Somewhere else entirely - inspiration from a distance

What do Peter Robinson (Inspector Banks novels) and James Joyce have in common with Ernest Hemingway, Oscar Wilde, Victor Hugo, Pablo Neruda,  Isabel Allende and Vladimir Nabokov? Well, of course, you might exclaim, they were all writers, weren't they? So much is true - but they also lived long periods of time far away from their native lands. Peter Robinson, for example, currently lives in Toronto, Canada, but his Banks novels are set in the fictional English town of Eastvale in Yorkshire where he was born. Similarly, Joyce wrote "Dubliners" when he was in Italy and Switzerland.

My thoughts revolve around this question: how far does "exile" influence and inspire the work of writers? I know that my own inspiration for "The Poor Singer of an Empty Day" came from nostalgia for the UK when I was living in Germany in 1997. And I was not in exile! I knew well that, if I timed it right, I could be standing outside my old junior school in Thames Ditton within four hours of leaving my home near Stuttgart.  Conversely, inspiration for "The Schoenbuch Forest" came from that fact that I was back in England and feeling nostalgia for my time in Germany.

Perhaps the fact of being away from one's homeland strengthens that sense of loss and absence that most of us feel as we grow older, that is: loss of or childhood, of parents, of an imagined carefree existence and so on. Writing can, therefore, be a way of reconnecting with a part of your life that seems to be more and more distant.  Being "not at home" may well be the inspiration to write in the first place, that is, writing is a way to reconnect with your culture, your language and your own past. Perhaps here is the most important part of being a writer "in exile." It provokes a state of mind that, in itself, becomes a source of creativity. Feelings of restlessness, of being a foreigner, can be harnessed and used to inspire your stories of Dublin or of Yorkshire.  

Those writers living abroad are, in a way, blessed. You are able to look at your past through the eyes of a foreigner. And those eyes are the eyes of a child or the eyes of the stranger. Perhaps Peter Robinson would not have been inspired to write his stories if he had been living in Yorkshire. Maybe Joyce needed the distance to write "Dubliners." Perhaps Wilde would never have written "The Ballad of Reading Gaol" had he not been in exile in Paris. 

Of course, we will never know for certain how being away from home affects the need to write. But it seems to me that writers transform the experience of being "not at home" into a piece of creative writing that might never have seen the light of day "back home."  

 

 

 

 

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Comments

[TINA]

I am not a writer but can see what you mean - being away from home makes one feel a bit more "raw" in a good way - "open" for all sorts of emotions.

[Christopher Goddard]

Perhaps this process works in reverse, as well. That is: sometimes 'foreigners' seem to see things that 'natives' do not, which may partly explain why so many immigrants (at least to the UK) manage to create successful new lives. But the children of those 'foreigners' would probably not have this facility. I wonder where Salman Rushdie would fit in here - am thinking in particular of "Midnight's Children"...

[robert john goddard]

Absolutely! And it that extends to joining any "foreign" community. For example the new employee in the new company with new boss etc. "Wait till you have been here a few years and you understand how things work before you judge us," says your manager! This ignores those first impressions which can so often be important for the company itself.