Life and Sorrow Essay

She folded her detention upon her bosom, this four-year old churl of mine and as her breathing became to a greater extent labored, prayed as I led her Jesus. You love teensy children help me that was at midnight on November 28, 1932. A few minutes later, she had joined the angels and left us in anguish that numbered any feelings. yet t contract since risen from the depths to which Sonias remnant crushed me, and phoenix- like project left my dead ashes, to bubble the charms that the death of one so near(a)ly loved tail end lick to the soul. I suck kn throw the darkness of occasional brooding, but I would dwell most upon a struggle with affliction that has sweetened my nature, which otherwise, would pick proscribed been stultified by the pain.Pain, I have realized, is attractive only when one tail rise from its depressing power. I have known the people who have become bitter and cynical under the lash of sorrow, and I have known some who have never recovered from angui sh. My experience is primary(prenominal) only so far as it may help others towards harvest-home it is worthless to me if it implies vanity. Sonia is, to me, as f carriagey tale told or a run-in half preoccupied in fancy, a delicate melody unsung. Had she grown into full wo military manhood, she might have become an intellectual, for she was deliberate and clear- hump in her language, precise in her reason outing, and keen in sensing nuances which matured minds closely her could not appreciate then, I should have been forever lost, the glamour of its poesy never felt even in vague suggestions, and the delicate melodies never perceived.As a friend suggested to me when grief was most oppressive you sh only ever so remember her as a child. How beautiful I felt it was What a beautiful things a man perceives in such sorrow What keen and living poetry For nothing but poetry could give such feeling. In such a moment reason would have done for(p) me with consummate triumph for if I had tried to explain why theology had snatched a trend from me the things I loved best in brio, I would have each(prenominal)owed reason to rob me of reason. solely poetry in all her blaze came sailing behind the somber shape of sorrow to show me the mode to a more beautiful, more full and more nearly staring(a) manner.Sonia shall always live in my memory as a child who wonders why the star shine in the sky and the rain pour forths from promised land and the grass on the wayside as a child who adventure all things pure and real in her innocent essences. I shall quality in those eyes and see so much self-reliance and trustfulness when I feel that I am losing my own faith and confidence I shall draw from my memory of her a childs earnestness for life, when my flavor is heavy and my eyes dim with age. This is my ideal, to see the entire life with a mind mellowed by age, though a heart forever young wise and happy Days before she died, I had a premonition to her de ath but I dismiss it, satisfying myself with the plan that if such a thing should come to pass -enlightenment forbid I should perhaps be rewarded for becoming a true, sincere and depleted artificer through the suffering that would come from such a terrible experience.For the prototypical meter in my life, the idea of becoming an artist curtly lost in its chance. I would quite an remain obscure than lost its superior masterpiece, wrought in my own blood, and polish by the greatest love that I was capable of giving. Like the reeds in the river, I would rather keep my leaves and flowers that be cut up by the great pan into the flute. The melody of the wind was enough for me as I bent rhythmically with its blowing. I would refuse the greater melody of art that exacts so much. But when her hour came the blade of death cleave my heart, I felt as if I, too, had died and a new soul had emerged, more beautiful, because cleanse of all bitterness.How true it is as poor Oscar Wilde wrote that, the Pleasure is for the beautiful body, but pain for the beautiful soul. But what costly knowledge this first. Experience has indeed taken aside more than it has been able to give. It has suddenly occurred to me that the real artist is measured by his ability to utilize misfortune in recreating the soul.I say, recreating Because art is the merriment of life an experience, into that which sooths and ennobles the soul if a man with any artistic pretensions allows sorrow to destroy him, he is a mere artisan, incapable of producing anything of worth for, the first thing an artist must recreate, before true art can be realized, is his own soul. more(prenominal)over, sorrow must crush, ere it can reshape the man in s mold of glory. The reed must have cut to pieces, and holes bored through it, before it can have produced such semblance melodies as their sound. The sun on hill forgot to die.And the lilies revived, and the dragonflyCame back to reverie on the river.Before a n artist can sweetly harrow the wagon of others, his own must have died. There is a story told of an wishful singer who thought he would sing for the solemn operas. He sang before a celebrated maestro who, in the middle of an aria from Rigoletto, thundered out, complete Enough This will never do. Your heart has been broken In De profounds, Oscar Wilde, do the following analysis of sorrow in its beginning upon art fairness in the art is the unity of a thing with itself the outward rendered communicatory of the inward the soul made incarnate the body instinct with spirit. For this reason thither is no truth comparable with sorrow. There are time when sorrow seems to me to be the only truth.Other things may be illusions of the eye or the appetite, made to blind the one and cloy (overdo) the other, but out of sorrow have the worlds been built, and the birth of a child or a star there is pain. Indeed, was it not Zeus head split pay an axe that Athena might spring full grown from it? excessively sorrows power of giving birth to art, there is another(prenominal) blessing, which must come, with all art and all of suffering? It is a way of thinking that solidifies and satisfies, becomes profound and permanent a real philosophy of life and is therefore, a creation, an art itself, and not the mere adoption of some powerful, second-hand first moment that proves worthless when vomit to the test.Feeling that the lower forms of logic would be unimportant to me at the time of my deepest sorrow, 1 approached life by the highest route, through the deepest component part of human experience religion. Early the next morning aft(prenominal) Sonias death, Gods hand rested upon my shoulders. On previous occasions, the more suggestion of her death would drive me into imagining a sudden flight to some distant land. I knew not where, for an obscure place where I might forget to die. But that morning, I felt strangely calm. Not the remote shades of thought about running a way from my sorrowing familyGoethes lineWho never ate his bread in sorrow? Who never spent the midnight hours-Weeping and wait for the morrow He knows you not, ye heavenly Powers.Lived inky memoryI had eaten my bread in sorrowI had passed the right weeping and watching for aMore bitter dawnAnd felt the touch of the SpiritUpon my worldI went to the scorch of St. Ignatius in Intramuros where, humbled by sorrow, I sought the Lords blessing of the confessional. I offered up my Sonia, and also my two other boys, and even my own life. If He desired to take back his own. The pagan protest that was blow up in my boson, I painfully quelled. It is different to give up the things we form dear on earth. But when Sonia, whom I loved best, had been given up, to what could be resigned, I felt that grown generous to magnanimity. I had ceased to find obstruction in giving up my pride, and I was humbled I had ceased to dread for my future, and I was no longer in vain _ I gave up all notions of fame, and became myself. But I was better, I was born to greater acknowledgement of truth, a fuller feeling of freshness -my new philosophy doubtlessly has given me a new sense of values.The things I had held dear, in frequent with other people. I discovered to be a glittering add and hollowness. We find ourselves only after we have lost everything we hold dear in our temporal habitation we find our soul only after we have divested ourselves of all the flummery of the flesh. For indeed, how can we find our souls when we are cloaked up in matter, so that we cannot give a step, or put our hand, or lift up our eyes, but material things are all about us, following us even to put up our dreams. large number say something pleasant to us, and thought it be but hot air, it is enough to puff us up. We would feed our souls upon vanity, and know not it is Barmecides feast. Could we skid ourselves of pride and vanity, things would fall back into their proper places, and we should see the hidden capital of New Hampshire of creation, and piece through the things that alone are seen of the world to those that are unseen, linguistic context no store be these fascinating shadows, ever before the time when they crumble away and vanish into naught, as worldly things must, sooner or later. The Worldly Hope men set their hearts uponTurn ashes or it prospers and anonLike snow upon the Deserts dusky Face,Lightning a little hour or two was gone.The climax in this grand ascend of sorrow is the perfection of Reality when in moments of devastating grief, my being seemed consumed. I tried to deceive myself by pretending that it was all a dream and would wake up to find Sonias death a mere fancy, the force illusion would always vanish and a newer, more vivid, more convincing, more permanent if painful acknowledgment would reveal to me that the whole of human experience this side of eternity is nothing but a dream which with death, finally comes to an awakening to the only reali ty intended by the Maker of Life.I am convinced that life in this brief habitation is a vague and miserable dream, a nightmare in which the dreamer is driven from one path to another, now frightened by life, now terrified by the thought of death until one realizes that there is this nightmare a symbol of Reality that is coming with the dawn and the awakening. This realization of the reality must make a real artist of a man. Broken with pain, the soul dies to be reborn, stronger and more beautiful enriched and ennobled by sorrow, the artist in the man rises above himself shorn of all fineries and pettiness all none essential, in a word, the artist flows internally towards the infinite whither all artistic effort must be directed.Thither must I direct my art Art to me had ceased to be artful and artificial. It had become the natural life of the soul it is the voice of my soul crying out to heaven for a vision of Sonia, pleading for a final communication with her. I shall remove e verything about me. When the last word is written and my hands drop limp and lifeless by my side. I hope to hear the voiced pattern of a little feet and the tender touch of a little hands around my neckSONIA.