All Down Darkness Wide by Seán Hewitt review – a remarkable memoir of love and sorrow in Sweden | Autobiography and memoirs
This extraordinary memoir by the poet Seán Hewitt hinted at himself after making a brutally impersonal discovery. While trawling the internet, he stumbled, in a moment of temporary curiosity, over something he had not known – that a young man with whom he had been romantically involved in Cambridge had died prematurely (there is a non-invasive sensitivity around Hewitt’s decision to let the reader guess what must have happened). He remembers “Jack” (the names in the book have changed) with warmth and in such a strange detail that it makes you feel like you have met him yourself – you can imagine the daring flirtation, bookishness and beauty. And it’s sad to reflect that Hewitt’s elegant assessment – “it was as if he had perfected his art” – could not have been shared by his motives. The insult of learning about Jack’s funeral in this way – and the grief that followed – led Hewitt to think about the context of Jack’s death and others, including himself, for whom homosexuality, even in 21st century Europe, continues to be a love affair. who do not always dare to say their name.
Jack disappears early from the story he made from life and gives way to a young Swedish man – the central figure of the memoir – whom Hewitt met when he traveled to Columbia. Elias is the life and soul of the party: charismatic, bold, seemingly calm in his own skin – with garlands tattooed around his neck. He offers Hewitt bits of Swedish, teasing him for failing to roll his Rs correctly. Again, Hewitt draws in the reader, knows how to charm. He is, before and after everything else, a romantic: “Real life was something that people lived when they were not in love,” he writes. He remembers a night swim just before he and Elias became lovers, and describes “the sea turning in its bed, still too far away to be seen”. This happily underrated line contributes to the stage’s growing erotic charge.
At this point, there can be no hint of what lies ahead. But fast-forward to Gothenburg, months later, and the two men live together. Superficially, everything seems fine except that Hewitt does not realize the seriousness of a change in Elias. He may not see it perhaps because he does not want to or possibly because he is not familiar with clinical depression. But there has been a turnaround, a decline – in step with the seasons. When Elias goes to the doctor for antidepressants, Hewitt privately thinks he is overreacting. A crisis ensues, a panic-stricken brush with death and Elias is admitted to a psychiatric hospital.
As part of the narrative braiding, there is a continuing non-academic tribute to Gerard Manley Hopkins (subject of Hewitt’s doctoral degree). A Victorian poet and priest, Hopkins worked for a time in Liverpool (Hewitt was born in nearby Warrington) and is his literary and spiritual soulmate. Hopkins knew the depth and the ecstatic heights and had to subjugate his homosexuality throughout his life. The book’s title, All Down Darkness Wideis taken from his poem The lantern outside the door and it is striking how Hopkins’ words, excluded from their context, have a disordered intensity, as if they are falling apart in the seams of thought or written in a second language. This will prove to be appropriate.
Trying to convince someone that life is worth living is challenging: listing good things can sound weak, fuzzy, and unlikely. Hewitt’s efforts to strengthen Elijah reveal the limits of the language itself: “Words seemed to sort out the spell of life,” he writes. For someone for whom mastery of words is everything (Hewitt is a wonderful poet) this was amazing. He also struggled with a second language when he learned Swedish. He admits: “I became strangely aware that I could only say the things I had the language for …” After Elias is discharged from the hospital, they translate the worried Swedish poet Karin Boye into English. This is a fascinating company. She talks to – and for – them but there are words “we fought to create new homes for”. Hewitt shows how easy it is for two people (and this can be true even when they speak the same language) to get lost in translation.
Trying to find a cause for Elijah’s depression was “like trying to shoot a cloud with an arrow”. Hewitt explains, “He was both the man I loved and the person who wanted to kill the man I loved.” He is very good at Sweden’s seasonal darkness and how it turns out. Gothenburg in the winter is similar to film noir. He walks back on unsalted paths that are slippery with old leaves and snow. His world is just precarious. Elias has survived but Hewitt is upset about what may have been and explains with touching realism: “It is difficult to account for the trauma of a thing that did not happen.” He begins to experience Elijah’s darkness as contagious – a harmful form of empathy. It takes time to understand that his desire to “fix” Elijah is meaningless. Eventually he realizes how “exhausting” it must have been for Elijah “not to be understood, not heard, that every question is met by an answer.”
All Down Darkness Wide is not about answers. It offers no sparkling comfort and is all the more powerful and influential for it. It’s about getting out in the broadest sense – and that includes the outing of depression. It is also about disturbing the fear of his younger self. And even if it joins a faith of some kind, the stability of the faith is not always available to Hewitt, a former Catholic – as little as it was to Hopkins. He makes no secret of his loneliness as a young gay man in Liverpool and describes that he feels haunted in a park by “a constantly perched observer, ready to sweep” (no more than a winged heron). It makes one wish that he could have exchanged his fears for the line from The greatness of God where Hopkins imagines the Holy Spirit brooding over the curved world with “warm breasts and with ah! bright wings”.