I write a short story with coldness and dryness in mind, and I notice that I am already becoming an expert in this kind of narrative that does nothing but arouse disgusting feelings. I deprive it of any color, any liveliness, any emotion. I also forbid exclamations: I make astonishment an outsider. One word to describe the scene. Scarce adjectives. The arc of action, naturally, cruel. I finish the work, and the result is astonishing. I immediately think of Swift. And I then imagine myself banished from the Human Race and defamed for centuries of centuries.
Tag: literature
The Cemetery of Great Works
I stand here, thinking, about the size of the cemetery of great works. By a natural tendency, the greatest artists are drawn into isolation and, by an equally natural consequence, remain mostly anonymous. Some—would be many?—end up being rewarded by history. But what about the others? how many would there be? I have never had the opportunity to enter an old library; if I had, I would be obliged to estimate the proportion of anonymous on the literary shelves. Not that there is any justice in this world, nor that one should write aiming at any award, but a brief reflection on the aforementioned cemetery makes my mind completely black. To think of the effort of a lifetime, the courageous stance and endurance, hard-fought, wasted… useless like everything else… I think about it and cursing the world feels like an obligation.
Psychological Variations
It is interesting to note how the psychology of great artists varies to extremes. In common, their sincerity. But how they differ, for example, in the vision they have of their own work! On one hand, examples such as Kafka and Flaubert, in whom the work seems not only bad, but it hurts them, it afflicts them to have to create it and to see it, because they are guided by something like a necessity. On the other hand, there are figures like Nietzsche and Pessoa, where the discouragement in front of the mirror not only seems non-existent, but often we notice a striking immodesty. What to conclude? It is evident that great art is a destination to which multiple paths lead.
The Book of Disquiet, by Fernando Pessoa
I reread this formidable The Book of Disquiet and feel compelled to toast it with a few words. Impresses not only its originality, but also the poet’s unique ability to sustain the atmosphere that is characteristic of him. Alternating descriptions and thoughts, revealing an entire inner universe of a very ordinary “bookkeeper’s assistant” from Lisbon, there are three hundred and fifty harmonious, rhythmic pages that express a meditative mental state and a very refined perception. The poet manages to be acute, powerful, and sometimes cruel without seeming so, in a prose so beautiful that it blinds itself against any repulsive sentiment and soothes the reader’s spirit. Great art, great philosophy, immortal pages. Hail, Pessoa!