Monday 18 November 2024
Since I have embraced the idea of writing a children’s book, I now understand that what my conscious mind dismissed as a silly impulsive “joke,” is what my unconscious mind insists I need to work on next. Numerous seasons of writing (and living with) my Katyn memoir have left both intellectual and emotional scars. And starting a children’s book project is of the utmost importance because doing so is a consequential pathway to self-healing.
Friedrich Nietzsche is correct when he warned us all: “if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.” I stared into several abysses while studying Herman Melville, and while writing my dissertation on his major works, I felt their uncomfortable presence. I didn’t realize or sense the harm I was experiencing while diving deeper in the abyssal waters. I convinced myself then that to arrive at a new understanding of Melville’s literary psychology, I needed to plunge into those fathomless depths which Melville himself also experienced psychological and existential injury.
I didn’t understand Nietzsche’s warning until I was nearly finished drafting the Katyn memoir (so many years after my Melville scholarly project), and perhaps this realization came way too late to offset the existential scarring.
I likely suppressed my unresolved grief over losing the twins to complete my Herman Melville dissertation. Moreover, the dissertation’s subject material… the theme of existential boredom… that I selected to write my dissertation (and later first published book) should have wearied me; it was grim stuff. Consciously, it didn’t. I probably didn’t notice the psychological toll I was ignoring. I suppressed the psychological effects of working on such a bleak topic that I was experiencing.
Overjoyed by making speedy progress of both finishing the dissertation and graduating with a Ph.D., I felt I didn’t have time to feel the looming emotions shadowing my every intellectual and physical step. I was young, too, and with that boyish enthusiasm, I propelled forward… mindlessly, perhaps even recklessly into the next dark project.
“What I’m writing is good stuff,” I convinced myself, “Why stop? Why change to themes less dark and depressing?” Unsatisfied with the remaining American literature writers left after I had completed my dissertation on Herman Melville, I quickly decided to work on war literature and genocide studies. New, even more dangerous abysses to stare into! And those abysses—their sheer dimensions are of the infinite size of the universe itself—stared right back, piercing, ripping right through me. Many times! And now, I couldn’t (and didn’t) ignore the consequences.
Watching college students cry and hold hands while I taught Tadeusz Borowski’s collection of short stories This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen and Elem Klimov’s film Come and See, I recognized that the abysses I was staring into now was fixing their gazes into my students. Since Fall 2016, I no longer teach either Borowski or Klimov. I can’t teach Primo Levi, either. So many other works, too. Even my war course students pleaded with me to teach a different, less imposing course theme… for my own mental health.
I devoted nearly two decades getting ready for Katyn and writing a book on it. Only during the revision stage of my Katyn manuscript (Summer 2024) did I arrive at the following painful insight: I hurt myself writing it. I first read Nietzsche’s warning over thirty years ago, but never understood it until July 2024. I was too cavalier about the philosopher’s admonition. While still alive, I’m not sure if Steve understood or recognized how deep I was in the abyss. Thank God for Ania, Ethan, Nicholas, King Arthur and his wife serving as life buoys when I was submerged in the deep waters during the final stages of the writing process for the Katyn book.
The problem with Nietzsche’s caveat is he doesn’t sufficiently offer an antidote or a life-preserver… whatever that might be. What could it be? Did he even know? Although he did warn me, I continued to stare. And when the abyss stared back, causing a nervous breakdown before a class I was to teach back in Fall 2016, I didn’t understand the consequences of how insidious the abyss is. Each abyss I gazed upon had its own ferocious and damaging but also unique nightmares and ordeals. And the smaller but no less harmful existential torments were adding up.
Well… I shouldn’t be too surprised by Nietzsche’s silence on the matter of rescues from the abyss; after all, Nietzsche did become mad, suffering several breakdowns. Certainly, his syphilis played an enormous role in becoming mad; however, I’m sure that while composing his philosophical works, he was drowning in those deep intellectual waters thus contributing to his mental decline. To paraphrase Ralph Waldo Emerson, with every gain, there is a loss. I gained much intellectually from my time diving in the abyss, but at what cost? The price was high.
Nonetheless, being an existentialist, I must also realize that finding and using rescues is ultimately my own responsibility. And one of those metaphorical lifelines was one that emerged from my own unconscious: the idea of a children’s book project.
This children’s book project is self-care. The idea of writing one is self-regulation. Preparing myself to draft it is self-therapy.
Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” is one of my most cherished and important stories from which I continue to learn. It always serves as a reminder that living in darkness, in that intellectual and literal abyssal cave, is deadly. For me, Plato’s allegory symbolizes not only education but self-growth. Go forth into the sunlight, and thrive! My Katyn book is in its own way my allegory of the cave. I have lived and worked in Katyn’s darkness, and now I embrace full-heartedly the life and work of a children’s book writer—a new journey in the sunlight.