Where? When?
July 19th, 2007
..a stone, a leaf, an unfound door; of a stone, a leaf, a door. And of all the forgotten faces.
Naked and alone we came into exile. In her dark womb we did not know our mother’s face; from the prison of her flesh have we come into the unspeakable and incommunicable prison of this earth.
Which of us has known his brother? Which of us has looked into his father’s heart? Which of us has not remained forever prison-pent? Which of us is not forever a stranger and alone?
O waste of loss, in the hot mazes, lost, among bright stars on this most weary unbright cinder, lost! Remembering speechlessly we seek the great forgotten language, the lost lane-end into heaven, a stone, a leaf, an unfound door. Where? When? -Thomas Wolfe
I spent most of my childhood living just miles from Asheville, the mountain town in North Carolina that Thomas Wolfe called home. Even closer to my house was the stone angel which was the main symbol in his magnum opus Look Homeward, Angel. The whole time I lived there, I never once bothered to learn about his writings. Of course, at the time I wasn’t embarking on writing a serious piece of literature.
Years later I have learned that Wolfe set out to write Look Homeward, Angel with the same intentions as I have with my work in progress. He wanted to show the world his genius while also trying to explain the mystery that is life by writing an autobiographical künstlerroman. Both he and I have drawn inspiration from the hazy blue hills that encompass the Asheville area. Could it be the allure of wondering what lies beyond those hills that encouraged us to explore and explain?
I have never read Look Homeward, Angel cover to cover, and I don’t plan to. I will look at specific examples of how Wolfe orchestrated his prose, but I have always found a lot more inspiration in the lives of the authors rather than their work.
Sadly, Thomas Wolfe is all but forgotten. His writing, by today’s standards, is unorganized and rambling. His work is heavily dated, and his stock in literary circles has gone down immensely. However, his short life was spent painting beautiful pictures of this mysterious concept we call life. He spared no one in his writing, not his friends, his family, or even himself.
Wolfe and I are both willing to give up everything just to see and talk about what we find under the stone, under a leaf, and behind that unfound door.
