No Place for Self-Pity, No Room for Fear

No Place for Self-Pity, No Room for Fear, is a stunning essay by Toni Morrison, in which she explores the task of the artist as a grounding and elevating force in turbulent times 

Toni Morrison is a Nobel Prize- and Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist, and editor, and Professor Emeritus at Princeton University. Her novels are known for their epic themes, vivid dialogue, and richly detailed characters. 

I've read 'Beloved', way back and I recall it taking me on 'a trip', in fact needing to read it twice. It's a novel based on slavery and its aftermath, and the way she weaves in the ego and the alter ego, the present and the past, and the past in the present...I think I read it mesmerized. So when I saw a write up on Toni Morrison in Brain Pickings, I not just read with fascination, but thought to share.

Morrison writes:

"Christmas, the day after, in 2004, following the presidential re-election of George W. Bush.

I am staring out of the window in an extremely dark mood, feeling helpless. Then a friend, a fellow artist, calls to wish me happy holidays. He asks, “How are you?” And instead of “Oh, fine — and you?”, I blurt out the truth: “Not well. Not only am I depressed, I can’t seem to work, to write; it’s as though I am paralyzed, unable to write anything more in the novel I’ve begun. I’ve never felt this way before, but the election….” I am about to explain with further detail when he interrupts, shouting: “No! No, no, no! This is precisely the time when artists go to work — not when everything is fine, but in times of dread. That’s our job!”

I felt foolish the rest of the morning, especially when I recalled the artists who had done their work in gulags, prison cells, hospital beds; who did their work while hounded, exiled, reviled, pilloried. And those who were executed.

This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.

I know the world is bruised and bleeding, and though it is important not to ignore its pain, it is also critical to refuse to succumb to its malevolence. Like failure, chaos contains information that can lead to knowledge — even wisdom. Like art."