It says suffering gives you clarity, strength and so many
other virtues. It says pain, loss and longings are all part of human lives,
like the inevitable death, like all the realities, like a shadow of happiness.
That there will be rough edge at the end of anything smooth and glowy, just
like there will be a silver line in every black sinking hole. The paradox is
universally understood. The paradox is universally accepted. But then when
every flesh and blood and lonely spirit shrinks into their own black holes,
there occurs the turbulence. The longing. The forbidden fire. In fire the
desire stutters and whines.
Who is the speaker in the poem? Who
is the character? Where does the plot leading to? What is the central theme
here? As I write these questions my own answer paper is empty. The protagonist
is uncertain. The author God is dead. In fact the author never lived. The story
is in first person here. The author is not omniscient. The author is in uncertainty.
Like many other authors. So who is the speaker in the poem? In the story? Who
is it? My existentialism and its crisis have led me to untrodden paths of self-doubt,
misery and the illusion of knowledge. There is nothing more dangerous than
being in an illusion. The more you are deceived the more you deny the truth.
But this author had only interpretations. Who wants the author's intentions and
interpretations? The experience of the reader has a different story.
The author's story is like a river.
There happen many people. Charming, intense, passionate, vibrant, who confesses
intimacy and great affection for the protagonist. The river flows unstoppably.
It zig zags along those huge boulders. There are sun, moon, the bent branches
along the banks, the peeping trees, umpteen pebbles, the rocks, the...the river
is jubilant as it touches all of it...It perpetually senses the beauty- It can
know the beauty- It becomes the beautiful. The river then slowly flows
away...its thin milky hue calmly making its way to the forlorn desolate sea.
The sea...the sea...the turbulent blue giant. The sea gulps it and dances it
away. The sea is neither the antagonist nor the life saviour...the sea is the
accepted vastness of silence and the roaring end. The sea is the ultimate paradox.
The sea knew all of it. Even in the beginning. It heaved and silently waited.
For that violet hour...
Woolf's lighthouse may see the
suffused river in the sea. May be Lily Briscoe would paint it. Only this time
the other way...turning her back on the summer house and looking towards the
sea...like the other artists. There is no Mrs. Ramsay left. Lily wanted her
painting to be like butterflies on cathedral arches. New airy thoughts on a
firm foundation. But this time Lily should paint the river in the sea. The
butterfly like river which flew/ flowed its whole way through those rocks, shattering
chiseling its head hundred times, carried away by the fire and the passion and
made its way to the blue blue pretty dark blue sea. Exhausted. The river is the
reconciled version of Sylvia- who once tried to drown herself and never wanted
to go back to the land...or may be the river carried Woolf herself along with
it…for the bliss of drowning herself with a pocket full of stones. How
wonderful it would be. Lily the character in her novel painting her own author
who had melted into the river. Who is the speaker? The speaker doesn’t
matter...the character is free to act. The reader has a different story to
tell... the reader has imagination to imagine. Perhaps even the death of the author.
The author God had only illusion of knowledge. The author is destined to die-
the author is both the deceiver and the deceived.
Someone has to die so that the rest of us should value life.
