In the words of my supervisor, the Heretic:
“You seem distressed, lately.”
[I know.]
“You’re still finding your way, aren’t you.”
But your proposal is “another smashing number [...] lovely stuff.”
You’ve done it before. “I’m proud of you.”
But then there’s the… thing you just handed me. “This isn’t your most… coherent piece of prose.”
[I know.]
“What’s troubling you about this?”
“Keep going. Try to find your intellectual centre.”
…I am trying. I find it, I think, now and then — here in a bit of a gospel, there in an invigorating line, then again over here in a particularly masterful stroke of scholarship. Then it slips away. I forget my purpose; I lose my centre.
I juggle my many elements with perfect precision, one moment. I see my task clear. The next moment… I don’t exactly drop an element, I don’t exactly fumble. I simply forget what I’m juggling, or that I’m juggling. I stand still. The elements juggle themselves, somewhere, above my head or next door, or beyond me in a dimension just slightly aslant of this one.
In still another dimension, Robert Southwell laughs gently to himself, his young poet’s hands moving swiftly, creating with my elements, the elements I see in him, hoops and swirls and arabesques excruciatingly exquisite. He laughs again. (Martyrs can, and do, laugh.) And then he winks at me, and I slide back from my inter-dimensional hallucination, and am again alone amid my books.
My books and my teacher’s voice: “Find your intellectual centre.”
8 comments
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June 10, 2008 at 12:23 am
hilaire
I think it takes years and years to find one’s intellectual centre…it’s dawned on me that I’m just finding mine, almost three years after finishing my PhD…Your awareness that there even *is* such a thing is crucial. And it will be in the searching for it that you will perhaps produce your best work.
Glad you posted this…I miss you!
June 10, 2008 at 1:09 am
Flavia
I was going to say much of what Hilaire already did — and from the bits and bobs on your blog it’s clear to me that you’re much further along (more conversant with the period, more immersed in the material, and more critically adept and aware) than I was even a few years into my PhD program. And you’ve not yet begun yours!
Which isn’t to say that it’s fun to feel as though one is adrift — however temporary or illusory that state may be — but it’s normal. And I suspect the feeling never totally goes away; one just learns to have faith, based on past experience, that the center will come back into view sooner or later.
June 10, 2008 at 2:36 am
Susan
Long time lurker here. . . I’d just add that I think in any intellectual project, the key moment is when you see the whole thing; then, as in any artistic endeavor, you spend a lot of time trying to catch up with the vision you had. And you never completely make it. But you chase the vision.
June 10, 2008 at 8:08 am
servetus
Hang in there. It will get easier over time.
June 10, 2008 at 3:05 pm
renaissance girl
Let me just agree with Flavia: you are so much more aware of what the critical conversation looks like than I was until…let’s just say, a good way into my PhD program (and that was after TWO masters degrees)…. I have nothing but confidence in you, though you don’t have it now yourself. That sense that one is faking? One gets used to it, but happily (I think) one doesn’t get used to the always-surprising evidence that one wasn’t, after all.
June 10, 2008 at 3:33 pm
adjunct whore
ditto on everyone….i was just sitting here thinking, intellectual center/re? do i have or know my intellectual center? what might that be?
if there is such a thing, it comes slowly over time, through some combination of reading, talking with an intellectual partner (s), and writing over and over again and all the time.
i think the beauty of intellectual work is its constant growth and change. the center moves. and i disagree with servetus: it doesn’t get easier over time, but one learns to recognize ones own thinking and writing process better. this means you can be in that uncomfortable zone for longer stretches without feeling like an utter moron.
well, sometimes anyway:) you’re doing the work. that is your center. thinking of you.
June 12, 2008 at 11:36 am
servetus
Actually, I don’t know if writing gets easier over time, but I do have a clearer sense of, at the very least, who I am not as an intellectual over time. That turns out to be a big time-saver.
June 12, 2008 at 4:19 pm
Dale
What intelligent comfort your readers offer!
May I just add that your teacher’s response is just the sort of remark I would make when I have a talented writer who I want to encourage and challenge to set the bar a bit higher, but who will probably finally write something better than I can presently imagine. I want a few pithy, uplifting words that suggest my confidence but don’t interfer by putting my trifling specifics in her way.
Find your intellectual center. I’m writing this down in my little black heart.