There are many advantages to publishing small volumes on a regular basis rather than letting the work grow indefinitely. The first is the more tolerable distribution of the revision work. Another, and perhaps the main one, is that one does not know when death will come, and it is good to avoid the risk of having passages published that would never pass the most faulty and inattentive revision, as one sees a lot in Kafka’s Diaries. What irony! Kafka, who loved to label as bad and burn what he wrote, had published in its entirety, with obvious errors and many idle lines, a work that he would probably have thrown on the bonfire. No doubt, it is something that could have been avoided.
Category: Notes
The “Headquarters of Noise”
Kafka, in his Diaries, cheekily names his room as a “headquarters of noise”. He complains about the slamming of doors, the trotting of hurried footsteps, the dragging of robes, the scraping of ashes, the shouting… Oh, my dear Mr. Kafka, it was God who freed you from the sertanejo music, from the mad cursing of referees, central defenders and side-backs! You never knew what it was like to interrupt a composition with punches on the wall, with the heavy heels of an elephant just above your ceiling! To read with the unbearable sound of the drums of a gospel band, memorizing the chants of the cult instead of understanding the lines read! Be thankful, my dear! You lived when there was not yet this mobile phone crap, when churches did not have microphones, amplifiers, and did not set up on every corner, especially yours, no matter how many times you changed your address!…
Productive Afflictions
It is ironic to observe that, in most cases, freedom does not produce good fruits when, on the other hand, the desire for freedom is one of the most potent propellers of the human spirit. Man, in order to be productive, seems to need a state that prohibits inertia out of simple necessity. And all the affliction that comes from the awareness of one’s own dependence, all the psychological torture that springs from this impossible desire for liberation, seem profitable after all! It is quite true that the time devoted to the necessary always seems more than tolerable; but there is no doubt that the mind used to continuous agitation, which draws its action from dissatisfaction with its circumstances, works more and better simply because it has become more active and vigorous—even if for, say, not very noble reasons.
The Man Whose Life Expresses His Inner Motivation…
Zimmermann already noticed, two centuries in advance, what would be proved theoretically and practically by Frankl:
Une forte résolution et ce désir d’atteindre un grand but peuvent nous rendre supportables les douleurs les plus aiguës.
If, on the one hand, a man seized by emptiness highlights his fragility on a daily basis, a man whose life expresses his inner motivation, whose steps seem to him justified, full of meaning, this man seems of an entirely different kind. It is as if he has, all his life, trained himself for war, for deprivation, and for pain. Nothing seems able to shake him. He has erected, with long and patient effort, an impenetrable psychological fortress. Life has become clear to him, and the same sense of priorities that guides him prevents him from succumbing to the less important. What to the first is the end of the line, to him is a new opportunity for affirmation.