Noted and cherished
I haven't been able to sit down and write about Madeleine L'Engle's death because every time I think about it I start crying. I tried to tell my mom about it on the phone the other night and I could barely get the words out. It is bizarre. But I really can't think of another artist who has touched me more deeply or for longer. I read my favorite books of hers over and over, and they are always both familiar and new. I just re-read Many Waters recently, and I've been itching to re-read A Ring of Endless Light, but the pages are literally falling out and it's not an easy thing to do, practically speaking.
I don't remember when I first started reading her. I know my friend read her first. I remember trying to read A Wrinkle in Time in grade school because a boy in my class was reading it and I did not have the faintest clue what was going on and I put it down. It was so far over my head at that point. This was maybe like third or fourth grade if my memory of what classroom I remember reading him in serves me. Anyway, I can only guess that I first read it in 7th or 8th grade? Friends who were there, do you have any memory of this? I know I was deeply entrenched in the Murry books in early high school. And then came A Ring of Endless Light, which I could not possibly love more and which fully made me believe that if I called to the dolphins in the Gulf when we were on summer vacation, and even as a grown-up staring at any big blue sea, they would come. I chose A Swiftly Tilting Planet in an adolescent literature class as the book to present that I thought everyone should read. For my master's project, I gave my subject the pseudonym Meg. I called her school Murry Middle School. I gave the girl A Ring of Endless Light when it was all over because she helped me so much with my paper, and I wanted to help her in return by giving her Vicky Austin.
I don't even really know what to say. These books have moved me, shaped me, in many ways raised me. The characters are almost like real people to me. And Glimpses of Grace has provided solace to me more times than I can even count. I consider her one of the great writers and great women of our time. I am so deeply sad that she will never write anything again. But I am so immensely grateful that through her writing she will live on. Kids will be picking up A Wrinkle in Time forever. It will probably end up on the banned books list over and over again. I think it's so ridiculous for that book to be challenged by religious groups when Madeleine L'Engle, much like Anne Lamott in my mind, is one of the most inspiring Christians ever to walk on the earth. It is such a blatant case of people jumping to ban something because it has witches in it without possibly having read it. Ridiculous. I can't even get started on this topic because it makes me so damn mad. Madeleine L'Engle was so tough, though. She was so funny and sarcastic and brilliant and strong. I read once that an astronaut carried A Wrinkle in Time into space during a mission because it was reading the book as a child that sparked her interest in astrophysics before women were allowed to enter the space program. Is that not the most awesome thing you have ever heard? (In trying to look up the astronaut's name, I just came across this. I can't wait to listen to it.)
I love A Wrinkle in Time mostly because of the way Meg loves Charles Wallace, the treasure of her heart, so fiercely that she loves him back into being himself. I love A Wind in the Door mostly because of what Proginoskes does in the end and also because reading it made me think for the first time about how everyone and everything are connected and because thinking about them being inside the farandolae inside the mitochondria was largely why I ended up really enjoying high school biology. I love A Swiftly Tilting Planet - maybe my favorite of the three - because of the awesome mythology of Charles Wallace moving through history within other people. I love the names in that book, I love the rune, I love the story of Calvin's mom, I love the unicorn, I love the changing of the might-have-beens, I love the whole damn thing. I memorized the rune as a kid and it's still stuck in my brain the way things you memorize as a kid are. I love Many Waters because Sandy and Dennys were finally given something to do other than grow vegetables. I love A Ring of Endless Light so much that I can't even put it into words. I love Vicky's relationship with her grandfather. I love Adam Eddington. I love Basil and Norberta and Njord. And I've read so many of her other novels but I love those the best. Some of my favorite copies of her books that I've collected include A Wrinkle in Time in both hardcover and paperback with this cover and an ancient copy of And Both Were Young. I have whole shelves of her books, fiction and nonfiction, and I love them.
I loved her. She opened whole worlds and universes for me. She made my imagination come alive. I am having trouble articulating what her books mean to me, what she has always meant to me. So I will let Vicky Austin say it for me.
I don't remember when I first started reading her. I know my friend read her first. I remember trying to read A Wrinkle in Time in grade school because a boy in my class was reading it and I did not have the faintest clue what was going on and I put it down. It was so far over my head at that point. This was maybe like third or fourth grade if my memory of what classroom I remember reading him in serves me. Anyway, I can only guess that I first read it in 7th or 8th grade? Friends who were there, do you have any memory of this? I know I was deeply entrenched in the Murry books in early high school. And then came A Ring of Endless Light, which I could not possibly love more and which fully made me believe that if I called to the dolphins in the Gulf when we were on summer vacation, and even as a grown-up staring at any big blue sea, they would come. I chose A Swiftly Tilting Planet in an adolescent literature class as the book to present that I thought everyone should read. For my master's project, I gave my subject the pseudonym Meg. I called her school Murry Middle School. I gave the girl A Ring of Endless Light when it was all over because she helped me so much with my paper, and I wanted to help her in return by giving her Vicky Austin.
I don't even really know what to say. These books have moved me, shaped me, in many ways raised me. The characters are almost like real people to me. And Glimpses of Grace has provided solace to me more times than I can even count. I consider her one of the great writers and great women of our time. I am so deeply sad that she will never write anything again. But I am so immensely grateful that through her writing she will live on. Kids will be picking up A Wrinkle in Time forever. It will probably end up on the banned books list over and over again. I think it's so ridiculous for that book to be challenged by religious groups when Madeleine L'Engle, much like Anne Lamott in my mind, is one of the most inspiring Christians ever to walk on the earth. It is such a blatant case of people jumping to ban something because it has witches in it without possibly having read it. Ridiculous. I can't even get started on this topic because it makes me so damn mad. Madeleine L'Engle was so tough, though. She was so funny and sarcastic and brilliant and strong. I read once that an astronaut carried A Wrinkle in Time into space during a mission because it was reading the book as a child that sparked her interest in astrophysics before women were allowed to enter the space program. Is that not the most awesome thing you have ever heard? (In trying to look up the astronaut's name, I just came across this. I can't wait to listen to it.)
I love A Wrinkle in Time mostly because of the way Meg loves Charles Wallace, the treasure of her heart, so fiercely that she loves him back into being himself. I love A Wind in the Door mostly because of what Proginoskes does in the end and also because reading it made me think for the first time about how everyone and everything are connected and because thinking about them being inside the farandolae inside the mitochondria was largely why I ended up really enjoying high school biology. I love A Swiftly Tilting Planet - maybe my favorite of the three - because of the awesome mythology of Charles Wallace moving through history within other people. I love the names in that book, I love the rune, I love the story of Calvin's mom, I love the unicorn, I love the changing of the might-have-beens, I love the whole damn thing. I memorized the rune as a kid and it's still stuck in my brain the way things you memorize as a kid are. I love Many Waters because Sandy and Dennys were finally given something to do other than grow vegetables. I love A Ring of Endless Light so much that I can't even put it into words. I love Vicky's relationship with her grandfather. I love Adam Eddington. I love Basil and Norberta and Njord. And I've read so many of her other novels but I love those the best. Some of my favorite copies of her books that I've collected include A Wrinkle in Time in both hardcover and paperback with this cover and an ancient copy of And Both Were Young. I have whole shelves of her books, fiction and nonfiction, and I love them.
I loved her. She opened whole worlds and universes for me. She made my imagination come alive. I am having trouble articulating what her books mean to me, what she has always meant to me. So I will let Vicky Austin say it for me.
The earth will never be the same again.
Rock, water, tree, iron share this grief
As distant stars participate in pain.
A candle snuffed, a falling star or leaf,
A dolphin death, O this particular loss
Is Heaven-mourned; for if no angel cried,
If this small one was tossed away as dross,
The very galaxies then would have lied.
How shall we sing our love's song now
In this strange land where all are born to die?
Each tree and leaf and star show how
The universe is part of this one cry,
That every life is noted and cherished,
And nothing loved is ever lost or perished.
Rock, water, tree, iron share this grief
As distant stars participate in pain.
A candle snuffed, a falling star or leaf,
A dolphin death, O this particular loss
Is Heaven-mourned; for if no angel cried,
If this small one was tossed away as dross,
The very galaxies then would have lied.
How shall we sing our love's song now
In this strange land where all are born to die?
Each tree and leaf and star show how
The universe is part of this one cry,
That every life is noted and cherished,
And nothing loved is ever lost or perished.
posted by eliza @ 6:48 PM
8 Comments:
that poem is beautiful
I don't know why you said you can't articulate what her books meant to you -- you said it beautifully. I loved her too, and remember the Murray books particularly. My daughter's only 6, and I'm trying so hard to refrain from reading them to her, as they will be over her head, and a bit spoiled for her if she's introduced to them too soon. But it's hard, because I love the idea of my daughter enjoying them the way I did!
Eliza.. you are wonderful.
I haven't been able to get a spare moment to compose my thoughts yet... a house full of inlaws leaves no time to think. but here.. in her own words...
(I haven't read it without crying yet..)
perhaps after death
by madeleine l'engle
Perhaps
after death
the strange timelessness, matterlessness,
absolute differentness
of eternity
will be shot through
like a starry night
with islands of familiar and beautiful
joys.
For I should like
to spend a star
sitting beside Grandpa Bach
at the organ, learning, at last, to play
the C minor fugue as he, essentially,
heard it burst into creation;
and another star
of moor and mist, and through the shadows
the cold muzzle of the dog against my hand,
and walk with Emily. We would not need
to talk, or ever go back to the damp
of Haworth parsonage for tea;
I should like to eat a golden meal
with my brothers Gregory and Basil
and my sister Macrina. We would raise
our voices and laugh and be a little drunk
with love and joy;
I should like a theatre star
and Will yelling, "No! No! That's not
how I wrote it! But perhaps 'tis better
that way. 'To be or not to be.' All right,
then, let it stand!"
And I should like
another table
-- yes, Plato, please come, and you, too,
Socrates, for this is the essential table
of which all other tables are only
flickering shadows on the wall.
This is the heavenly banquet
(Oh come!)
the eternal convivium
the sky blazes with stars
And you, my friends? Will you come, too?
We cannot go alone.
Perhaps, then, star-dazzled,
we will understand that we have seen him
and all the stars will burst with glory
and we, too, in this ultimate explosion
of matter
and time
we will know what it is
to be
perhaps
Oh, A Ring Of Endless Light. And I had almost-but-not-quite forgotten And Both Were Young.
I've still got my old seventies' copies of the trilogy. I miss them.
I am glad you found the words. This was a beautiful tribute!
Tonight my daughter (15 months) picked A Wrinkle In Time off the bookshelf and brought it to me. How did she know? I think I'll take her hint and re-read it now. Even though, like you, A Swiftly Tilting Planet is my favorite of the three (four? Do you count Many Waters?)
Such a beautiful entry. Thank you for writing that, Eliza. Madeleine L'Engle's books were such touchstones to me throughout my youth. My daughter is almost 5 and getting close to reading, and I can't wait to introduce her to this world. Thanks for helping me remember why.
Oh, no... I've been away from the outside world on vacation and had no idea she'd died. I'm so sorry to hear this.
Before we were married, my husband and I read the series out loud to each other at bedtime. I knew he was the one...
I love the Vicky Austin bit at the end.
Post a Comment
<< Home