It is funny how some things you read or watch or hear are not understood or appreciated until years later. Decades later, even.
You go about your life and then out of the blue (or pink or green or purple) you go, “Ah! So that is what that stanza means. What brilliance, what courage, what precision!” You enthuse over that one line all over again but in a different way — it was, for all intents and purposes, just a neat turn-of-phrase or cool wording when first encountered. Now it holds the universe of this or that particular, special experience in a few words.
***
The following from The Valley of Fear by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle:
“He spoke wistfully of a sudden leaving, a breaking of old ties, a flight into a strange world, ending in this dreary valley, and Ettie listened, her dark eyes gleaming with pity and with sympathy – those two qualities which may turn so rapidly and so naturally to love.”
Of all the brilliant lines in the novel, the above comes most often to mind for me, with one twist. For some odd reason, my mind has, over the past decade, quite firmly replaced “sympathy” with “admiration” — arguably not a defensible alternative given the context of the story; but in the context of emotion it may be even more powerful. (Speak I from experience? Perhaps.)
Can one combine an honest admiration with true pity? “Admiration and sympathy” would work better. But maybe it is the impossibility of such a combination that forces the mind to step aside and allow the heart to whisper a healing word, or stumble upon an idea that makes the next few minutes of existence more bearable for the beloved. Not the sort of pity that demeans another as less-than-human nor the starry-eyed admiration that mistakes a man for a god; but that aching realization that, in McLean’s words, “the world was never meant for one as beautiful as [them].”
Illegitimate admiration aside, this blend of pity with admiration might well be why tragic heroes (and villains) capture my heart before I realize I have come to love them beyond what cool-headed reason may dictate. Think Van Gogh, Javert, Christ. Look also at the lives that entwined themselves around theirs and were also just as tragic and beautiful and striking — the Theos, Valjeans, and Mary Magdalenes.
My heart is full whenever I think of them — full with that special sort of pity saturated through and through with admiration — and for the two beloved persons in my life whose existence mirror theirs.
***
The second thing that struck me was Jacob Lee’s “Artistry”. I have loved the song for years — but not until last night did I try to sing it and find myself choking up on the first chorus:
If I make my arms, the home you seek
If I sway my brush, would I capture thee?
If I hang your scars, in a gallery
As a work of artistry
May I clear your slate and wipe your conscience
Lay it on another shelf
I’ll be anything you ever ask
I’ll take your memories upon myself
If you keep my thoughts and thieve my wisdom
I will find another shell
I don’t ever want to be the selfish reason
You don’t ever find yourself
This love, born of pity and admiration, quite effortlessly lends itself to this offering-up of self for the good of its beloved. A dangerous, tremulous feeling for one who tends towards lone-wolfing through life and for whom individualistic habits often trump communal ones — and yet it is there.
What would you not give up or lay down for one who softens your heart and inspires your mind, and calls forth all that is good and beautiful and true in you?
This love is devotion, not obsession. The fullest expression of self in an act that appears to erase it. A “sacrifice” that is but the exchange of a present, owned value for one even higher and more glorious.
It is to stand at the foot of a cross on which hangs the naked, tortured body of your dying rabbi and say with your heart in your throat, with absolute conviction: “Him I love, him I shall follow.” It is to forgo meat and drink so that your brother can have a bit of paint and canvas within which to find peace and create beauty. It is to raise the daughter of a prostitute even when your own freedom is in question and your motherland in shambles.
One wretch laying themself down at the feet of another, there being no other place they would rather be, no other life they dare live or imagine.
Such is what the purest, strongest chords of pity and admiration bring out in the human spirit.
And if this sounds religious to you it is because it is, you desert-hearted agnostic, you. 😉