Heart of flesh, heart of stone

[pegkerr]

After having a dozen odd short stories and two novels published, I almost accidentally pinpointed what my fiction is about when I sat down for the very first brainstorming session on my third novel, the ice palace novel I’m sorta kinda working on now. If you remember, I traced it back to the end essay of pameladean’s book Tam Lin, where she said that book was about choosing between heart of flesh and the heart of stone that the world wants to put in. As I’ve been thinking about it more ever since I wrote that entry, I’ve realized that the stories I’ve loved the most (the ones I’ve read as well as the ones I’ve written) have always been about that.

Yesterday, I pointed to an entry about an encounter at a coffeeshop, which magdalene1 suggested could be the birth of a new love. I haven’t read all the comments that entry generated, but Rob did, and he pointed out the parody that awatson did.

I couldn’t find a more elegant contrast between a heart of flesh and a heart of stone if I tried.

The very first short story I had published was a story about a young woman who works in a munitions factory goes to visit for a day her grandmother who lives in a deserted, bombed-out city. The grandmother at the end of the story gave the younger woman her two precious teacups, all that she had left of the bygone day before the war came. I realize now that right back there at the very beginning of my career, I was preoccupied with this same theme without even knowing it. Amy Thomas (author of Virtual Girl) reviewed it, and I imagine she has no idea how much her more or less approving assessment still stings a bit, even years later. She called it "schmaltzy, but moving."

That critique, of course, was in a way a put down, and I knew it. It stung because the world doesn’t value schmaltzy (Etymology: Yiddish shmalts, literally, rendered fat, from Middle High German smalz; akin to Old High German smelzan to melt -- 1 : sentimental or florid music or art 2 : SENTIMENTALITY). pameladean was absolutely right: the world doesn't value the heart of flesh, and always seeks to replace it with the heart of stone. Look at awatson’s last paragraph: I don't know the poster of the original, and I've got nothing against them. I'm glad they see the world the way they do, and honestly, I hope their version comes true. I'd be lying if I said that I didn't feel briefly warmed and uplifted by their account, but then my natural bitterness got the better of me.

magdalene1 saw the couple and viewed them one way: He’s tall, with brown hair and thick glasses with black frames. She’s short and curvy, with thick curly brown hair. awatson took the very same description and saw it with different eyes, with a jeering dismissive undertone: He's lanky, with slightly greasy brown hair and thick glasses with dated looking frames. She's short and fat, with frizzy brown hair. awatson is seeing them with the bitter glass that the demons hold that W.B. Yeats talks about in "The Two Trees." (See the essay at the end of that link).

Is the romantic love that magdalene1 thought she witnessed at that coffeeshop a myth? In the great conversation between Tolkien and Lewis that led to Lewis’s conversion to Christianity, Lewis said that the story of beautiful story of Christ dying to redeem the world was a myth, and myths were merely lies, though lies "breathed in silver."

No, they are not, Tolkien replied. They are truth.

Of course romantic love is a myth. But in that myth is a truth that can comfort you when you are alone and discover that you need not be alone because someone loves you. It can keep you warm at night, it can save your life from despair, though the world will always jeer and mock and predict that everything will end up horribly. We live in a cynical age, but I’m going to continue to resist that cynicism.

Let the world sneer. I’m going to continue trying to nurture my heart of flesh and resist the heart of stone.

Edited to add: Oh dear, oh dear. I see that I've set off somewhat of a comment kerfluffle. I've been thinking about this all day and marshalling my thoughts. I have to leave work now. Rather than replying to comments on this entry piecemeal, I'll do a new entry when I get home, and perhaps this time I'll explain myself a bit more clearly.

Comments

[ex-greythist387.livejournal.com]

I find this contrast very interesting. (Am disinclined to be sentimental--so I'm told, repeatedly, as a criticism.) Certainly, the heart of stone is useful, but utility cannot sum up the whole of what's needed, and in that I think you're absolutely right.

[wintersweet.livejournal.com]

After reading Eri Izawa's article on The Romantic, Passionate Japanese in Anime, I realized that sentimentality and romanticism is really what draws me to the manga and anime that I like, and so I put "sentimentalromantic" in my LJ info. I'm not sure why we denigrate romanticism and sentimentalism in our modern world so much, except maybe that it gives us hope that things can be good and can be better, and that's a dangerous thought--it encourages you to follow your dreams.

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

What's worse is that faith is somehow untrendy these days.

I'm a pretty deeply cynical person. I believe that the difference between pessimism and optimism is that a pessimist can always be pleasantly surprised, and can also still be rudely awakened.

But I have to feel a certain amount of pity for somebody who doesn't even want to admit of the possibility of hope.

Still, it's a great lesson on unreliable narrators.

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

I don't believe that there are hearts of flesh and hearts of stone. I think that there are simply people with different needs.

You say of the myth-as-truth of romantic love, "It can keep you warm at night, it can save your life from despair, though the world will always jeer and mock and predict that everything will end up horribly." It can also make you cold 24-7 because you don't have it and fear you never will, it can kill you with the despair that causes, while the world jeers and mocks you because you are alone and clearly not worthy of that wonderful romantic love that others seem to find.

There are people who need to believe that the world holds wonderful things that will be theirs if they just keep believing, and people who need to believe that the world holds terrible things, and any day that doesn't bring those terrible things is another step toward the inevitable. And every variation in between. My own viewpoint is along the lines that the world holds terrible things, and any day that doesn't bring those terrible things is a gift.

I think that to say some have hearts of flesh and others hearts of stone is . . . well, just wrong, in every sense of the word.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

That may be part of it, but I think it's also that hearts of flesh can be wounded. They are vulnerable. This is why we have bone armor around them. But the bone armor is not solid; we don't have carapaces. We should learn from that.

Have you noticed that some people in our culture have an entirely engineering approach to emotion? The purpose of offering comfort to the hurt and bereft is to fix it. And yes, sometimes it is, but often it isn't. Often we need to just be with someone who is hurting and let them hurt and be with them. Our culture doesn't value that at all. If it can't be cured, let's not talk about it. We ignore our old people because they can't be mended and we don't know what else to do than mend things. We only know one way of making things better, as a culture. Individuals sometimes manage to get it right, to be a shoulder to cry on or a hand to hold without always having to be a toolbox as well. But as a culture we're pretty bankrupt in that regard.

Hearts of flesh will be wounded. If you know someone's dreams, you know how to hurt them. If I was magdalene1, I would be hurt and upset that someone took something beautiful I'd done and made it into ugly nastiness -- and not even with the excuse that they were making the point that people should be careful about their attitudes, but just because they couldn't let it stand and be beautiful. She wouldn't have had that if she hadn't let her sentimental and romantic side out.

I'm very, very glad she did, and I don't think a single word awatson could say can affect the original.

[wintersweet.livejournal.com]

That's an excellent point (goes along with our treatment of mental illness, etc., too).

[mizkit.livejournal.com]

I didn't read the parody because I don't like them generally and I was pretty sure it'd be hurtful, if not actively hateful. I'm glad I didn't.

I think I would like very much to read your first published short story. Is there anywhere I could find it?

[neonnurse.livejournal.com]

It sounds to me like you feel attacked by this metaphor. The stone/flesh comparison implies a person can CHOOSE which state to encourage within themselves, but a person's innate NEEDS are less malleable, yes?

It seems to me that some needs ARE changeable. I'm thinking of Maslow's pyramid here--can't do anything to alter our needs for air, water, food, etc. But as you move up the pyramid, where our need for love, acceptance, and such are listed, well, I think we can make choices in our lives that help us get those needs met. Also note Erickson's tasks to be accomplished at each stage of life. Not "learning" the task of an early stage makes it harder to manage the later ones successfully, but it can be done.

It's not just keeping on believing, but keeping on TRYING that makes a difference.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Scanning comments at the parody site, I'm struck by people's certainty that the ugly version is "more real," "what really happens." In a weird way, they seem to take comfort in assurances that there's nothing in the world but shit.

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

It sounds to me like you feel attacked by this metaphor. The stone/flesh comparison implies a person can CHOOSE which state to encourage within themselves, but a person's innate NEEDS are less malleable, yes?

It seems to me that some needs ARE changeable. . . .

It's not just keeping on believing, but keeping on TRYING that makes a difference.

You appear to be saying that one state, one outlook on life, is intrinsically superior to the other. That's what I read pegkerr as saying, as well. I simply disagree.

Extremes

[pameladean]

I am a little hesitant to weigh in here. Possibly I am being self-important, but I want to emphasize that the metaphor is just as much yours as it is mine; it's not really mine at all anyway, since it's in some versions of the ballad.

As for the issue at hand:

I don't think the parody works at all. It has a rote quality, and it's relentlessly one-note. But I was not completely won over by the original post, either. Mind you, it made me cry, but I kept thinking, oh, but wait, no, oh dear, that is so, so, so standard. If I listed, insofar as it's possible to do so, what bothered me about the original entry, I'd just get accused of being PC, and I haven't got the energy. And of course, the person seeing the scene and concocting a possible future for two strangers has every right to see it exactly as seems right. It's a very individual kind of reaction, and if I had to choose between the original and the parody I'd take the original every time, because of its generosity.

But the original bothered me just the same. I might, before reading this comment thread, have dismissed it as sentimental, but the real problem with it, and perhaps what at least some people object to in sentimentality, is that in my opinion, it's insufficiently quirky. I kept falling over imagery and situations and thinking that they felt cliched, or, just as much, the emotional color of the account felt cliched. It's not sentiment that I mind in itself, but its tendency to put situations into pre-existing boxes. The parody does this too, but there one can't be sure if this is a quality of the writer or a reaction of the writer to the original. Sentiment is prone to stereotyping.

Of course one can err in the other direction and strive for meaningless orginality or quirkiness. But whenever I read anything that my intellect tags as sentimental or schmaltzy, if I bother to get to the bottom of the feeling, there's always that sense that sentimentality claps a vast array of individual experience into far too few boxes. When I said "standard" above, I didn't mean "too much like ordinary people rather than like fascinating extra-special people." I haven't found so-called ordinary people, by which I can't really mean anything other than "people whom I encounter at random rather than by choice" to be all that ordinary. If you try to have a conversation with somebody on a bus, you may be driven mad by the completely predictable quality of their expressed opinions; but if you hear about their actual lives, there's nothing predictable about them at all. I'm wandering; sorry. But when I say "standard," that's a quality of thought, of the color given to the scene by the writer, not something I think is actually in random people.

I think, in short, that the future of those two people is stranger and more individual than what the original writer imagined, and if sentimentality is to blame for anything, it is for exactly this, for restricting imagination to a series of arbitrary and far-too-small boxes.

I also think the original writer should be extremely proud of that piece. But it didn't quite sit quite right with me, and I hope I have articulated why.

Pamela

Re: Extremes

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

I think you have articulated it brilliantly. You tapped into something that bothered me about it, too, and I didn't realize it: the writer is wishing onto perfect strangers what is apparently her own vision of a perfect romantic relationship. It's one thing to write a story about characters who have such; it's another to imagine that it would be perfect for real people whom one doesn't even know. The latter smacks of "everyone is like me" or "I know what's best for everyone."

Would it surprise the writer of the original story, I wonder, to know that some people contemplating such a relationship would say, "Eeeewwwwww" (you know the sound--"icky poo")?

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

I don't think they're saying "there's nothing in the world but shit" (emphasis mine). I think they're saying that less perfect relationships, even relationships that some might label "dysfunctional," are far more common than the perfect romantic original version. Are they not, in your world? They certainly are in mine.

If it makes some people happy or hopeful to believe that such perfect romantic relationships exist, great. It makes some people sad and despairing to believe it, because they have never had anything close to it themselves and they don't see any possibility of it in their future. Call the former "people with hearts of flesh" and the second "people with hearts of stone" if it pleases you; I call them both simply "human."

Maybe relevant, maybe not

[amandageist.livejournal.com]

I wrote this a year or so ago; I don't know why it struck echoes so that I went back and found it after reading your entry. I still don't; but I post the link here in case you find resonances too.

Maybe it's being aware of your perceptions, and of how you choose to interpret them.

http://www.livejournal.com/users/amandageist/5277.html

~Amanda

Re: Extremes

[heinous_bitca.livejournal.com]

She commented on awatson's version, so I don't think she'd be surprised. Even she recognized the schmaltz in her original story.

Re: Extremes

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

Yes, but I'm not talking about the way she writes, I'm talking about the relationship she describes. She was envisioning for strangers a kind of relationship that not everyone wants.

[snippy]

would be hurt and upset that someone took something beautiful I'd done and made it into ugly nastiness

Why? That's about them, not about her. It's narcissistic.

[snippy]

note Erickson's tasks to be accomplished at each stage of life.

Do you have a URL I could look at to learn about this?

Re: Maybe relevant, maybe not

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

Yes. Very well said. Life sucks, except when it doesn't. Life is wonderful, except when it isn't. Both are true. Some people live a better life for them by viewing it through one lens, some through the other. Some use both at once: I think I do. For myself, I find a richer life when I use binocular vision.

As for the kids, sooner than you will believe possible, they will be asking for the keys to the car, getting jobs, going off to college, moving to their own apartments. Today, it seems like those years will take forever; tomorrow, you'll wonder how they could have sped by so fast.

[neonnurse.livejournal.com]

Sure thing. Here's one that's reasonably compact but still gets the idea across, I think.

http://www.childdevelopmentinfo.com/development/erickson.shtml

Re: Extremes

[sdn.livejournal.com]

yes. you and pameladean are both right. i was touched by the original, but at the same time i thought, "wow, what a mess of cliches!" i mean, his graphic novels and her children's books? why do they have to move in and get engaged and married and have kids?

it's like the Ideal Romance for Hipsters or something. but it was sweet regardless.

[neonnurse.livejournal.com]

I guess if I DIDN'T think one outlook was superior, I wouldn't continue to choose it. :)

The thing is, calling something "wrong, in every sense of the word" rather strikes me as saying that pegkerr's idea is intrinsically *inferior*. Those words convey a much stronger feeling than simple disagreement....

[sdn.livejournal.com]

i wonder how old the parody writer is. i recall being very "cynical" and "bitter" when i was in my 20s. (and pretentious. not in quotes.) i have since reverted to my essential 11-year-old cheerfulness and optimism.

Good conversation...

[whumpdotcom.livejournal.com]

I like the conversation the two scenes spawned, modulo the "hear-hears" and "dittos", and found it useful for digging into my pre-dispositions.

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

I guess if I DIDN'T think one outlook was superior, I wouldn't continue to choose it.

Is it not possible, in your world, for two (or more) different outlooks to exist without one being superior and the other inferior? My outlook, or viewpoint, is the one that I judge to work best for me in a given situation, but I don't claim it as superior for any other person or any other purpose.

I do think that dividing people up into those who have hearts of flesh and those who have hearts of stone has the potential to be a dangerous view of the world. I think that it could lead lesser humans than pegkerr into some very bad behavior.