I’ve been wondering since I
picked up the book; why ‘The sea, the sea’, why not just ‘The sea’? And as I
read the last few words, I guess I know now. It’s a call of despair, of
longing, of a melancholic meditation where it’s a fruitless, failed attempt of
breathing right and keeping your eyes closed and trying to understand and
believe and trust things and situations that you don’t want to but probably
must; numerous thoughts like wild waves only thrashing you against the abrasive
rocks, destroying your meditation, your peace if there is any.
Is LOVE a four letter word? Let’s
not waste time here - it IS a four letter word. And so is PAIN and HURT. Ask
Charles Arrowby, an imperious theatre stalwart, loved and despised equally by
the marionettes in his life. And almost always, as he pulls the strings, they
remain taut for a long time and don’t really break till they do. And still his
so called friends, colleagues, past love interests and James, the only family
he has, cling to him - a despot who steers relationships, manipulates them,
breaks them with an unflustered detachment.
Charles has moved to
‘Shruff’s end’, a house he’s bought by the sea for his self-imposed retirement
from the theatre and all people. He’s decided to peacefully write his memoirs
here and spend the rest of his life in solitude. But ‘Iris Murdoch’ won’t leave
him alone. She places his life back to him when he thinks he’s already lived
it. Charles comes across Hartley, his childhood sweetheart, who’d run away from
him without a trace or explanation then. Cupid is cunning and doesn’t see age
(Charles is above 60) or a marriage to be a shield for his arrows; he only strikes.
Which one is funnier, the
heart or the mind? A drowning man clutches to a straw; Charles clutches to his
memories of Hartley, to the play of fate. He now sees why he’s come to this
place, of all places, a connection that existed, exists so strong; how can he
let go of it now? What unfolds is a tenacious contrivance; Charles plays God,
destines his own destiny and that of others, primarily Hartley; his unshaken
beliefs and ramblings silencing the shrieking thoughts and woes of others. Does
a despot know that s/he’s a despot; does a lunatic undulating between sanity
and insanity, know that s/he’s a lunatic? How would they; isn’t it why we
relate it to obsession. They’re right because they think they’re right and they
think it very strongly and passionately; they aren’t hypocrites, they are
believers and it’s only fair that they find it astounding why other’s are so plain,
feeble, so dispassionate, tedious and wearisome.
“But supposing it should turn out in the end that such a
love should lose its object, should it, whatever happened, lose its object?
Some loves are not defeated by death, although it is not as easy as we think to
love the dead. But there are pains and devices which defeat love more
ingeniously. Would I at last absolutely lose Hartley because of a treachery or
desertion on her part which should turn my love into hate? Could I begin to see
her as cold, heartless, uncanny, a witch, a sorceress? I felt that this could
never be, and I felt it as an achievement, almost as a mode of possession. As
James said ‘If even a dog’s tooth is truly worshipped it glows with light.’ My
love for Hartley was very nearly an end in itself. Twist and turn as she might,
whatever happened she could not escape me now.”
“What indeed was I planning to do? I was in a state which
I well knew was close to a sort of madness, and yet I was not mad. Some kinds
of obsession, of which being in love is one, paralyse the ordinary
free-wheeling of the mind, its natural open interested curious mode of being,
which is sometimes persuasively defined as rationality. I was sane enough to
know that I was in a state of total obsession and that I could only think, over
and over again, certain agonizing thoughts, could only run continually along
the same rat-paths of fantasy and intent.”
And entangled in this
hullabaloo of affairs, deception and tragic deaths, the others play their
parts, they enter and exit, they stay; the ambiance and tune changes – from a gloomy
surrender to a maddening rage, from a calm melody to a tumultuous symphony. A
silhouette of the spiritual and supernatural also flirts with the reader. Murdoch,
like in her other stories presents a range of questions and none of them are
really answered. You love and hate the characters, and more so because they manifest
reality, their emotions are of this world. You’ll end up justifying the
characters for their horrific, loving and/or indifferent acts; like a shrink
you’ll try to understand them, you’ll want to make them understand. In the end,
you’ll just end up making yourself understand.
How well a story resonates
with you depends on when you pick it up and for me it couldn’t be a better time
and situation. I felt, in bits and pieces living the emotions of most of the
characters; of being obsessed, of hatred due to helplessness, of desire, of
pangs of jealousy, of submissiveness, of dominance, of so called pragmatism and
more importantly being immersed, deeply immersed in the sea of love.
In Hartley, I saw a
resemblance of the female protagonist of J.M. Coetzee’s ‘Disgrace’. I was also
reminded of John Banville’s ‘The Sea’ when I went through these accounts. The
sound of the sea relaxes, calms you down but somehow also has an agonizing
effect, goading you to ponder, silencing you in your words but making your
thoughts scream. Is that true for others as well?
Sooner or later, the sea
throws back all that we put in it. The waves give back to Charles a longing and
undesirable loneliness for all of his fastidious plans and rancor. Finally, he
attempts to come to terms with it; he realizes that caring, love and desire cannot
be in mere words, if it can’t be felt. There’s a very thick line between
thinking, believing and doing.
LOVE indeed is a four letter
word and yet it’s BEAUTIFUL (that’s nine!) and NECESSARY (nine again).
Can Lizzie’s (a former
lover) words in a letter to Charles sum up to an attainment of peace in love?
“My love for you is quiet at last. I don’t want it to
become a roaring furnace. If I could have suffered more I would have suffered
more. Tenderness and absolute trust and communication and truth matter more and
more as one grows older. Somehow let us not waste love, it is rare. Can we not
love each other at last in freedom, without awful possessiveness and violence
and fear? Love matters, not ‘in love’ Let there be no more partings now. Let there
be peace between us now forever, we are no longer young. Love me Charles, love
me enough.”
My rating – 9/10
Images courtesy:
Iris Murdoch picture - https://www.curtisbrown.co.uk/client/iris-murdoch
Book cover - https://electricliterature.com/my-year-in-re-reading-after-40-5-the-sea-the-sea-by-iris-murdoch/
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