From the moment businessmen, that is, men of money, that is, men who dedicate their lives to grow financially, expand businesses, conquer markets and all the rest, from the moment these men make speeches quoting Marcus Aurelius and Seneca or, as they say, the “stoics,” then the best thing is to burn all the books at once, because they are useless and teach nothing. Marketing is perhaps the most odious of sciences because it has no scruples, because it appropriates everything that appears useful in order to sell. In a good dictionary, it would be described as the art of lying. To see conceptual aberrations such as “stoicism applied to emotional intelligence” is something that could lead to indignation or despair. It does not, however, as long as the world is seen for what it is: a ridiculous and infamous circus.
The Modern Panorama of Cultural Degradation
One cannot help but see the panorama of cultural degradation in which modern society has sunk. Along with the rise of the majority, on a higher plane placed their preferences. The result? High culture despised, reduced to the superfluous. Behavioral precepts dictated by an infamous mass psychology: everyone obligatorily sharing tastes and habits, under threat of punishment. And if access has been, as never before, facilitated, the ease has resulted in a loss of interest in what was once rare, in a loss of value. What to do, seeing this scenario? Against the impositions of numerical force, there is nothing possible: the joint scale of values escapes the individual’s field of action. But this is despicable, like everything that comes from any majority. There remains, however, the need for a cultural reaction with unprecedented violence.
Serious Art Does Not Deliver Pleasure to the Artist
Serious art does not deliver pleasure to the artist. To say that is to repeat the obvious… Kafka is the model of the serious artist: Kafka, the writer who burned almost everything he wrote and who lived as a complete anonymous. What did art give him? Nothing, but affliction. Anyone who thinks art delivers any kind of contentment is completely unaware of it. The artist works for dozens of hours: he creates the work. And then, what does he do? or even: what good does the work do him? At first, serious art does not sell—and it is an insult to think that it is made to sell;—then, it is a joke to imagine someone like Kafka satisfied or contented by glimpsing what he has birthed. Kafka certainly reread his works, which is why he burned them. A serious work, once created, repulses the artist; once created, it has to disappear from his field of vision. For the rest, there is what art delivers: endless hours of bitterness and a final disgusting judgment. Like Kafka, it is to leave unpublished the work of a lifetime and to order in a will: “Burn everything that is left of me!”.
The Great Artist Does Not Simply Recreate Existence
The sharpest dividing line between inferior and superior artists separates those who make art for fun and those who convey through art a judgment about life. The great artist does not just recreate existence: he bluntly exposes a judgment, he strips himself bare in prose or verse. He chooses the theme, builds an arc visualizing its effect, subjects the whole to a feeling or impression, impregnating the creation with a state of soul, a feeling coming from his judgment. This is why there is artificial art, weak art, which neither moves nor convinces. There are protocol artists, who play around and limit themselves to copying models, who make art out of vanity, who follow trends, who, unable to make a sincere personal judgment, make art thinking about pleasing.