Since November, I’ve been going through and writing about each of the original songs from the Red album (and why they’re all fantastic). Somehow six months later, the only song I have left to tackle is “All Too Well.” It’s a daunting task. The album’s track 5 – the place held for the most heartbreaking song – “All Too Well” is widely regarded as Swift’s greatest hit. According to (Tay)lore, Swift wrote the song on the Speak Now tour, while she was reeling from her break-up with Jake Gyllenhaal. Rumor has it that she sat down with a guitar during rehearsal and somehow spun up a ten minute song about the short-lived relationship and agonizing breakup (which later got cut down – the full 10 minute version was released as part of the re-recorded album last November) .
“All Too Well” is a lyrical masterpiece that reflects on the pain of remembering and idealizing moments from a romance that’s ended. Framed as a collection of memories from the former relationship– for example, “We're singing in the car, getting lost upstate/ Autumn leaves falling down like pieces into place/ And I can picture it after all these days” – the song characterizes the moment as an acutely nostalgic memory with the reminder, “And I know it's long gone and that magic's not here no more/ And I might be okay but I'm not fine at all.” With good memories turned to painful reminders of what’s been lost, Swift laments, “I’m a crumpled up piece of paper lying here/ ‘Cause I remember it all/ Too well.”
Overwhelmed by the breakup the song describes, Swift initially described performing “All Too Well” as “painful,” and she would cry as she sang it live. But the fact that the song was so raw quickly turned it into a fan-favorite. Anyone who’s ever lost anything great can relate to the agony of remembering that “All Too Well” poignantly evokes. And as fans embraced the song for its honesty and catharsis – getting tattoos of the lyrics, screaming along at concerts– the song became not just a beautiful description of heartbreak but brought people together over something real and allowed them to enjoy it, so they would cheer along at concerts. As Swift describes the life of the song, though it was born out of heartbreak, “It went out into the world and you turned this song into something completely different for me. You turned this song into a collage of memories of watching you scream the words to this song.”
In this way, the song transformed tragedy into a piece of art that gave expression to people’s pain and created connections so that tragedy ultimately fostered joy, making the life of “All Too Well” an example of eucatastrophe. A term coined by J.R.R. Tolkein in his essay “On Fairy Stories,” the concept of “eucatastrophe” in literature refers to “the Consolation of the Happy Ending.” More than a fairy-tale narrative, eucatastrophe is a concept of framing the narratives we tell about suffering and heartbreak. It is not simply the saccharine happily-ever-after narrative we expect once heroes overcome obstacles like dragons (or heartbreak), but rather is “the sudden joyous ‘turn.’... It does not deny the existence of dyscatastrophe, of sorrow and failure: the possibility of these is necessary to the joy of deliverance.” In other words Tolkein explains that eucatastrophe is not just a narrative that has a happy ending, but one that acknowledges tragedy and ends happily despite the realities of suffering. Just as “All Too Well” does not deny suffering – but rather gives voice to suffering – eucatastrophe demands a story create a reality that articulates that pain is real to make the happy ending all the more happy.
Importantly, the concept of eucatastrophe requires reframing tragic endings, like the life of “All Too Well” does. As Swift notes in the song, how we frame heartbreak matters – endings hurt, especially if you remember them all too well. But, Tolkein writes that eucatastrophe “denies (in the face of much evidence, if you will) universal final defeat.” Framing a story by ending with a happily-ever-after-despite-all-odds asserts that pain of endings is not overwhelming forever, but instead that happiness can define the endings. For example, “All Too Well,” though written about the enduring pain of a romance’s end, turned that ending into the beginning of a masterpiece that helped others make sense of breakups (and became a pop sensation), so that the life of the song was ultimately one of happiness despite tragedy.
Because it’s Tolkein, eucatastrophe is not just a point about framing suffering in art, but also a theological one that attempts to answer the problem of theodicy, or the question of why an all-loving, all-powerful God would permit evil and tragedy. Eucatastrophe asserts a narrative that frames happiness, not defeat, as the end, so it makes evil and suffering seem less significant to the overarching story, merely necessary plot-points. This is the framework T.S. Eliot asserts in “Little Gidding” writing that “All shall be well and/ All manner of thing shall be well/ When the tongues of flames are in-folded/ Into the crowned knot of fire/ And the fire and the rose are one.” Expecting that all shall be well (a phrase coined by the mystic Julian of Norwich), despite the undeniable existence of suffering, evil, and pain, Eliot creates a theological narrative that subordinates heartbreak and promises faith that everything will make sense and all will be well.
For each of these artists, suffering and heartbreak are realities, but not ones that characterize the overarching narrative of life. Instead, their art works to reshape how we remember things that have ended, to demonstrate not, the tragedy of endings, but eucatastrophe that would not be possible without the existence of suffering.