Cynematik

“Nobody, I think, ought to read poetry, or look at pictures or statues, who cannot find a great deal more in them than the poet or artist has actually expressed. Their highest merit is suggestiveness.” — Hilda, in THE MARBLE FAUN by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Another screenwriter I know is always worrying that what she writes isn’t “important enough.” Since I’m working on projects with her, I guess that means I’m working on projects that may not be meaningful enough, either. The Bible and the Koran have already been written and Shakespeare was so prolific in the realm of dramatic storytelling, it seems like the whole important, meaningful thing has already been handled. Besides, if Nathaniel Hawthorne is correct, if we do it well, people always find more in our creative work than we originally intended anyway.

I find myself wondering if Hawthorne had any idea of the merit of his writing as he was doing it. Born on July 4, 1804, in Salem, Massachusetts, Nathaniel was the descendant of John Hathorne, one of the prosecutors of the Salem Witch Trials (in 1692 and 1693). Shortly after he graduated from college, Nathaniel added a “W” to his surname. (Why add the “W”? Was it for Witch? Or, perhaps, he just wanted to be different from his family? I’m sure the answer is somewhere but I haven’t found it definitively, yet.) Anyway, back to Hawthorne the writer. THE SCARLET LETTER was published in 1850, just four years before his death. I remember having to read Hawthorne in high school and college. His writing was so dated; it was staid as a Puritan’s collar, more stiff than a Puritan’s prosecutor’s righteousness. I had a difficult time getting through it, much less enjoying it. Now that I know he put historical figures into his work and that his ancestors arrived in Plymouth Colony in 1630, I have more of a commitment to revisit his novels.

A few years back, I went into an Antiquarian Bookstore and saw a FIRST EDITION of THE SCARLET LETTER. It was amazing to look at this book and know it had been printed more than a century and a half earlier. It had a leather cover, ornate and tooled. It had been read and treasured by readers for decades. I started to have a desire to own a first edition of an important work … and what I noticed was NOT that I wanted to own a work that was meaningful or important to the storekeeper or the contemporary literati. I wanted a work that was important and meaningful to me. I ended up getting a first edition “book” by Joyce Carol Oates. She probably doesn’t even remember it, this micro-book, a first edition short story (printed on a laser printer, put in a saddle-stitched printed cover and signed) but it meant the world to me.

So, every day, I just keep writing and hoping, at the end of the day, that someone, somewhere finds what we do to be meaningful and important to them, in their lives, at that moment in time. Even this blog is part of that desire to connect and create access to and for another. What else is there in this life?

“We sometimes congratulate ourselves at the moment of waking from a troubled dream; it may be so the moment after death.” — Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864).