God! So much life in these lines! Yet… it is pitiful. A remarkable spirit struggling, eroding and crumbling amidst fifth-rate yearnings. Clouded by passions that divert his focus and sap his energy, Cesare Pavese exposes, in this diary entitled This Business of Living, an atrocious inner conflict that arouses, at the same time, empathy and pity. Terrible, terrible torments; and the motives unjustifiable, unworthy of the poet’s lineage. On one note, the prudence: “maturità è l’isolation che basta a se stesso”, shortly after, the relapse: “la massima sventura è la solitudine”—manifestations of a spirit that has succumbed to the weaknesses of the race. Too bad, too bad…
The Moment When Destiny Makes Its Call
Although it is uncomfortable to assume it,—and even more so to justify it,—there seems to be, in the biography of every great man, a moment when destiny makes its call and, as usual, since we speak of great men, they fulfill their role. It is always possible to identify the emblematic circumstance whose response—the act—results in the concretization of the personality. It can also be added that such a circumstance configures the apex of a biography, the point where individuality is affirmed and distinguished and, since we speak of destiny, one’s fortune is defined. History offers us countless evidences for this unpleasant realization that seems to suggest that the greatness of its characters is limited to accepting, consciously or not, the fate that is reserved for them. Oh, note!…
The Artist Must Use All the Means at His Disposal…
It has been said—by Pessoa?—that the artist must use all the means at his disposal to give light to his own work. Otherwise, the difficulties will not be overcome and, probably, the work will not come out. It is necessary for the artist to build a favorable environment, to mold his life around the central objective; to have a daily schedule reserved for his work, a schedule that represents the core of his routine and to which he arrives every day in his best disposition. This for years, for as long as he lives—always aware, as Pessoa himself was, of inhabiting the present while belonging fully to the future.
The Realization of the Fragility of Life
The human brain, a machine programmed to seek and identify patterns—even where there are none—only under duress admits the conclusions that come from the realization of the fragility of life. It seems unnatural to have as determinant and presumable that which, in an instant, abruptly transforms the reality. The false slowness of time deceives it, the slow change of states seems to lead to a non-existent end—and the machine thus gives birth to erroneous judgments about existence. The unpredictable dynamics of life seem to want to force it to accept that not everything is about cause and effect; but for it, to do so is to confess its weakness and succumb to the irrational.