A literary genius is he who manages to capture and express, in his own way, the inner nature of things. He is the author whose work, upon first reading, evokes that sense of rediscovery Lavelle speaks of, which seems to shed a new light on something we already knew but that lay hidden within us. Then, through that unique and memorable expression, we definitively claim it as our own. Only the truly great can provide this kind of experience.
Tag: literature
There Is No Salvation for the Reader Who…
There is no salvation for the reader who, upon first encountering Dostoevsky, is not filled with the highest admiration for this man who, in desperate circumstances, grasped and managed to express much of what lies deepest within the human soul, with unparalleled intensity and originality. Nothing can be expected of anyone who, faced with this unique and obvious artistic achievement, does not turn away forever from the sterility of that kind of criticism which regards form as the true hallmark of high literature. Anyone who is more impressed by this or that narrative technique, by this or that rhetorical device, by this or that structural organization of the text, than by the exceedingly rare insight of true genius, deserves nothing but compassion.
Biographies, and Especially Autobiographies…
Biographies, and especially autobiographies, of great men hold a fascination that is hard to match. This is particularly true of those in which the impossible becomes a fait accompli, convincing us that it happens and can happen. That is why it takes a great deal of effort for them to become tedious. More often than not, they convey that perfect and fundamental notion that there is meaning in the whole, something that, if not grasped, is what brands a biography as mediocre. Fortunately, such biographies do not make for good stories, and we rarely have to endure them. On other occasions, we find ourselves facing pages we cannot bear to put down.
Cioran Rightly Recommended That…
Cioran rightly recommended that anyone experiencing a fit of rage toward someone simply take a piece of paper and a pen and write down a few dozen insults: “He’s a pig, a scoundrel, a criminal, an animal….” The rage passes. If it does not pass, it diminishes dramatically, and putting it down in writing brings about a kind of release. Now, what happens with anger also happens with anguish. But the processes are different. Anger dissipates with the frantic, dizzying outpouring; it dissipates through the way one writes. Anguish, on the other hand, dissipates, at least in part, through rationalization. It is always the same: evoking it seems to intensify it, plunging the mind into a painful process; yet, little by little, as one describes how it operates, it loses its strength, as if understanding were neutralizing it. In the end, one is left with a text: there it is, laid bare, perhaps very unpleasantly; but it has indeed diminished.