There are lines that, even if they seem full of absurdities, lead our thoughts to very interesting and sometimes unexplored areas. For this reason, it is good that we encourage the exploration of the nonsense: from it we occasionally extract the unprecedented and unexpected, and we may reach surprising destinations, even if this was not the intention of the author in our company. Does it make a difference? Apparently not…
Tag: literature
One Avoids Much Frustration…
One avoids much frustration by remembering that art is also mostly made up of mediocre men, with mediocre inclinations, who learned artistic technique as they would learn to fly a kite or play Sudoku. Thus, the majority distinguish themselves only superficially, when in essence they have nothing superior. So to expect, in each work, the discovery of an extraordinary spirit is simply unreasonable. It is precisely because they are rare that great artists deserve special appreciation.
If It Is Necessary for the Writer to Establish a Link…
If it is necessary for the writer to establish a link with his time, he can only do so by living it. It is inevitable… no matter how hard one tries, one cannot feel a past or future time as those who have lived or will live in it have felt and will feel it. Therefore, one can only have a notion of a distant time, and a notion entirely dependent on the degree to which the writer felt it in the flesh to then describe it to us. In this way, living his own time can be seen by the writer as a mission for the benefit of those who have not yet been born, and therefore it is perfectly possible, and even necessary, for him to find meaning in that which seems unpleasant and importunate: only in this way can he be useful and indispensable to those who will come.
Inaccurate Definitions
Except by mistake, Freud said of misanthropy “a psychic state”; in the dictionary, we find a dull “lack of sociability”. Both definitions are glaringly inaccurate, for they hide the essentially active character of misanthropy. So we need an expert to redo the shoddy work and enlighten us on the meaning of this very special word. Thank you very much. Misanthropy is a sport. In it, two teams confront each other: that of the misanthrope, consisting of himself; and that of humanity, consisting of all other people. The misanthrope’s goal is to avoid humanity, and humanity’s goal is to harass him. The differential of this sport is that its practitioner practices it all the time, and every step of his life can be considered a move. Let’s take soccer as a reference. If the misanthrope, for example, realizing the threat of an approach on the street, pulls out his cell phone from his pocket and pretends to answer a call, or pretends to be concentrated in order not to take part in a stupid conversation around him, he performs something like a dribble. If he misses any social occasion, it is as if he scored a goal. Fernando Pessoa pretended to be ill to miss a family Christmas: an honest goal. A beautiful goal would be the one Karl Kraus scored when, asked on a train if he was the famous Karl Kraus, he answered the stranger with a resounding “no”. Thoreau, moving to a forest to live among wild animals, scored a goal similar to Maradona’s against England in the 1986 World Cup. And so on… With these few examples, one can already see that misanthropy has nothing passive or passing, being much less a “psychic state” than a daily and wonderfully stimulating practice. Thank you very much.