What makes information warfare even more abominable than that waged on battlefields is the absence of any war code. Consequently, anything is allowed. What is astonishing is the number of those who have not yet realized that there is, in fact, a war going on in this field. This is mostly because none of those who fight fiercely has published, as protocol demands, a declaration of war. So that those who innocently stand in their way are attacked by a total violence that has no scruple to destroy and admits no amnesty. To crush the adversary, and to do so by any means available, preferably sneakily, so that the aggression will not be identified or, at the very least, it will be impossible to identify the aggressor. It is a war that, in short, has added infamy to pure violence.
Less the Man Than His State of Nerves
Style, says Brodsky, is less the man than his state of nerves. Very well observed! And it is possible to go a step further by saying that there is, in every writer, the man who lives and the man who writes—or, in other words, the man who thinks and the man who acts. Style is, to a great extent, the emotional and psychological effect triggered by the act of writing. The moralist is bitter because it is precisely bitterness that fills him when he writes about what he writes about. Likewise a grandiose style reveals a sense of grandeur. The poet is a feigner, says a verse by Pessoa—but only to a certain extent. Invariably, one can only express what one can feel.
What the Reader Seeks
Brodsky says something extremely true: what the reader seeks in literature is to read about himself. This justifies, on the reader’s part, literary preferences; on the writer’s part, it justifies his success or rejection. If we identify success with popularity, the most successful author will be the most popular, and it is easy to see that to be so, he will have to come closer than the others to the reality of the common individual. What the reader seeks, in short, is a book that could have been written by himself. And that says it all.
Originality Achieves Recognition More Quickly
In art and philosophy, originality achieves recognition more quickly than value. In philosophy, however, original ideas seem to guarantee longevity, and the more original they are, the more surely they guarantee it. The phenomenon is curious, because it occurs in spite of the value of the idea. This one, if original and even absurd, even if refuted a thousand times, always seems to deserve the generosity of a citation. In art, however, although originality makes noise, it invariably wears out with time. In art, a work only endures if, beyond originality, it retains something of value.