The Essayist's Notebook

The greatest temptation facing the essayist is not direct dishonesty but vanity. A beautiful sentence can become more attractive than the perception from which it arose. When that happens, fidelity to experience is quietly replaced by fidelity to appearance.

The myth of Cassiopeia offers a useful metaphor. Cassiopeia boasts of her beauty. It is her daughter, Andromeda, who suffers the consequences. So it can be with writing. The beautiful sentence may be Cassiopeia. The thought may be Andromeda. The sentence boasts. The thought suffers.

The writer becomes enamoured of a phrase, an image, a cadence, a turn of language. The sentence draws attention to itself. It shines. It asks to be admired. Meanwhile the perception from which it arose is left chained to the rocks. The question for the essayist is therefore not merely, “Is this well written?” but “Is this faithful?” Beauty is not the enemy of the essay. Vanity is. A beautiful sentence that remains faithful to experience serves the thought. A beautiful sentence that seeks admiration for its own sake abandons it.

Perhaps this is one of the disciplines of essaying: to remain willing, when necessary, to sacrifice the better sentence in order to preserve the truer one. For the essay is not a performance of intelligence, but an attempt to encounter experience de bonne foi, (in good faith).

The task is not to make the thought beautiful. The task is to ensure that Andromeda does not suffer for Cassiopeia's vanity.