Note by JRW : The following is taken from a letter, written by Myatt, and addressed to me. He dated it Just Beyond Mid-May.
Here, in the Sunshine
Here, in the sunshine at the beginning of another English Summer, I feel the learning that has seeped deep down inside me, borne as it has been by my manifold errors of experience. I have learnt, among other things, the value and importance of personal love - far too late to avoid hurting three women who, over the past decades, I loved, but who loved me, I now know, far more. How stupid was that? To place my dreams, my ideals - abstractions and forms - above human frailty, above human love, and above honour, grounded as genuine honour is in empathy, in seeking the cessation of suffering by honourable, reasonable means.
For Empathy is one of those other things, learnt, or rather re-discovered. For years I hid a part of myself away - or rather, controlled it, believing that ideals, that goals, that abstractions and forms and even dreams borne of such abstractions should come before human feeling, before the empathy I had always felt, before the compassion that had often moved me. How stupid was that?
So, there was and is a learning of the meaning, of the value, of the importance of empathy, compassion, reason and honour - and thus a deep knowing of suffering. Yes, let us not forget suffering, the suffering that we - Homo Hubris - inflict and have inflicted on ourselves, on other life, human and otherwise, and on Nature, whose fragile life clings to this planet which is our home. Do not let us forget suffering - as we should not forget the smallness that is best: the local dwelling, the home, in a warm life-bringing Sun, where close by is someone loved who returns such love. There is nothing complicated, here - no abstractions; no unchecked emotion; no destroying instinct or dishonourable passion; no desire to dominate and destroy. There is no Homo Hubris, the Noise-Maker, destroyer of that quiet quietude which is the only beginning of wisdom. No Homo Hubris, bringer of suffering and dishonourable war, bane of the the living-being which is Nature. No Homo Hubris, the inventive, the cunning, who toys with honour, for a while, only to reject it. No Homo Hubris, scourge upon the Earth, and yet who in place of the suffering has sometimes, infrequently, too little, produced some beautiful things, redolent of the divine, and who - once, still? - possessed so much promise...
Homo Hubris - who values, as once did I, the abstractions, the forms, above, beyond, the human frailties, the human dreams, above the humanity of love, sowing thus the suffering. There need not be the abstractions that have come to enslave us - no nations; no States; no politics; no governments, and no power beyond the individual, finite, pleasing human power to choose our own way, our own life, guided by honour, reason, empathy, compassion, love. For all abstractions in both their essence and their effects destroy The Numen - that Life that is beauty, calm, quietness, home to the myriad connexions that join us to the matrix, beyond.
Thus, here I sit - again - venturing forth to mould the flowing ink upon the paper of a book in a field warmed by this warming Sun of one more sublime hour of one more sublime day turning past another middle-May. Would that this small learning of mine might make some difference...
DW Myatt