In October 2016, Susanna Clarke found herself in a hospital ward, battling a mysterious crisis after 11 years of chronic fatigue syndrome. Unable to eat and trembling violently, she faced a consultant gastroenterologist who asked, 'How do you feel?' Her reply—'very ill'—was deemed insufficient. 'Can you describe it?' he pressed. She couldn't. The anguished, burning sensation that consumed her body had no name, leaving her, a prize-winning novelist, frustrated and angry.
The Limits of Language in Illness
Clarke echoes Virginia Woolf's observation in On Being Ill that 'language at once runs dry' when describing pain. She wanted to say, 'I feel like I am about to fall off the world,' but knew such a metaphor would be useless to a doctor. Illness, she argues, blends physical, emotional, and spiritual strands that defy easy description. Woolf's essay notes that 'all day, all night the body intervenes,' yet speaks in a language we struggle to understand.
Clarke draws parallels to Julian of Norwich, who, at age 30, experienced visions during an illness and spent the rest of her life distilling them into two written versions. For Clarke, illness reveals the inadequacy of words, but also the desperate need for narrative.
The Freedom of the Invalid
In Woolf's essay, the invalid floats like a stick on a stream, indifferent to the bustling world of clerks and lawyers. Clarke found a similar insight: a world of endless beauty exists regardless of human awareness. While Woolf saw this as evidence of the universe's 'divine heartlessness,' Clarke's character Piranesi sees it as proof of a universe 'intensely bound up with its creations.' Piranesi's mantra—'The Beauty of the House is immeasurable; its Kindness infinite'—reflects Clarke's own perspective.
Illness also grants intellectual freedom. Cut off from societal obligations, the invalid can read Shakespeare anew, unshackled from others' opinions. Clarke recalls Kathy Acker (or another writer from the 1970s) who wrote at night to escape others' thoughts.
Narrative as Cure
Clarke emphasizes the power of storytelling in illness. A young woman in a discussion group once said she couldn't get better until she could tell herself a story about what happened. An elderly woman attributed her neck aches to sitting in a draught, giving herself a sense of control. For chronic illnesses like fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, and long Covid, where doctors are often at a loss, narrative becomes essential.
Clarke admits that as a writer, she can produce countless narratives: a revenge tale blaming publishers, a zoological story of Lyme disease from a tick bite, a fairytale of fairy revenge, or a childhood-adversity narrative. She reflects on being told as a child that she didn't deserve success, a message that resonated with other girls from her comprehensive school in Bradford. That school produced only one other writer, Andrea Dunbar, who died at 29 from a brain haemorrhage possibly related to alcoholism. Clarke's best friend, a talented musician, died before 40. 'From one point of view, I got off lightly,' she says.
A New Narrative of Safety
Clarke now explores therapies like pain reprocessing, somatic tracking, and polyvagal theory, which suggest that chronic illness may stem from a primitive part of the brain detecting danger and producing symptoms. The story of a dangerous world can be countered by a new story: 'You are safe.' Her current narrative is one of retracing her steps through the labyrinth of her body to return to safety.
This essay was originally commissioned for the Charleston festival.
