Words are infinitely wise

This excerpt is from an essay, The Writer's Kitchen by Rosario Ferre and translated by Diana L. Velez, which was first published in Feminist Studies (Vol. 12, No. 2, pp. 227-242, Summer, 1986).

Throughout time, women narrators have written for many reasons: Emily Bronte wrote to confirm the revolutionary nature of passion; Virginia Woolf wrote to exorcise her terror of madness and death; Joan Didion writes to discover what and how she thinks; Clarisse Lispector discovered in her writing a reason to love and be loved. In my case, writing is simultaneously a constructive and a destructive urge, a possibility for growth and change. I write to build myself word by word, to banish my terror of silence; I write as a speaking, human mask. With respect to words, I have much for which to be grateful. Words have allowed me to forge for myself a unique identity, one which owes its existence only to my own efforts. For this reason, I place more trust in the words I use than perhaps I ever did in my natural mother. When all else fails, when life becomes an absurd theater, I know the words are there, ready to return my confidence to me. This need to construct that moves me to write is closely tied to my need for love: I write so as to reinvent myself, to convince myself that what I love will endure.

But my urge to write is also destructive, an attempt to annihilate myself and the world. Words are infinitely wise and, like all mothers, like nature herself, they know when to destroy what is worn out or corrupt so that life may be rebuilt on new foundations. To the degree that I take part in the corruption of the world, I turn my instrument against myself. I write because I am poorly adjusted to reality; because the deep disillusionment within me has given rise to a need to re-create life, to replace it with a more compassionate, tolerable reality. I carry within me a utopian person, a utopian world.

This destructive urge that moves me to write is tied to my need to hate, my need for vengeance. I write so as to avenge myself against reality and against myself; I write to give permanence to what hurts me and to what tempts me. I believe that deep wounds and harsh insults alone might someday release within me all the creative forces available to human expression, a belief which implies, after all, that I love the world passionately.

If you have access to JSTOR, you can read the entire essay here.