'Writing Is a Dog's Life' and Other Thoughts

A portrait of poet Anna Akhmatova by the Ukrainian-French avant-garde painter and book illustrator Nathan Altman

‘Writing is a dog’s life, but the only one worth living,’ says Gustave Flaubert.

And while I would agree with him any other day, today is different. Today, this dog is not writing. I cannot even muster the energy or the will to get out of bed, or comb my hair, let alone brew a pot of coffee, sit at my desk, and start working on a novel with utmost faith in humanity and utmost faith in myself and other such necessary illusions that keep us writers going.

Nope, it is not happening. Because the real world has gone off its axis. The coldness, the craziness, the calculatedness, the cruelty of our times is mind blowing. There is so much suffering right now. Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan, DR Congo…. And so much ambiguity in the air: American politics, European elections, massive global shifts…. It is too depressing. Too stressful. Just too much. What is the purpose of fiction, really what is the point of rolling up your sleeves and labouring to craft a delicate sentence, carefully selecting the ideal synonym, or perfecting the punctuation, only to describe imagined events and invented characters when the world outside is on fire?

A loss of energy. A creeping lethargy. Therefore, I want to stay rooted in this very spot in my pyjamas, looking at the wall for a couple of hours, if not several days. Having made this ridiculous plan, I start implementing it at once. But the problem is that the wall is covered with bookshelves, so instead of studying a blank white space like I had intended, I find myself staring at book spines.

This is how I discover an interesting optical fact: if you stare vacantly and fixedly at an inanimate object for long, long enough, it starts to move.

It is definitely moving, in front of my eyes. I watch a book with a bright red spine sway this way and that, and slowly wriggle off the shelf. It is Rumi’s poetry.

Before I know it, Jalaluddin Rumi is standing in front of me with a frown.

‘What work doth occupy thee, might I inquire?’

‘No work,’ I reply. ‘The world is depressing, there is no point in writing.’

A calmness in his voice, he explains to me that poets and writers must continue, especially in times like these. I say it is easy for him to utter sweet advice. He did not have such a messed up world, nor social media platforms or dark web or tech monopolies, in Anatolia in the 13th century.

‘Nay,’ he says. ‘We had dreadful political upheavals, the wholesale destruction and conflagration of our cities, wars without end, poverty, extremism and unceasing violence. Not to mention the Crusades, the famine and the plague.’

I feel a bit bad then. And embarrassed. I sit up. But I am not giving up. I need to return my gaze to the wall that is a bookshelf. This time a blue volume starts to jiggle and shimmy, until it falls off the shelf. It is named, aptly, The Fall.

And this is how, Albert Camus appears in my room looking very dapper in a grey suit. As always, charismatic. He, too, says encouraging things about the need for art and creativity to flourish. ‘You wouldn't understand,’ I say stubbornly. ‘There is no point. It was easier during your era. Things were simpler back then.’

‘Were they simple?’ he muses. ‘I was born into poverty, I never knew my father. My beloved mother was illiterate, partially deaf. I was writing during the Nazi occupation of France, the Algerian-French war, through immense disruption and suffering and not to mention my own mental health struggles and tuberculosis.’

OK, now I feel even more embarrassed. I push the duvet aside but I am still not leaving the bed. I just need to find an author or poet who lived in nicer, kinder times. As I am considering this, my gaze lands on a pink book spine. Oh dear! Too late! It is already moving. The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova.

And here she is, her dark hair perfectly cut, her eyes big and soulful.

‘I wrote poetry in the most tumultuous times when literature was repressed, banned, persecuted. The secret police searched my apartment, arrested my loved ones, and Stalin breathed down my neck all the time. I had to burn my verses after committing them to memory, they were that dangerous. I lived under constant threat of being sent to prison, gulag or exile. I asked my dear friends to memorise my lines. Only this way my poems survived. But still I wrote.’

I sigh.

Slowly, I get out of bed, get out of the room, get out of my anxiety attack. I must go and make a cup of coffee now, strong.

Whether it is a dog’s life or not, and no matter how bewildering and debilitating our world, we write poetry, we write prose, we write our resilience, hope, empathy, and love for pluralism, nuance and diversity, we write our shared humanity through the chaos of our times.