Burcu

Pennan fattades och boken bändes upp. Ryggen knakade, linjerna stirrade.

 

De oändliga linjerna gav sitt misstycke, de ville inte hjälpa, men heller inte förinta. Däri låg en slags likgiltighet som kunde slå ut även den mest frusna människa. För B innebar det en rädsla. En rädsla för skapandet som från den allra första dagen paralyserat den välformade handen. Gatorna kallade historierna till sig, de små ögonblicken blev genast föremål för det stora, men så fort det kom till att slå sig ned, och uttömma de impulser, de tankar som ständigt fick kämpa för sin överlevnad i denna tillvaro belamrad med meningslöshet, blev det stilla. Det inre upproret tystnade, vapnen lades ned; segerns vita flaggor rörde sig i långsamma bilder inför det vakande ögat. 

 

Varför?

 

B ville gärna förstå, att göra sig tillgänglig är sällan ett problem för den envise. Otillräckligheten? 

 

Traditionen är fylld av män. B är ett djur. Ett litet djur som finns sin trygghet i mörka vrår som skulle vända ut och in på en människa. 

Kvinnorna isidosatta. Sååå, låt oss skapa lite kvinnohistoria! B kände sig förskräckt. Frustrerad över att inte finna sin väg i en diskriminerande tradition. Som ett djur kände hon sig skyldig att peka ut de mänskliga bristerna, som sällan upptäcks inom den egna arten. 

Rummet blir genast så litet så litet. För det lilla djuret som endast finner sin ro i att tänka.

B inser att det krävs en smärre explosion för att vakna ur drömmarna om ett djur som skriver. Tassen kan inte fatta pennan, de vattniga ögonen torkar snabbt ut. Hur lever man med sin ena tass i drömmen, och den andra i mänsklighetens verklighet? Var finner man sig själv när det är omöjligt att omvandla det inre till det reella. 


Obegripligt. Vartenda ord blir ett nyförlöst barn, var avslutad mening ett skott mot huvudet. Ett övernaturligt skeende som tar sig i uttryck av ett barn som fumlar med en urholkad penna, dränerad på medvetande och lust. Däri ligger rädslan. Att försöka, och misslyckas. En rädsla som paralyserat så många kvinnor att vi lämnats med... ingenting. 

Att bli ett djur är en undanflykt, en möjlighet att dra sig undan rollen som "det andra". En flyktdörr, ett nödbrömshandtag, ett stort svart hål. Det är där en icke-man finner sin plats i dessa och alla dagar.

Det lilla djuret suckar nöjt. Tassen stryker de nitiska linjerna, huvudet, håret, benen, kroppen faller faller faller...

Drömmen är outgrundlig.

"November 9, 1938

Dear Frances:

I’ve read the story carefully and, Frances, I’m afraid the price for doing professional work is a good deal higher than you are prepared to pay at present. You’ve got to sell your heart, your strongest reactions, not the little minor things that only touch you lightly, the little experiences that you might tell at dinner. This is especially true when you begin to write, when you have not yet developed the tricks of interesting people on paper, when you have none of the technique which it takes time to learn. When, in short, you have only your emotions to sell.

This is the experience of all writers. It was necessary for Dickens to put into Oliver Twist the child’s passionate resentment at being abused and starved that had haunted his whole childhood. Ernest Hemingway’s first stories ‘In Our Time’ went right down to the bottom of all that he had ever felt and known. In ‘This Side of Paradise’ I wrote about a love affair that was still bleeding as fresh as the skin wound on a haemophile.

The amateur, seeing how the professional having learned all that he’ll ever learn about writing can take a trivial thing such as the most superficial reactions of three uncharacterized girls and make it witty and charming — the amateur thinks he or she can do the same. But the amateur can only realize his ability to transfer his emotions to another person by some such desperate and radical expedient as tearing your first tragic love story out of your heart and putting it on pages for people to see.

That, anyhow, is the price of admission. Whether you are prepared to pay it or, whether it coincides or conflicts with your attitude on what is ‘nice’ is something for you to decide. But literature, even light literature, will accept nothing less from the neophyte. It is one of those professions that wants the ‘works.’ You wouldn’t be interested in a soldier who was only a little brave.

In the light of this, it doesn’t seem worth while to analyze why this story isn’t saleable but I am too fond of you to kid you along about it, as one tends to do at my age. If you ever decide to tell your stories, no one would be more interested than,

Your old friend,

F. Scott Fitzgerald

P.S. I might say that the writing is smooth and agreeable and some of the pages very apt and charming. You have talent — which is the equivalent of a soldier having the right physical qualifications for entering West Point."

"Grove Park Inn
Asheville, N.C.
October 20, 1936

Dearest Scottina:

[…]

Don’t be a bit discouraged about your story not being tops. At the same time, I am not going to encourage you about it, because, after all, if you want to get into the big time, you have to have your own fences to jump and learn from experience. Nobody ever became a writer just by wanting to be one. If you have anything to say, anything you feel nobody has ever said before, you have got to feel it so desperately that you will find some way to say it that nobody has ever found before, so that the thing you have to say and the way of saying it blend as one matter—as indissolubly as if they were conceived together.

Let me preach again for one moment: I mean that what you have felt and thought will by itself invent a new style so that when people talk about style they are always a little astonished at the newness of it, because they think that is only style that they are talking about, when what they are talking about is the attempt to express a new idea with such force that it will have the originality of the thought. It is an awfully lonesome business, and as you know, I never wanted you to go into it, but if you are going into it at all I want you to go into it knowing the sort of things that took me years to learn.

[…]

Nothing any good isn’t hard, and you know you have never been brought up soft, or are you quitting on me suddenly? Darling, you know I love you, and I expect you to live up absolutely to what I laid out for you in the beginning.

Scott"