The Call of the Craft

[wheelieterp]

"There is an ecstasy that marks the summit of life, and beyond which life cannot rise. And such is the paradox of living, this ecstasy comes when one is most alive, and it comes as a complete forgetfulness that one is alive. This ecstasy, this forgetfulness of living, comes to the artist, caught up and out of himself in a sheet of flame; it comes to the soldier, war mad on a stricken field and refusing quarter; and it came to Buck, leading the pack, sounding the old wolf-cry, straining after the food that was alive and that fled swiftly before him in the moonlight. He was sounding the deeps of his nature, and the parts of his nature that were deeper than he, going back into the womb of Time. He was mastered by the sheer surging of life, the tidal wave of being, the perfect joy of each separate muscle, joint, and sinew in that it was everything that was not death, that it was aglow and rampant, expressing itself in movement, flying exultantly under the stars and over the face of dead matter that did not move.”

Yesterday, my birthday wish for a copy of The Call of the Wild came true in a box of books from wolfdaddi.

As I wrote earlier, reading this book when I was twelve or so introduced me to the sheer joy, the ecstasy that is the blessing of good writing. At twelve, I knew I held something special in the first short chapter of this short but epic book.

I had no idea.

I just finished reading it again, in the beautiful, small, and gilt-edged hardback edition that she sent me. On Wednesdays, I spend hours on the bus, as my schedule is weird and I am running back and forth between the campus and my apartment. Several times today, on that bus, I had to put the book down and choke back tears…not only because of the story, but for the craft of the writing itself.

I am left with a velvety and sweet melancholy; a bittersweet aftermath. Reading such as this is what should have the ecstatic description of le petite morte, because it is the time I spend in books like this that feels to me that I am so full of the wonder that is life, that I must be crossing over the threshold of the divine.

Comments

Ohhh!

[wolfdaddi.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you got the book, and that you were able to enjoy it once again!