The relationship between some writers and their illness is difficult to explain. A normal person, without the slightest discomfort, can find all the excuses he needs not to write. If he suffers from an illness, there is nothing to say. So we see not one, not two, but many writers who have not only persevered with their illness for months, years or a lifetime, but who have made the illness itself a source of motivation. This is no small feat, and it is not easy to imagine. There are illnesses that one never gets used to, but it seems that these are the ones that trap you and leave you with no other option.
Category: Notes
It Is Strange to Be Completely Unaware…
It is strange to be completely unaware of one hundred percent of contemporary literary production and to notice that no writer from any country has ever behaved like this. To write, to make writing the center of one’s existence, and never have opened a novel by a living author! Not knowing names, titles, everything! And carry on as if everything were normal… Whether or not this is necessary is an idle question, but it is certainly an attitude that reinforces the feeling of total isolation.
Of All the Languages in the World…
Of all the languages in the world, English seems to be the most deceptive, since it is learned with an ease that completely falsifies its real dimension. The tourist who has learned to order a coffee at the airport believes he has mastered it; but if, by chance, he tries to read a novel by Dickens, or a poem by Milton, Byron or Chaucer, he realizes in a few lines that he knows nothing about the language he has learned. And the curious thing is that, syntactically, English is always the same: the structure of the periods never complicates understanding too much. But literary English is a dungeon into which the foreigner always enters without a flashlight. The words, the infinite expressions, obscure and untranslatable, are like hauntings. It takes a lot of courage to understand it and face it as a writer.
Some Writer Once Made the Wise Recommendation…
Some writer once made the wise recommendation: one work at a time. And there is no doubt that concentrating the mind on a single piece of work can only speed it up, intensify it and be of great benefit to creation. But is it possible to stick to this rule? Perhaps with prose. With poetry, however, the situation changes, and when the planned verses exceed a few hundred, the mind seems to beg for an escape valve into which it can pour lines and lines and experience the relief of fluidity. Without this valve, soon the unproductivity, added to the ideas that accumulate in a closed deposit, begin to torture. For the poet, practicing prose seems psychologically essential.