I
have a Ph.D. in Literature from Purdue University. My area of study was English
Renaissance—the period of time in which such authors as Shakespeare, Donne,
Herbert, and many of the great poets and playwrights lived. I did my Ph.D.
dissertation on the poetry of Robert Herrick, best known for his poem that
begins "Gather ye rosebuds while ye may." This is a classic carpe diem poem more famous in recent
times due to the fact that the late Robin Williams mentions it in the popular
film, Dead Poet's Society.
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| Robert Herrick |
You
would think people would recognize such achievement, but those in my writer's
group were always telling me, "Dave, you're sounding academic!" By
which they mean boring and elaborate. To an extent they are right. For years I
wrote academic studies of literature. The by-word in fiction writing is
"Show, don't tell." In scholarly writing, however, you tell and don't
show! So I've had some bad habits to break. You also tend to write more passive
sentences in scholarly writing, so that's another thing I've had to overcome. The admonitions of my writer's group were good in many ways. But not in
every way.
As
I began to look for new ideas to write about and new inspirations for stories,
my mind reverted to my education. I had studied a lot of modern literature and
a lot of classic fiction such as Dickens, the Brontë sisters, William Makepeace
Thackeray, and it was good stuff. I borrowed a plot from Henry James for the
first story I ever published, "The Girl Who Knew Nick Drake." But
what about my dissertation topic? Would it be possible to construct a
contemporary story using something from the English Renaissance? Lots of people
draw on Shakespeare for plot material. The sci-fi classic film Forbidden Planet is based on
Shakespeare's The Tempest; a lot of
Ian McEwan's novel Atonement borrows
from Hamlet. But what about Robert
Herrick? Could his poetry ever provide ideas for a story?
Teaching
some of his writing in a class at the university where I'm employed gave me an
idea.
When
Herrick was not writing carpe diem
poems or poems about the nipples of his girlfriend's breasts, he wrote
theological poems (he was an Anglican priest and often crossed the line in his
writing). His theological works are considered
inferior to his other poems, but they made good material to write a
dissertation on because not many people had written on them. The couplet that
gave me the idea of the story was this one:
"Evil no nature hath. The loss of good / Is that which gives to sin
its livelihood."
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| Augustine |
Obscure?
Sure it is. Herrick is drawing on a theological point that goes back to Saint
Augustine of Hippo in 400 A.D. It is the notion that sin has no ontology—that
is, it has no real existence and not a part of God's creation; it is a twisting
and a perverting of something good. It has no existence in and of itself.
This
is an idea Christian theologians have held to since Augustine wrote about it
1600 years ago. C. S. Lewis noted, in his preface to The Screwtape Letters, that the Devil is not the counterpart of God,
not a creature of perfect evil that exists in opposition to the perfect goodness of God,
because if you took everything that was good away from the Devil—will, mind,
emotion, and existence itself—there would be nothing left. Evil is simply a
twisting and a perverting of something good.
This
is what Robert Herrick meant when he wrote, "Evil no nature hath. The loss
of good / Is that which gives to sin its livelihood."
"Livelihood" here means existence. A story began to occur to me after
I left the class where we talked about Herrick's poem.
My
ongoing character, Sossity Chander, is doing a tour with an English musician,
Collin. Usually cheerful and funny, he seems depressed. She asked him if anything
is wrong, and he confides to her. Years ago, when the craze was on with groups
like Black Sabbath and Judas Priest, he sold his soul to the Devil. Sossity
says such a concept is ridiculous and he needs to forget it, but he tells her the
Devil has come for his due and he will have to kill himself soon. And he plans
to do it. He then withdraws from her and will not see or speak to her.
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| Abadonna |
Sossity
gets a call from a girl named Abadonna, who identifies herself as her friend's
"watcher." She is there to make certain he goes through with the
expected suicide and warns Sossity that if she tries to interfere there might
be trouble. This angers Sossity but she doesn’t know what to do. In desperation she calls an old friend,
Heather Alabaster, who is an Anglican nun and who, Sossity remembers, once
smashed a Satanic altar someone had erected at their apartment because Heather
was counseling girls caught up in a demon-worshiping cult. She asks Heather's
advice. Heather advises her to try to separate her friend from the
"watcher." She later remembers reading the line from Herrick in Heather's house long ago. She gets an idea.
Sossity
calls Abadonna and hints that she is willing to give herself in exchange for Collin's safety. She also has the security agency she works for gather as
much information as they can on Abadonna, whose real name is Abagail. When they
meet, Sossity confronts her with all she has left behind and with how she has
been sexually exploited, served time in jail, and been forced into an abortion
by her Satanic colleagues. She tells her, “Think of what you’ve lost,
Abigail. Think of all the good things
you’ve twisted and perverted to make yourself into what you are today . . . A
girl like you should be loved by a man—and should not think she is obligated to
let herself be gang raped and to facilitate a murder.” This affects Abagail,
but not in the way Sossity expects. She runs off and commits suicide.
Collin is freed from her power over him and converts to evangelical
Christianity. Sossity reflects on the tragedy of Abigail and the loss of good
as Collin, his friends and family, rejoice over her death. Sossity remembers
that in Dante's hell the worst part of it is cold, not hot.
The
story was printed. My adult daughter, who is a good critic of my writing,
thinks it's my best story ever. I feel all the better because at a certain stage in my
writing journey, I began to see how even academic and scholarly texts—considered
too esoteric and obscure by many—can inspire paranormal stories. I would similarly
use such texts in future writings.
Check out my Facebook Page for more information on my writing; or my Writer's Page
to see the books I have available.
The story, "The Loss of Good" appeared in Amarillo Bay magazine. A great read, check it out.
