I have settled on the general direction of my ECA writing project (OU Advanced Creative Writing A363). Broadly speaking, I am interested in bringing together the ideas of 'death' and 'narrative'. I hope to consider stories that turn on the imminence of death or the presence of 'death in life'; also, those tales and enduring myths that seek to explore death's power and mystery. There will be those, no doubt, who will think me odd, if not actually perverse - we are living in an 'Icarus culture' that has scant regard for the dark - but I do I believe that, at this time, it is into the darkness that my soul wants to go; consequently, I find I have no option but to follow it. In any case, any lingering doubts that I may have felt have been dispelled by my recent reading of James Hillman's 'Suicide and the Soul' (Fifth Spring, 1978 ) in which - apart from much food for thought - I found the following quotation from 'Healing' by D.H. Lawrence:
I am not mechanism, an assembly of various sections,
And it is not because the mechanism is working wrongly that I am ill.
I am ill because of wounds to the soul, to the deep, emotional self
and the wounds to the soul take a long, long time, only time can help
and patience, and a certain difficult repentance
long, difficult repentance, realisation of life's mistake, and the freeing oneself
from the endless repetition of the mistake
which mankind at large has chosen to sanctify.'
From 'Healing' by D.H. Lawrence 'Selected Poems' (1916) Viking Press
which struck me as being so completely pertinent to my situation as to constitute a providential blessing. Please, if you can point me in the direction of a text you think I need to read, do not be shy about saying so. Help me 'build my ship of death'!
