To Ward Off Madness
the art of expression (ft. William Blake and The Silmarillion)
Someone brought home a book of poems today, illustrated with bold splashes of color.
I sat down and began paging through it, reveling in the beauty of words and pictures alike. Within minutes, I found myself haunted by “A Poison Tree,” by William Blake.
It reads with a rhthym almost like a nursery rhyme, beginning “I was angry woth my friend / I told my wrath, my wrath did end. / I was angry with my foe / I told it not, my wrath did grow…”
(I’d highly recommend spending a minute to read the other three stanzas here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45952/a-poison-tree)
I’ve been mulling over that poem in the back of my mind for hours—anger that dies with expression; wrath that survives, kills (per the rest of the poem), with silence…
It made me think of the story of Túrin Turambar from Tolkien’s Silmarillion. The story of Túrin is one of the darkest within that often-dark book, and it’s one that I had to grit my teeth and suffer through just to get to something else.
But one of the most poignant sentences in all of The Silmarillion, I think, comes within the story of Túrin. Túrin at this point is a captive of the Orcs, and two of his friends, Beleg and Gwindor, decide to rescue him.
They come up upon the sleeping prisoner in the middle of the night and set to slicing his bonds. Beleg accidentally cuts him, and Túrin starts awake. In the dark, he mistakes the rescuers for Orcs, and before he can realize his mistake, he strikes down Beleg, and he dies.
Túrin is free, but with the blood of his friend staining his sword. He and Gwindor bury Beleg, then set off for home.
Gwindor keeps a wary eye on Túrin through their journey. Every bit of the life seems to have seeped out of him, he is grief-stricken but never weeps, he is so silent—he doesn’t sleep, doesn’t eat, doesn’t think…
Desperate to see if he can save his friend from this madness, Gwindor leads him to the Pools of Ivrin, the clearest water in all of Middle Earth.
Then Túrin knelt and drank of that water; and suddenly he cast himself down, and his tears were unloosed at last, and he was healed of his madness.1
I love that the proof of Túrin’s healed madness is that he’s able to weep.
Wracking sobs may not feel like a victory, but they are a feeling, and that’s the point. We humans are designed to feel, to respond emotionally to the world and the people around us.
People controlled by their emotions are unhealthy. I’m not saying they’re not. But what’s even more unhealthy is people who don’t feel emotions—who have fallen into a darkness and silence where nothing, not joy, not grief, can reach them.
Isn’t this the cycle of grief? It begins with shock—which is often silent. Eventually, when tears do come, it’s a sign that the person is progressing, even if their journey remains bitter.
(Depression, too, should be an element of this conversation, though I have less personal experience to speak from. My heart goes out to those who suffer from it.)
Guilt and horror alike (and I believe Túrin is walking through both after the death of Beleg) are numbing. The expression of anything is a sign of healing.
And like Blake said in his poem, the expression of anger can be healing too. Anger that is never dealt with becomes bitterness, digging deeper and deeper. An enemy on the road will not leave until he is met—either alone or in company, but met just the same.
Wounds fester when left untended.
You and I live in a world of infinite sorrows and infinite joys, brimming with injustices and compassion alike. All of these demand responses.
Let us give them. Let us pray that they be the right ones, yes, but let us give them.
Let us tell our wrath to make wrath end; let us weep for our dead til death is dead. And when all is well, and all is well, and all manner of things are well—oh the joy that we will feel then.
J.R.R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion