To be a writer is to write on behalf of, even if it’s on the behalf of herself. It’s to bear witness to her own life and to hold it beneath the glare of her writing. It is to study and prod in an attempt to understand – sometimes even when there is no understanding to be found or claimed – and to call attention to something greater than herself.
***
Consider Miklos Radnoti, a man who wrote poems until he was shot and dumped in a mass grave during a forced march in World War II. Why did he write if not to bear witness to his own life and the men with whom he walked, to find some measure of calm even as he walked hand-in-hand with death, to say “look at this”?
He had no reassurance that his poems would ever be found. They were, but that wasn’t the thought that occupied his mind. He was a poet. Therefore, he wrote poems.
***
Journalists and biographers have a different understanding of writing as witness. They don’t tell their own stories. They tell other people’s stories, and they try to tell them as truthfully and objectively as possible. They hold the position of recorder and reporter.
Sometimes, they use elements of fiction to make their act of witnessing more pressing. They understand readers will not stay for a litany of facts and figures. They must impress upon the emotions. If they embellish their reporting with metaphor and allusions, it’s so that the story will stir the heart, soul, mind, and body.
***
Writers are not the only witnesses. The readers, too, bear witness when they receive the story or the poem. What happens upon that witnessing cannot be foretold, but every writer hopes her words will meet the person who needs them.
That is, the writer desires the act of reading to become more than an act of witnessing. She hopes for comfort and encouragement and, sometimes, discomfort. She knows that the pricking of the heart and mind is the beginning of transformation, of changing from the inside out.