He worked on this journal day after day for twenty-five years, searching for words with which to express himself, sometimes putting in an entire day to write just half a page. He called his journal “The Story of a Terrible Brain Injury” but later changed it to “I’ll Fight On.” This work caused him no end of despair, but the hope that had impelled him to write carried him along.
Although he learned to write quickly and automatically, this was a far cry from being able to express his ideas in writing. To do so he needed words and these did not come easily: he had to rack his brain in order to put together a sentence that would convey his idea. In the beginning, he did not know how to start or how to link one sentence with another. He would struggle for weeks on end, ask for advice, or try to turn up the right words himself:
I spent weeks thinking about what I wanted to write and how I would do it, but my sick brain couldn’t remember the right expressions. I tried to figure out how you write a letter—mainly how to begin. I asked people about this, and I tried to find out about it in books. But somehow I couldn’t begin, and after worrying about it for days I got a splitting headache.
To show you how confused I was, I sent my family a letter saying: “Greetings from Kazanovka” even though I was still in the hospital. They must have had quite a shock reading that, figuring my brain had really taken a beating, and wondering what was up with me.
I wrote very few letters because I really didn’t know how. As usual, I tried to write automatically, without thinking, but sometimes I couldn’t read or understand what I’d written and confused the verbs I used to link parts of the sentences together. Even a short letter took me an enormous amount of time to think through. Some mysterious power prevented me from writing even a simple letter to my mother. Why, I just don’t know. But I finally got to the point where I could write a letter even though it would sometimes take a day or even more than a week for my sick head to “think it through.” I’d wrack my brain trying to remember how you write to someone. And I got so exhausted from this, my mind worked more slowly.
Suppose, rather than write a letter, he tried to retell a story he’d been read—a short fable like those one reads to second-grade pupils. Naturally this was simpler: the ideas were already expressed so that he had no need to hunt up words or think about how to begin. Yet even this proved difficult. Though the meaning was clear, the ideas familiar, how was he to write a sentence when he had hardly any vocabulary at his command? Sentences can be fairly complicated; they require a knowledge of punctuation and grammatical construction that would be difficult, if not impossible, for him. Disjointed phrases and clauses were all that occurred to him; from these he had to select the right words and try to compose sentences.
Suppose he tried not to retell a story but to describe what had happened to him. What if he wrote his own story about a terrible brain injury, described his handicaps and his past and present life, to formulate and render coherent the problems a man faces when his world suddenly disintegrates. Naturally this would be incomparably more difficult; he would have to collect those fragmentary recollections, provide some sense of continuity, and—what was most difficult—write sentences that added up to a logical account of things. This seemed almost impossible, yet he must have thought there was some chance of succeeding when he undertook this exhausting, colossal job.
I set to work writing. I decided to devote parts of the journal to the periods I spent in different hospitals. At first these were the only facts I had. I tried to remember whatever I could with that battered memory of mine and write it as a true story, just as a writer would. But when I started, I realized I’d never be able to do that since I didn’t have enough of a vocabulary or mind left to write well. I’d get a faint idea of how to describe the beginning of the attack I was in but couldn’t remember the words I needed to do it. I’d try to dig these up from my mind but I’d spend ages hunting for the right words. I had to remember and turn up words that were at least fairly similar or close enough to what I wanted to say. But after I’d put together these second choices, I still wasn’t able to start writing until I figured out how to compose a sentence. I’d go over each sentence again and again in my mind until it seemed like a sentence I’d heard or read in an ordinary book.
But it was so hard to write. I’d get an idea of how to describe the moment I was wounded and the period right afterwards, when my illness began. At last I’d turned up a good idea. So I began to hunt for words to describe it and finally I thought up two. But by the time I got to the third word, I was stuck. I’d rack my brain trying to remember. Hold on, I’d think, I’ve got it. But before I could manage to write it down, it was gone, along with the other two words I’d had such a hard time remembering. I’d try to dig up another idea and find suitable words for it, and I’d write these down on various scraps of paper before including them in my writing—I’d try to clamp the words to the idea as much as I could. But what a torture it was. I’d always forget what I wanted to write, what I had just been thinking of the minute before. Minutes would pass and I wouldn’t be able to remember how far I’d gotten.
So, before I could go on and write my story, I had to jot down various words for the names of objects, things, phenomena, ideas. I’d write these down whenever they came to me. Then I’d take the words, sentences, and ideas I’d collected in this way and begin to write my story in a notebook, regrouping the words and sentences, comparing them with others I’d seen in books. Finally I managed to write a sentence expressing an idea I had for this story of my illness.
When I was almost sure a sentence made sense, I’d write it on a piece of paper (a newspaper or pad). And if I was convinced it was more or less fit to be read or heard, I’d write it in my notebook. Then I’d go on to the next sentence, each time rereading what I’d written, even though this was hard for me to do. (I could only read letter by letter what I’d just written automatically.) But this is the way I managed to get a few sentences written. I couldn’t continue until I’d read over two or three of the preceding sentences. I had to do this in order to know what I was going to say next. Otherwise I simply couldn’t write—that’s how bad my memory has become.
I’ve repeated the same points over and over again in my story and may do it again, because I’m always forgetting what I’ve written and what I still want to say. So often I forget something important, I just overlook it.
I can only write and keep a small amount in mind at a time. I try to strengthen and fasten these ideas so that they’ll finally “stick” in my mind.
I work on this story about my illness from morning until five in the evening while my mother and sisters are out working. When they return, I have to quit since we live in a very small apartment and noise or conversation prevents me from writing. I have to be alone to do this.
Sometimes I’ll sit over a page for a week or two. I have to think about it for a long time, slowly considering what I want to say and then comparing various kinds of writing so that I can figure out how to express myself.
I wanted terribly to write this story but I worked so hard at it, I finally felt sick—both from my head wound and the endless job of writing about it. It’s been an enormous strain (still is). I work at it like someone with an obsession.
Years of exhausting work began, during which the effort to express himself became no simpler. But he reconciled himself to this and would sit at his desk all day stubbornly hunting for words, frantically trying to grasp them and put them into a sentence before the idea escaped him. And he did all this just to write ten lines a day, occasionally a page.
By the third year I added some things to my story and decided to rewrite the whole thing. Except that I noticed my mind worked even more slowly during this time so that sometimes I couldn’t even write half a page in a day. Or I’d spend the whole day thinking and not come up with any of the ideas I wanted to write next. Sometimes I’d spend several days thinking about them and still not write anything. I just didn’t seem to have the strength, memory, thoughts, ideas—they’d slipped my mind, they were buried in amnesia.
For some reason the last part of my writing dragged on for months, and there didn’t seem to be any way to finish it. I tried to finish this story three years after I began. But somehow it gets harder for me to write each year and remember all that happened. My head gets duller all the time and I forget all the details of my illness—details of my past and present life.
But I don’t want to give up. I want to finish what I’ve begun. So I sit at my desk all day sweating over each word. I can’t think of any other way out of my situation—that is, any way to remember and express what I want to say. Sometimes, when I get up from the desk, I have to grab for a chair since I suddenly feel very dizzy. It’s as though I’ve been turned upside down a few times along with the desk, chair, the whole building—whirled round and round. Of course, I don’t sit and work on this story every day. If I do spend a whole day at it, the next day (or two or three) my head aches so badly, I often have to stay in bed (the pain is easier to take lying down). And sometimes I have work to do around the house.
The years dragged on. Stacks of notebooks piled up on his desk—at first, thin books he put together himself out of yellow paper, then thick gray notebooks he used after he sent the first batch off. He later changed to even larger notebooks in oilskin covers. By this time he had written a thousand pages, and when he had finished another thousand, he started over again, trying to express himself better and more fully. He started this story before the war ended and continued work on it for twenty-five years. One would be hard put to say whether any other man has ever spent years of such agonizing work putting together a 3,000 page document which he could not read. Why, did he do it? What was the point?