The Promethean Task of Writing Something Worth While

Writing is a kind of sculpture project. Sculpture starts off with a characterless object—a stone, a piece of soap, a stronghold of wood—and ends with, one would hope, a sophisticated artistic display. Writing starts off with the alphabet, and ends with a poem or story or fable or essay. In order for the story to exist, the alphabet must be hammered, sanded, chiseled, and/or scraped by the idea-architect. Some words fall to the floor. Others stay attached to the story. Balance is necessary. What is jettisoned must equal what is kept, qualitatively speaking. No “sophisticated artistic display” is possible without the balance between the words or shards that didn’t make it and the ones that did.

Prometheus. The eagle sure did a number on his liver when he was tied to the stone. Maybe the eagle made a sculpture with it? The myth doesn’t say. We do know Prometheus stole the fire from the gods and bequeathed it to mankind. He stormed the heavens and committed celestial larceny. Man and Woman should be grateful, for the godly fire invigorates the imagination and burns away the falsehoods we carry within.

The Promethean task and the task of writing something worthwhile is one in the same act. A sacred fire, or duende, is essential to writing from the heart and the imagination. When there is no creative fire, the abyss of stagnation roams. Ideas and inklings get brittle and cold. The whole thing is over and done with before it even starts.

The fire the writer steals is from a place deep within the body, the soma. All creativity starts from this ineffable interiority. It is coaxed to the surface by passion, introspection, meditation, and all the things in life that inspire and invoke wonder. Once the creative fire is coaxed from the hidden chasms within, it spills out onto every page. A conflagration of immense profundity and power spreads with every passing word. The duende, or soul, of the work becomes obvious. This is Prometheus’ gift to the craft.

In “Luka and the Fire of Life,” Salman Rushdie uses the Promethean task as his leitmotif. In the spellbinding tale, a young boy, Luka, must save his father, Rashid Khalifa, the Shah of Blah, from an inconscient state of deep slumber. The boy saves his father by entering the Magical World. In the Magical World he encounters Nobodaddy, Khalifa’s self-destructive doppelganger, the Aalim, the overlords of Time, and a host of mythological beings, gods and godesses’, friends and foes. The narrative is rife with clever word play, riddles, and adventures best suited for the virtual environs of video games. In the end, Luka comes back from the Magical World with the fire of Life in an Ott Pot, and saves the day. For the record, Prometheus, or Old Boy in the fabular tale, is one of Luka’s allies.

All of the adjectives, verbs, nouns, and literary devices awriter has at his or her disposal are weak and tepid without soul, fire, wonder, and the Promethean itself. This is why that Old Boy is needed more now than ever. Stories must be sculpted. The heavens must be on high alert for the thief.