Communications from the unconscious

   

    'From the beginning, Davies saw writing as a matter of recording communications from the unconscious. In a light-hearted 1948 talk, he described the process, basing his account on "a certain amount of practice and a few vague intuitions." When an idea occurred to him that seemed "to demand embalming" he would immediately jot it down, lest it vanish, in a notebook he always carried for the purpose. Then the idea would seem "to acquire a life of its own," presenting itself in dramatic form, growing and sometimes transforming itself utterly, until it settled into a final shape. Only then, when it had become "an aching tooth which has to be pulled," would he commit the play to paper. He has described the process of writing his plays and novels in similar terms ever since. When an interviewer asked, soon after the publication of Fifth Business*, how he went about developing a character, he replied: "You don't. The character arises in your imagination and then you go ahead. I know this sounds terribly pompous and grandiose, but you don't really do it; it's something that happens and you write it down. You can't sit down and say, 'Now, I think I'll think up a funny Jesuit,' and do it, because you'll get a mass of eccentricities; you won't get a live person. But if one arises in your mind, and he's got all his oddities and you see him hopping around and doing things, then you just write down about it. This is what imagination is. It's not invention, you're more passive than that. You listen to your ideas; you don't tell them what to do." And in 1989, after describing the writing of Fifth Business, he concluded: "It is this sort of explanation, I know, which persuades some critics that an author is an idiot savant, who does not know what he is doing. But that is a misunderstanding of the creative process. The author may not know consciously every detail of his story when he begins it, but his Unconscious knows, and it is from the Unconscious that he works." '

    From Robertson Davies: Man of Myth  

 

    *See this post.

Comments

[Renata]

I very much enjoyed this post. I am at the beginning of re-discovering Robertson Davies. As a schoolchild in Toronto in the 70s Davies 5th Business appeared on our English class reading list. While I enjoyed it, I don't think I appreciated the humour and slyness that I am finding in his writing now.

I was looking at a copy of a collection of his shorter writings in a second hand bookstore last week. It was inscribed "To XX and YY from Brenda and Rob in spirit" Christmas the year after he died. I may have to go back and get that.

I'd be interested to hear what you think about the biography. A couple of reviewers have criticized it as a hagiography lacking a critical eye on the subject.

[Cornflower]

Do go back and get the book, Renata!
I'm enjoying the biography greatly as I am finding Davies fascinating (as I expected). I take the point about its being a hagiography, and while I love detail I'd say this goes too far at times, but so far it's an absorbing read.