Transcendence and Reality: Irreconcilable?
A Frodo's Notebook Staff Editorial
by Eric Sütter - Senior Fiction Editor

In his book, Lost in the Cosmos, Walker Percy discusses a struggle that exists for the writer and the writing.

The writer, in creating art, transcends every day life, reaching an altogether new plane. This plane is reached when the writer reaches a super-saturated form of reality, or a deeper perception of reality, or a more articulate form of reality, etc. This is what good writing is: saying something that everybody intrinsically knows, but saying it in such a way as to cause the reader to re-evaluate his/her values or understandings.

For the writer, however, there’s a problem: upon the completion of this creation, he must re-enter reality. He must come down off his “transcendent plane” and eat dinner, do the dishes, and put the kids to bed. It’s the “re-entry” that’s the trick. Upon the re-entry into reality, many writers don’t do so well:

“ It has been observed that artists live longer and drink less than writers. Perhaps they are rescued from the ghostliness of self by the things and the doing of their art. The painter and the sculptor are the Catholics of art, the writer is the Protestant. The former have the sacramentals, the concrete intermediaries between themselves and creation – the paint, the brushes, the fruit, the bowl, the table, the model, the mountain, the handling and muscling of clay. The writer is the Protestant. He works alone in a room as bare as a Quaker meeting house with nothing between him and his art but a Scripto pencil, like God’s finger touching Adam. It is harder on the nerves.” (Walker Percy, 147)

As writers we transcend reality, but we also must come back to earth. What is one to do? After completing the last page of The Idiot, Fyodor Dostoevsky went out and spent 3 days and nights at the roulette table. Hemmingway blew his brains out.

It is my perception that most writers live in two realities: a) the earthly, mundane, and dull or b) the ethereal, brilliant, and transcendent. This dichotomy is destructive, both to the writer and to the writing. Here’s my recommendation: we, as writers, must strive always to live in a certain flavor of transcendence.

What does this mean? Well, what is transcendence that I’m advocating? Transcendence, in the context that I am proposing it, is a place the writer reaches where he’s looking above and beyond, or into and through reality. He’s looking for the deeper truth, the truer beauty, the ultimate good (or evil). And he’s looking to articulate this in such a way as to open the eyes of the reader.

All that I am proposing is that the writer strive to always live life in this instant of heightened perception, heightened understanding, heightened inquisitiveness. Seek to see usually mundane things in a new way, or from a different angle. Try to second-guess your prejudices, because maybe, after all, there’s more to it than you may have guessed.
The point: approach reality as you approach your art.

This is a much more holistic approach to the dilemma of transcendence and reality. When a writer seeks to achieve this wholeness of existence, it will have a two-fold effect. First of all, it will help the writing. It will inspire the creation of a piece of writing, broadening the scope of both subject and articulation. Secondly, it will make for a more healthy lifestyle. After all, if one approaches life with a certain level of reverence, it will drastically change the way one works, interacts, and walks through life.

©2003

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