O'Connor painted a little during her last years of life. She painted a self-portrait and included - of course - a peacock. This is incredible to me, because she was very ill when she painted the very truthful portrayal of herself. She said:
“I very much like the look of the pheasant cock. He has horns and a face like the Devil. The self-portrait was made . . . after a very acute siege. . . . I was taking cortisone which gives you what they call a moon face and my hair had fallen out to a large extent due to the high fever, so I looked pretty much like the portrait. When I painted it, I didn’t look either at myself in the mirror or at the bird. I knew what we both looked like.”
These may appear to be interesting, but random facts about the life of the strange, but profound O'Connor. But they have made a connection for me - a peacock and a self-portrait has helped me understand why the writing of Flannery O'Connor penetrates through the "neatness" of Christianity. She focuses on the grotesque: the terrible, aweful, disturbing images that I at first believed could not really point to God. But she does. In dwelling in the darkness of the gutters of the earth, O'Connor makes her readers look up to heaven in desperation for the Light that she knew - that she intended - they would find.
O'Connor's said her favorite animal, a bird that is meant to symbolize the immortal soul, reminded her of the Devil. This reminds me of Wise Blood; it is a Christian novel lacks joy, peace, love, and hope, but contains despair, defeat, and death. Yet it is still Christian and portrays Truth. How?.....this is what makes her writing powerful, because it is confounding.
The peacock, a beautiful bird representing eternity, made O'Connor think of the opposite of heaven. And she liked it. She was tired of living in the society of simple, clean-cut, seemingly perfect Christianity. It is false, and she portrays it so. Real Christian faith must include the darkness, the Devil, the dirt, filth, and suffering that comes in living in opposition to the world. It's what we were promised; why do we pretend otherwise?
O'Connor graps this like no other author I have ever read before. Suffering was not just an idea to her; it was a reality; it was her life. Her lupus caused her immense pain and hardship throughout her short life, yet she did not run from it or even claim that it was unfair. The statement she made about her self-portrait is shockingly blunt and accepting. She knew she was sick; she knew what she looked like and why. She didn't have to use a mirror, and she didn't try to depict herself differently than she truly was. She did not mind being remembered for her pain, her sickness, her suffering. Neither did Hazel Motes...
Yet while she painted herself as sick, as literally dying, beside her she painted the symbol of the immortal, incorruptible soul. She shows us her uncertain, wavering life next to the certain promise of eternity. She puts ugliness by beauty, suffering by hope. She gives us a glimmer of light beyond the blind eyes, a desire for life behind the outline of the skull.
Flannery O'Connor, instead of being unimpressed, might sincerely say: "That's all I need, a peacock feather."
Kala this went more personally into what I said in my own O'Connor blog to an extent. Thanks for bringing the context of O'Connor's life into the light so that we can better understand why she embraced the novelist style and mood that she did. Great blog as usual.
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