In poetic creation, there are perhaps only two pleasurable moments: ideation and, of course, completion. The first comes down to illusion, the second to relief. For the rest of the process, there is nothing but struggle and more struggle. We get one verse right, but the satisfaction of a moment disappears in the face of the need to get the next one right. We get the idea right, but the verse lacks rhyme; idea and rhyme match, but the rhythm is off-putting. And so on, plus the need to find words that, when accurate, do not fit the needs of the verse. The process would resemble the assembly of a jigsaw puzzle, were it not innocuous matter to be concatenated, were it not a hobby whose success or failure exempts the practitioner from existential consequences.
There Are Ideas That Mature and Ideas That Time Makes Rot
There are ideas that mature and ideas that time makes rot. All of them, however, seem to benefit from time, with the exception only being those that burst forth and demand immediate transposition onto paper. But these, if properly analyzed, may not be ideas at all, or just ideas, but passing states of mind that, once wasted, may never return.
Patriotism and Anti-Patriotism
If one thing is certain, it is that patriotism and anti-patriotism go beyond the realm of rationality and are based above all on temperament, which is shaped primarily by experience. In short, a patriot is someone whose sense of belonging manifests itself, while an anti-patriot is someone who feels out of place. They are different psychological attitudes, based on different sensations, and that is all they are: psychological attitudes arising from sensations.
The Practical Man and the Thinking Man
Thomas Bernhard, in Extinction, makes a very sharp reflection on what can be called the practical man and the thinking man. According to his reasoning, the practical man hates idleness and usually identifies it with the thinking man. However, the practical man, unaccustomed to thought, only conceives of action as practical action, and therefore cannot understand the absence of practical action as anything other than idleness. But the truth is that idleness does not exist for the thinking man, because it is precisely under the appearance of idleness that he experiences his states of greatest excitement. This, however, is far beyond the comprehension of the practical man. The curious thing about all this is that, in fact, it is precisely the practical man who slips into the idleness that he hates so much: incapable of thinking, only for him does the absence of practical action mean genuine and absolute inaction.