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A Circle of Quiet, published in 1972, is my favorite of all of Madeleine L'Engle's books, and it is a hard choice among such riches. More than any of her other books, it focuses on the process of writing, and the power of the written word. And yet there is so much more to this indescribably rich journal. At almost any page, there is an opportunity for reflection. L'Engle's theology and cosmology weave throughout the entries, linking astrophysics and mythology, Einstein and Bach. Stepping into this circle of quiet sends the mind flying. Einstein's calling on the necessity for mystery in the scientist's life did not surprise me. I was rather more startled to discover Freud saying that the two groups of people who defy psychological knowledge are the artists and the saints. None of the rules of psychology hold for them. Thornton Wilder also classed artists and saints together in Our Town. After Emily dies she is allowed to come back to earth to relive a day, and she is torn apart by her awareness of all that she has always taken for granted. She asks the stage manager, "Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it? – every, every minute?" And he answers, "No. The saints and poets, maybe – they do, some." Tallis once told me that a great mathematician said, "Mathematics is the conscious setting aside of facts until we have found a conclusion." Einstein's own work demonstrates his words on the mysterious; he did not come to his theories by working them out consciously; rather, he took enormous leaps, like Nureyev defying gravity, and there were his conclusions waiting for him, out in the realm of the mysterious. After that he had to go back and get it all worked out mathematically. . . . One of my English aunts now lives in an ancient, rheumatism-producing castle in Scotland, because it has been in her husband's family since before the Norman Conquest. But she lived for many years in Kenya, where, after her first husband's death, she managed his vast estate singlehanded. On one of her rare trips to the United States she was staying in New York, at the Hotel Plaza. And she was puzzled because she was wakened, every morning, by the roaring of the lions, exactly as though she were still in Kenya. Lions on the island of Manhattan? It seemed most unlikely, and she mentioned it to a friend. The friend became most agitated over my Aunt Alexandra's mental health, and insisted on setting up an appointment with a well-known psychiatrist who, when Alexandra's symptom was described, felt that it was urgent that she see him at once. Fortunately, before the appointment, Alexandra mentioned hearing lions at dawn to another friend, who laughed and said, "Of course. You're hearing the lions in the Central Park Zoo. It's just across from the Plaza." I wish we didn't try to turn real lions into imaginary ones. The lions are not imaginary. They are real. I have experienced a lot of lions in my lifetime, and these encounters are what I write about, and why I write as a storyteller: it's the best way to make the lions visible. |
