Although the Eastern explanations for the extreme discrepancies in the conditions under which beings are born on this earth seem very reasonable, it does not seem to make sense that a psychopathic murderer is reborn a saint, or the other way around. In other words, where is the link that unites such different natures? It is very difficult to accept the doctrine of karma when we see individuals paying for acts that they would not be capable of committing. If the same essence has to manifest itself in different circumstances, something of itself has to subsist in order to be identifiable, that is, to be itself in a different circumstance. It does not seem plausible that, in each life, the same being develops a temperament that bears no resemblance to what it once was. If this is so, what, then, defines it? And how to admit the supposed “spiritual evolution” through which it must pass, if in each life, unrecognizably, it returns to square one? To these questions, the answers do not seem satisfactory…
The Poet Easily Becomes a Good Prose Writer
It has been noticed that the poet easily becomes a good prose writer, while the opposite hardly ever happens. Compared to prose, poetry is so much more difficult that the first seems almost funny to the poet. To compose verses, one must first be in a propitious state of mind, that is, in a state of mind that allows one to concentrate entirely on the composition. Dispersed, the mind does not make poetry. Then, the slowness in composing, the technical difficulties, the large number of elements that must be harmonized in the creation, all this, over time, accustoms the mind to a patience and discipline that, for prose lines, is far beyond what is necessary. One does prose by force; fluid and natural prose. The simple movement of the fingers is enough to stimulate mental creation which, as if by automatism, registers itself as it is being created. How different it is to write poetry! The prose writer who is used to this almost therapeutic ease, if he risks composing verses, will find something very, very different…
Verlaine Seems Like a Dostoievskian Character
I go through a volume of Verlaine and the impressions blend to a point where it is impossible to risk any conclusion. All this innate irreverence, this indecent biography, these lines that mix ecstasy and fatigue, this terribly disturbed soul… Verlaine seems like a Dostoievskian character on the verge of madness. And how well he writes! It is as annoying as natural that his work, that is, the work of a deviant artist, has resonated so strongly, especially among the countless deviants who claim to be but will never be artists. But is undeniable the talent with which Verlaine represents, to say with Carpeaux, his “musical sensations”. A comparison with Villon is imperative, and recognition is equally imperative. Great artist!
Miraculously Special
To notice the unfathomable extension of the universe, the scales that can only be represented by mathematics and that the mind itself is incapable of conceiving, all the distances, magnitudes, the number of stars that border infinity, and before all this, in something less than a point, invisible and insignificant, to notice that there reside beings provided with consciousness,—apparently the only ones,—capable of identifying themselves within this unlimited whole. It is an amazing contrast. The mind, if it reflects on it carefully, will end up judging the human condition as miraculously special. A lure? Perhaps. But, indeed, it is what it seems…