Robertson Davies and Alice Walker: A Review By Someone Who Has Never Read A Single Word They Have Written

Such a delightfully warm and witty man, Robertson Davies seems most definitely to be. He looks so severe, when you first look at his face, but then he speaks, and there is such an effusive warmth, gentleness, sensitivity, good-heartedness, magnanimity, graciousness, playfulness, optimism, compassion, humour and wit, that you realize he’s not severe at all, or in the least. What a truly lovely human being. He reminds me of a male Alice Walker – and hopefully people won’t be offended by that, but you never know, because people are always getting offended about all kinds of things, some with good reason, and many without. But she has all those beautiful human qualities as well. I know these two characters only in the slightest way, but you can see in them from just two minutes of them talking, or thirty seconds, or two, all of these wonderful qualities so vividly shining through their being, in their faces, their words, their expressions and their tone – through their spirit. I know the two only through brief video taped interviews, and not through their writings, but their qualities and their humanity were absolutely clear from the briefest encounter. Now I definitely want to read them both. What wonderful, wonderful human beings. People like that remind me of the goodness in humanity, which I never doubt for a moment, but am always joyously thrilled to rediscover it anew, every time I see it afresh, in someone new, or someone I have known a long time, or anyone at all.

The Zen saying is true: you can tell everything about a person from the way they pour a cup of tea – or do anything at all. Some people make a methodology of hiding their humanity and their being, and that puts a thin film or cover over it, making it sometimes more difficult to see, but usually not very. But with people who are comfortable with themselves, people who have the self-confidence and the self-dignity enough to simply be themselves, they let their being shine through freely, and do not hide, and then the transparency is clear, and the radiance shines all the brighter, and more clearly.

I’m not trying to be flowery or poetic, or to make some kind of pretension. I’m simply describing what I see. And it makes me think, that another of the great qualities of great writers, great artists, or great souls, is that they are delightfully candid – not in a cruel way, but in an honest and human way, and sometimes in a sympathetic way, and sometimes in a playful way, sometimes in an anarchic way, or a humourous way, but always in an honest and candid way. They are the uncarved block, that the Taoists talked of: the have the magnificent quality, of being simple and uncontrived. They simply are, and there is no artifice about it. And that, is their greatness.

JTR,
April 4, 2021