Ad finerem

I know that fiction and reality are different phrases, different worlds – antonyms. All I want as a writer is to merge them every so often – the same way I ask for present and past to merge in order to grant a human being life to its fullest. The movie, my opinion and thoughts about Peter Pan, J.M. Barrie and the Llewelyn-Davies family are fiction to a remarkable degree. The reality was something else – something astonishingly diverse.

In reality J.M. Barrie was no unwavering optimist, no boy who grew up to be a bigger boy, but a severely conflicted man. He was unbelievingly scarred and burdened by the loss of his elder brother David. In order to grieve he invented his Neverland – where he could see his brother. His admiration and devotion to David became somewhat neurotic. He willed time to stand still, he willed the clock to stop ticking, he willed the crocodile to stop chasing after him. In fact he coped with his own fate and life through his plays, more so in Peter Pan.

Somewhere deep within he was the boy who lost his brother and the childish innocence of the Llewelyn-Davies brothers, their games and fantasies were inspiration to unite the bitterness over his past and the joy and adoration of his present. Result was - is a play that is extremely hard to read and understand even today, though it would be unjust to the unfathomable width of it to pick unconventional and controversial passages just to underline that opinion. Peter Pan is by far not part of the typical children’s literature, but yet again it was a play to show innocence, a play to portray fantasy and fiction – children are able to do that by themselves, grown-ups need to be shown once again.

The real tragedy, however, is that with portraying their lives and their innocence, their adventures and child-like creations he robbed those five boys of their innocence. J.M. Barrie was talented in an astounding way to expose other people’s innermost feelings, fears and wishes and it is the sheer irony of his life and the lives of those he accompanied that triggers this fascination we feel for the play.

He caught innocence and youth for us strangers, showed us distinctively what we lost times and times ago and yet he ruined it for those he loved the most. At least two of “his” boys committed suicide. He captured Neverland for us, for those who will themselves to become innocent and pure once more to experience the wonders of Neverland – he brought it to us.

Undoubtedly, Sylvia Llewelyn-Davies was his muse, the grown-up with a heart of gold, the dedicated mother he sought so desperately after his own gave up on him. Undoubtedly, her boys and Barrie himself were devastated after her death. And at least after yet another blow to their innocence they weren’t able to flee into Neverland any more for they lost all child within along with the public display of their past and the loss of their mother and dear companion. In the end most of them died unhappy and full of remorse, unable to enter their Neverland for it was now a public place for all of us. It’s the irony that displays ever so often in our lives, in our world – the joy and relieve of the masses is built upon the misery of a few.

Ad finerem: Just Believe. - Whenever we let ourselves be child enough, innocent enough we can visit what we have left behind, what we have lost, as long as we keep imagining the existence of Neverland. And following that fact there may be people who will find J.M. Barrie and the little Llewelyn-Davies boys playing with Porthos in Kensington Gardens, while Arthur watches with fatherly pride and Sylvia with motherly affection from their position on the grass not far from them – where they will always be a memory of their own blissful past, forever in Neverland.