‘Love sets us free, time kills us’
The following is my translation of Geet Chaturvedi’s essay ‘Prem Humein Swatantra Karta Hai, Samay Humaari Hatya’, from the book Adhuri Cheezon Ka Devta (The Lord of Unfinished Things), published in 2020 by Rukh Publications.
‘Love sets us free, time kills us’[1]
— Geet Chaturvedi
There is a story by Nathaniel Hawthorne called ‘Wakefield’. A man tells his wife that he is leaving for a few days and will be back soon. He bids his wife farewell at the door with a ‘foolish smile’ and steps out of his home[2]. A few steps later, he wonders: why move too far away from home? He rents a room in the hotel on the next lane and decides to return home on the following evening. The next day he wonders why return so soon and stays back another day. He thinks about his family, his life, all other worldly matters, and keeps delaying his return. Days pass by, then weeks, months, and years. The man named Wakefield doesn’t go back home. He roams around the streets in disguise. He watches his wife walk by from a distance and notices her ageing by the day. He is literally at a stone’s throw away from his home, yet he never goes there. He doesn’t speak to anyone, nor mingles with anybody, but keeps to himself. Thus, twenty years pass by. One morning he finally decides to return. It was a very pleasant day with a cool breeze; he feels as though he weren’t walking on his own, rather was being borne along homewards by the wind. He rings the doorbell. His now aged wife opens the door. He wears that same ‘foolish smile’ with which he had taken his leave from her many years ago and entering, he declares: “I’m back”. The story ends.
This story was written in 1835. It is one of the earliest short stories ever written in world literature and has attracted hundreds of interpretations since then. None of its readings seems quite correct or complete. Nowhere did Hawthorne specify the reasons for which Wakefield left his home or why he didn’t return for so long. Hence, the possibilities are endless. One of the most popular analyses goes thus — ‘Home’ and ‘self’ are opposite poles. The more a person gets immersed in domestic matters, the more he keeps losing his selfhood. The day the memory of that lost selfhood gets intolerable, he transforms into a Wakefield.
Contemporary English writer E L Doctorow rewrote this story under the same title, adapting it to our times and bringing Wakefield’s internal conflict into stronger focus. This new story, published in The New Yorker, is an interpretation in its own right — a very American interpretation. In 2016, Hollywood made a rather average, fast-paced film of the same name.
I was introduced to this story in 2008, through The New Yorker issue. After reading Doctorow’s version, I looked up Hawthorne’s story and read it and afterwards learnt that Jorge Luis Borges had been an ardent admirer of it. Ever since, the story has haunted me. Despite its structural unevenness, it is Hawthorne’s story that appeals more to me.
The social arrangement of our lives is such that we are accustomed to taking occasional breaks from it. In school we enjoyed at least one holiday a week and also one or two longer vacations in a year, during which we never bothered with school at all. As adults, we take leave from work; luck and budget permitting, we go travelling once or twice a year. If we can take a break from every kind of work in the world, then why not from life itself? We live our lives out, sometimes it seems as if we are living it like some work assigned to us — with no variation at all and that constant tension, even moments of happiness marred by that strain called life.
Is there a way in which we could leave behind not just all the work at hand, but life itself, and go somewhere far away? Death too is a sort of leave — a long leave — and yet, not quite a leave. For, a ‘leave’ doesn’t imply freedom. There is no return from freedom, whereas the essence of the word ‘leave’ suggests a return to work, after a certain period of time. Therefore, death doesn’t fit into this narrative.
If only there were a way in which I could escape the compulsion of having to be myself. If, for a few days, I could take leave from being a Wakefield or a Geet Chaturvedi and become something else, or nothing else — just a body, an identity, nothing like what I had been till then. How ironic! Even to escape your old identity, you need a new one. The time spent on a leave from life too will be — life. You can leave your name and town behind and also your friends and lovers, you can lead an entirely solitary existence, and still not be able to leave life behind. Because, such an experience can only be a holiday and once you decide that the holiday is over, you will return home. With that same ‘foolish smile’, declaring: ‘I’m back’.
Is life a solitary affair? We are all individuals — separate people, with distinct personalities; even in the company of others, we are alone. However, our lives can’t really be spent alone. Life is a phenomenon experienced in a community. The most private life led by the most individualistic person too is ultimately not truly solitary. If you tried to write someone’s biography, you will find the account of their own life insufficient for it; you would have to write about the several other lives that were attached to theirs.
Reading Wakefield’s story naturally leads to a question — what offence had his wife committed that she had to suffer this punishment of endless and uncertain anticipation? Wakefield carries his ‘foolish smile’, he is no Buddha. But Buddha’s story too brings the same question to mind: what had been his wife’s fault? The impact of a decision taken by one individual is never confined to him alone.
Existentialism contemplates deeply on individual liberty. What makes a person unfree? It is because his life is bound up with many others. To some, this seems like bondage. Wakefield broke out of this bondage and vanished without reason. In those days of his contrived disappearance, was he truly free? Not at all. During that time, he was a different kind of slave — a slave to his own life. And this particular slavery had been with him from the very moment of his birth, only — he had never realised it. For all the independence we may acquire, somewhere we still remain in dependence.
Wakefield exists within each of us. In the story, he lives away from his home for twenty years, on a holiday of sorts, but even then, he continues to live nearby, keeps thinking about his family and in the end, returns home. All those years he might take to be a ‘holiday from life’ were really his ‘holiday from home’. Each of us becomes a Wakefield temporarily. You close your eyes for a while, lose yourself to inscrutable thoughts, forget that you have a life, a family, friends, partners. For that duration, you disappear. You become Wakefield. Away from all responsibilities. Away from the helplessness of living. Ten minutes, an hour, a day…every Wakefield has his own capacity and limitations. Once he reaches the limit of that capacity, he returns. Returning is the biggest attraction. You may delay your return, but return you must, one day or another. Like the earth-born Sita returns to the earth one day. Civilisations that emerge from water, sink back into water some day. Odysseus of Ithaca sets out on his travels for the purpose of eventually returning to Ithaca some day. The sun rises in the east each morning and toils all day to return to the east, via the west. Your return may not be as grand as theirs, may just be like that of a humble Wakefield with his ‘foolish smile’; nevertheless, a return it is. Because you never applied for a change in your life, only for a break from it. You did not wish to change jobs, only wanted leave from it. No matter how much we wish it, or how many sophisticated philosophical theories we develop, we cannot claim a leave from life.
A line by Neruda comes to mind: “If nothing saves us from death, may love at least save us from life.”
In the end, all our hopes come to rest upon love. All those who have raised questions about individual liberty — probe their lives and you’ll discover very little love in them. All of them thirsted for love, pined for it, but their desire for love remained unfulfilled. They began to view their lives as a form of subjugation. In truth, their lives were marked by such deep vacuity that even love could not fill it.
On the other hand, look at the Sufi dervishes. They always appear to be immersed in love. If not with a woman, then a man. If not with man, then God. Flowers, trees, leaves, birds — they love all. If nothing else, they fall in love with their own fantasies. They celebrate bonds and define them as freedom. If we keep denying the bonds in our lives, we will keep sealing them in their places.
Everyone defines attachment and independence differently. Hawthorne wrote in a different story — “Happiness is like a butterfly. The more you chase it, the more it shall escape you. When you sit still somewhere, it may come and hover over you.[3]” In this analogy, ‘happiness’ can be replaced with ‘love’ or ‘freedom’, to an extent. In other words, that which will save us from life can be termed love — that which saves us from life and reveals to us its beauty.
Adam Zagajewski has a poem which has this line: ‘Love sets us free, time kills us’.
What is it that we seek freedom from? Perhaps, life itself. Love releases us not from death, but life — that life which had come to mean a prison.
I often wonder if Wakefield’s life were to be marked by amnesia, how would the scene unfold? If he were to forget everything: home, family, wife, even life itself. If he were to stand on the road like a blank slate, what would that make him? A free Wakefield? An autonomous individual? Now, he would have no attachments, since attachments arise from memory. He who is without memory, is without attachment, and is hence free. There was a life once, but no recollection of it any longer, and hence, it ceases to have existed. So, he is free even of life. In that case, can’t we say that not love, but amnesia brings freedom? Won’t it be just like death then, without possibility of return?
Some people believe that true love is that which makes you lose your ‘self’. But if you were to lose your ‘self’, then how could you be called free? Autonomy means to be ruled by your own self, and not that of any other. If total amnesia were to erase that very ‘self’, then this would render the question of freedom irrelevant.
Then, how does love free us? Love walks on two legs — memory and amnesia. Loving means to remember often many aspects of our lives and those of another. Loving also means to forget many aspects of our lives and that of another. You cannot love without remembering, nor can you love without forgetting. Both functions are useful, and need to work in harmony. Naturally, if there is no coordination between the two legs, you won’t be able to walk properly. In this way, love brings us freedom — by remembering a little, by forgetting a little.
Through memory, it reminds you of your self from time to time, and your freedom expands. Through amnesia, it disconnects you from your self and you keep getting released from all kinds of bondage, and your freedom expands. And thus your liberty flowers to such an extent, that should the need arise, your self can be absent. This is the emancipation granted by love.
Complete oblivion is not of use either to Wakefield or you. Even in absence, you cannot really escape life. How long will you remain absent? Will memory allow you your absence? You may wish to live in seclusion, but your memories will destroy it. Wakefield can hide from his life, not run away from it. We seek shelter to hide — even the body is but a site for concealment.
सूत्र:‘प्रेम हमें स्वंतंत्र करता है, समय हमारी हत्या’, गीत चतुर्वेदी, अधूरी चीज़ों का देवता, रुख़ पुब्लिकेशन्स, २०२०
अनुवाद : ऋतुपर्णा सेनगुप्ता
Note: The original essay is under copyright and I don’t have permission to share my translation for publication. Feel free to quote from it or share it (with attribution), but not to reproduce it in publication elsewhere.
Endnotes:
[1] This is a line from Adam Zagajewsky’s poem ‘Little Waltz’ translated by Clare Cavanagh, published in Without End: New and Selected Poems, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003.
[2] The original story mentions a ‘crafty smile’, but I am translating from the Hindi essay, which uses ‘मूर्ख मुस्कान’.
[3] The original quote is: “Happiness is like a butterfly which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you”. This is widely attributed to Hawthorne, but may, in fact, be a misattribution.
