The false writer gives up his individuality in order to please, and for this he receives the prize of social acceptance. He is false, firstly, because he does not assert himself, and secondly, because he believes that social acceptance is a prize. How much easier things are for the true writer! He sees the dilemma as a wonderful win-win situation: he affirms himself by displeasing, and thus receives the benefit of social rejection.
Tag: literature
The Least That Is Expected of a Writer
The least that is expected of a writer worthy of the name is to consider as an insult the mere conjecture of these adepts of modern social engineering, who think they have the right and the power to determine how others should express themselves. Because this is exactly what the language police deserve: absolute and utter contempt, which must be extended to the writer who submits to it, who humiliates himself by adapting to the sudden and delirious dictates of half a dozen clowns who believe they are powerful enough to subordinate literary traditions that go back centuries and will go on for many more.
The Fascinating Thing About Literature
Another by Louis Lavelle:
Nous avons plus d’émotion à retrouver dans un auteur les sentiments que nous éprouvons en secret que ceux dont nous témoignons, ceux qui sont en nous en germe que ceux qui ont déjà éclos. Les œuvres de l’esprit ont pour objet un monde que nous portons en nous et qui est souvent invisible à nos propres yeux ; l’auteur qui nous le révèle acquiert du premier coup avec nous une intimité mystérieuse.
The fascinating thing about literature is that it allows us to absorb experiences that we would never have had in life. To a certain extent, it plays the same role as external circumstances, stimulating feelings, reactions and thoughts within us that need a specific stimulus to appear. Understanding grows with the comprehension of new possibilities and, as has been said, we create a bond with the author who reveals them that is difficult to explain.
The Writer’s First Duty
Says Lavelle:
Le premier devoir de l’écrivain doit être de s’élever assez au-dessus de toutes les circonstances de sa vie particulière pour fournir à tous les êtres un appui de tous les instants et les montrer à eux-mêmes tels qu’ils voudraient être toujours.
This duty is perhaps the most difficult, because “rising above all circumstances” involves first understanding them, and understanding how they perhaps fit into the bigger picture of individual existence, and only then, having extracted a crystal-clear meaning from them, is to think about how this meaning can be transplanted to the general human experience. And communicate it! In fact, there is no human experience, no matter how individual, whose meaning cannot be extracted in different circumstances; what is difficult, however, is to see the big in the small, something we have grown unaccustomed to doing.