of women.

I loved this line. Truly.

I also love your writing style and enjoyed reading this. I also think you are a talented writer. But! I feel as if this has so much missing. Not quality of writing wise, but story wise. As if we never were able to tap into the naked mind of the character. Which I would love to do. Unless, of course, your intentions are not to show the character that intimately.

[MANICHAEAN]

PA / Sarah.
Bless you both.
M.