Susanna Clarke's acclaimed novels have captivated readers with their richly detailed worlds and complex characters. But behind these words lies a more intimate story – one of living with chronic illness, where the boundaries between body and mind blur and language falters. In an 11-year battle with what she identified as chronic fatigue syndrome, Clarke found herself in a desperate struggle to convey her suffering. Her harrowing experience highlights a profound limitation of language when confronting profound personal pain.
One episode stands out – a hospital stay in October 2016, where Clarke was wracked by extreme weight loss and debilitating physical symptoms, including violent trembling and overwhelming dread. During this time, she had a poignant encounter with a consultant gastroenterologist who asked her to describe how she felt. Her initial response, 'I feel very ill,' was deemed insufficient. Despite her mastery as a novelist, Clarke found herself unable to articulate the 'anguished, pressurised feeling' that permeated her body. This sensation, a blend of burning and falling, was so deeply familiar to her that she was astonished it lacked a readily available name.
Clarke draws a compelling parallel between her own experiences and those explored by Virginia Woolf in her 1926 essay, 'On Being Ill'. Woolf observed that 'let a sufferer try to describe a pain in his head to a doctor and language at once runs dry.' Clarke echoes this sentiment, noting that while medical professionals often require clear, physical descriptions, the patient's experience frequently encompasses emotional and even spiritual dimensions that are difficult to disentangle and convey. She reflects on wanting to tell her doctor, 'I feel like I am about to fall off the world,' recognising its poetic truth but also its impracticality in a clinical setting.
The novelist also discusses how illness can shift one's perception of the world. She found an insight similar to Woolf's, noting that 'there is a whole world endlessly going on, endlessly being beautiful, regardless of whether anyone is there to see it or not.' This perspective heavily influenced her novel Piranesi. However, Clarke differentiates her conclusion from Woolf's. While Woolf perceived this as evidence of the universe's 'divinely heartless' indifference, Clarke, and her character Piranesi, find a sense of 'sheer profligate abundance' in this independent existence.
Clarke's reflections underscore the ongoing challenge within healthcare to fully understand and respond to patients' subjective experiences of illness, particularly those that defy easy categorisation or description. Her narrative highlights the importance of empathy and the recognition that the language of sickness often extends beyond clinical terminology, encompassing a deeply personal and often ineffable reality for the individual.
Source: The Guardian