GLR March-April 2023

Losing Touch

A LL DOWN DARKNESS WIDE , Seán Hewitt’s splendid new mem oir, is haunted by ghosts. “Every thing, once you start to look,” he observes, “is haunted.” There are the ghosts of a Catholic faith he abandoned; the ghost of his dead father; the ghost of the gay Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, his poetic mentor; the ghost of the once grand city of

Elias is committed to a psychiatric hos pital for treatment. For Hewitt, the institu tionalization provides him with a measure of reassurance that Elias is safe. “I was scared of having the whole responsibility of his life placed into my keeping.” Neverthe less, he worries that he is being selfish, that all he really wants is for things to be easy for himself. Things get worse: days in

P HILIP G AMBONE

ALL DOWN DARKNESS WIDE A Memoir by Seán Hewitt Penguin Press. 234 pages, $26.

which Elias seems to be making progress are followed by peri ods when something goes wrong, reinforcing Elias’ separateness and isolation. Hewitt worries that Elias may commit suicide. Meanwhile, Hewitt continues his research into Hopkins. He finds the poet’s late sonnets disorienting and painful to read, evi dence of a mind tortured by guilt over his homoerotic feelings for young men, “wracked by the chaos of being himself.” The similarities between Hopkins’ and Hewitt’s younger self fire his imagination. “My mind fused myself and Hopkins,” he writes. In the exclusion, difference, and impossi bility that he finds in Hopkins’ ho mosexual experience, Hewitt wants to find clues to help him understand his own life, which he feels is coming undone. This is also a memoir about a young Catholic man’s depar ture from the Church, and about the lingering harmful effects of a life in the closet. Hewitt takes us on a long excursus to examine his own past, the painful growing-up experi ences of a kid with a secret to keep. Of his annual church trip to Lourdes, he writes: “Each year, there was a new boy I fell in love with, a new boy I knew I could never tell.” As the troubled affair with Elias continues, He witt keeps hoping they will find a way forward, even as he senses that the two must eventually separate. Elias tells him: “If you leave me, I’ll have nothing left. If you go, that will be the end.” Every time Hewitt considers cut ting and running, something tugs him back. “Surely,” he thinks, “if I loved him properly, he wouldn’t be prepared to give himself up.” This cycle of hope and despair unmoors him. For three more years, they make a go of it, until they finally admit to each other that some things just cannot be fixed. One of the many things that make this book so compelling is the way Hewitt plunges us into the psychological drama of being partnered with a mentally ill person without resorting to the deadening weight of psychobabble. Hewitt’s poetic talents—he is the winner of several poetry prizes and was shortlisted for the

Liverpool, “dragging itself up out of its own grave”; and the ghost of Hewitt’s closeted gay youth. (Indeed, in British slang, he tells us, “ghost” is another name for a closeted gay man.) But most of all, the ghost that haunts this beautiful and quietly eerie book is that of Hewitt’s love affair with a young Swedish man named Elias. The two of them meet while Hewitt is on a postgraduate trip to South America. With his tanned skin, long, dark brown hair, and a confident sociability that puts everyone at ease, Elias quickly attracts Hewitt’s interest. He

decides he wants to be near Elias, to “fall under his warmth.” Before too long, they fall in love, quickly achieving the sort of intimacy that would normally have taken a year to develop. Returning home, Hewitt can’t focus on his work. In a few months, he’s sup posed to move to Liverpool to begin a PhD. Feeling that what he and Elias had together was “too precious to let practicalities get in the way,” he takes a budget flight to Sweden. He hopes that Elias will be the person to “complement and adjust” everything he himself lacks.

At first, things go well. He meets Elias’ friends, begins to learn Swedish, and basks in the endless sun shine of the Scandinavian summer. During this period, Hewitt undertakes research on Gerard Manley Hopkins and is thrilled by the “bouncing, riotous energy” of the poet’s work. The ecstasy that Hopkins experienced in the ordinary world inspires him, a young poet who had previously tried to survive in the “ruinous safety” of a “sealed, hypocritical life,” to go out and see how beautiful the world truly is. While Hewitt nurtures this new investment in life, Elias begins to withdraw into himself. “Everyone I love will leave me,” he despondently tells Seán. On his 27th birthday, Elias disappears. When Hewitt finds him, Elias confesses that he was contemplating suicide. Hewitt realizes that everything has changed. “He was both the man I loved and the person who wanted to kill the man I loved.” Suddenly, all the consolation and joy that Hopkins had formerly given him seems diminished. Philip Gambone, is the author of five books, including the memoir As Far As I Can Tell: Finding My Father in World War II. March–April 2023

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