[For Stormwind]

“If there is anything noble and good within me, it will express itself through my writings; if, however, these qualities are absent from my disposition I would strive in vain to represent the lofty and the beautiful, as the low and ignoble would always shine through”
Adalbert Stifter, Bunte Steine (Augsburg, Wilhelm Goldmann Verlag, 1983, p7).

In my innocence as a first-year undergraduate I had still not emerged from the self-absorption necessary for my escape, an introspection encouraged by the fellowship, which left no thought, no emotion unpoliced in the relentless battle against impurity. From the bay-windowed study of the flat I shared with my elderly landlady, society seemed little more than the jostling throng of shoppers littering the pavements of Princes Street. I had no concept of its workings, at most perceiving it as a giant, mystical self-regulating mechanism. The human world was divided into believers and unbelievers, the saved and the damned and my energies (when not directed towards the welfare of my own soul and avoiding any activity that might jeopardise my salvation) went into evangelism and prayer. My allegiance to the teachings instilled in me by the (male) elders about accepting the proper place God had allotted and the belief that we were in control of our own fates (and by extension that failure to improve oneself and one’s lot was exclusively attributable to the moral shortcomings or lack of effort on the part of each individual) had not yet begun to waver. External factors were a lazy excuse. I had a duty to prosper for the greater glory of God (and by enhancing my future earning power the church would be assured a better income through tithes, which presumably had a lot to do with its tolerance for a mere female procuring an education).

Of all the literature I consumed during that year, the passage that exerted a lasting appeal came from Adalbert Stifter’s preface to Bunte Steine, which set out his theory of the “gentle law” (das sanfte Gesetz):
“Since we are talking about the great and the small I would like to set out my views, which probably differ from those held by many others. The blowing of the wind, the trickling of the water, the growing of the crops, the surging of the sea, the greening of the earth, the gleaming of the skies, the shimmering of the stars are what I consider to be great; the splendid procession of the storm, the lightning, which splits houses apart, the gale that causes the breakers to surge, the fire-spewing mountain, the earthquake, which buries countries I consider to be no greater than the phenomena listed above, indeed I consider them smaller because they are only the effects of far higher laws. They occur in isolation and are the outcomes of one-sided causes. The force, which makes the milk in the poor woman’s small pot bubble up and boil over is the same one that forces the lava upwards in the fire-belching mountain and causes it to spill down over the mountain slopes. These phenomena are simply more eye-catching and they attract the gaze of the ignorant and the unobservant to a greater extent, whilst the intellectual efforts of the researcher prefer to settle on the entirety and the general, and are able to recognise greatness in these alone, because these alone preserve and sustain the world. The details pass by and their effects are barely discernable within a short time” (p8).

The truly awe-inspiring was to be found in the humblest and least spectacular, in the tiny, anonymous actions of kindness and nurturing whose cumulative (beneficial) effect is so taken for granted as to be invisible: “The lightning is only a small characteristic of this force; the force itself is, however, a great thing in nature. Since, however, science only proceeds one tiny grain at a time, since it only makes observation upon observation and can only piece together the general from the individual, and since, ultimately, the number of phenomena and the field of the given are boundless, God has rendered the joy and bliss of the researcher inexhaustible, we too in our workshops can only represent the individual, never the general, as that would constitute creation. So too has the history of what is deemed to be great in nature been subject to a perpetual transformation of views concerning what that greatness is thought to consist of. When humanity was in its infancy, its mind’s eye had not yet been touched by science and so the imagination was captured by the obvious and the striking and captivated into fear and admiration, but when the minds were opened, when the gaze began to focus on the wider context, the individual phenomena sank ever deeper and the law rose ever higher, the miraculous events waned, the sense of wonder grew.
As it is with nature on the outside, so it is in the inside, within human beings. An entire life full of fairness, simplicity, self-restraint, rationality, activity within one’s circle, admiration of beauty, linked to a tranquil, composed death I consider to be great. Wild fluctuations of temper, terrible fulminations of wrath, the lust for revenge, the inflamed spirit striving for action, which tears down, alters, destroys and in the heat of its agitation often throws its own life away I do not consider to be greater, but smaller as these things are no more than manifestations of isolated and one-sided forces, like storms, fire-spewing mountains and earthquakes. We seek to catch sight of the gentle law, which guides the human race. There are forces, which are aimed at nurturing the individual’s existence. They take everything and make use of it, which is essential for its existence and development. They ensure the existence of the individual and through the individual of all. If, however, someone absolutely has to grab everything his being needs for himself, if he ruins the conditions of existence of another’s, something higher within us becomes incensed, we help the weak and oppressed, we restore the previous conditions so that one person can exist alongside the other and can follow his human path, and when we have done so, we feel contented, we feel ourselves to be far more elevated and profound than we can ever feel ourselves to be as individuals. We feel ourselves to be all humanity. There are therefore forces, which work for the existence of humanity as a whole, which must not be allowed to be restricted by individual forces, indeed, which, on the contrary, have a limiting effect upon themselves. It is the law of these forces, the law of justice, the law of morals, the law that wishes everyone to be respected, honoured, and to live alongside others without danger so that he may pursue his higher human trajectory, that he may win the love and admiration of his neighbours, that he be guarded like a jewel, as every human being is a jewel for every other. This law is to be found wherever people live side by side, and it manifests itself whenever people work against each other. It may be found in the love of spouses for one another, in the love of parents for their children, children for their parents, in the love of brothers and sisters and friends for each other, in the sweet affection between the sexes, in the industriousness by which we are sustained, in the activity by which one works for one’s immediate circle, for those further afield and for humanity and finally in the order and contours, with which entire societies and states surround their existence and bring it to a conclusion” (pp8-10).

Once I had prised myself from the grip of delusion, absolved from the taint of my birth by my unapologetic sisters, attentive to the innumerable discriminations perpetrated against us, I embraced rebellion. How I loathed and despised the weary who retreated behind their net curtains, who flopped onto the sofa and allowed themselves to be stupefied by mindless entertainments, the fight drained out of them. Not for me the nicotine-stained fingers and tremble of withdrawal, but the gulping of excess down to its dregs, the worship of life lived as art (hence my pilgrimage to the cemetery in Paris to adorn the Irish poet’s grave with iris and rose). The miserable bourgeois, blinkered with their petty-mindedness, their matching pair of dull-eyed “wally dugs” on the mantelpiece, not a speck of dust in sight. Contempt nourished me. The calm, the settled, the predictable were anathema, constriction. Rather Sturm und Drang than recollection in tranquillity.

The rage has all but fizzled out, the pulse throbs less urgently. In the words of the Welshman, his cheeks flushed by finest Tuscan red: “It has its compensations”. The smell of furniture polish, the grandfather clock ticking in the hallway, the vase empty, a petal on the table, chips frying, my mother’s voice through the kitchen window, catching thistledown “fairy godmothers” and releasing them having whispered a wish, the moss clambering over the stone wall, the bark of the silver birch, plucking the cotton grass as we hopped from tussock to tussock.