It is impressive to note the ever-present interest in contemporary literature, found even in authors who are aware that great literature is, by definition, timeless. To note that, while there are dozens of centuries that will not be absorbed, thousands of works that will not be read due to lack of time, interest in contemporary works still thrives, and contemporary works attract attention that the majority of secular works, already consecrated by the test of time, do not. How to explain why the opposite does not happen? How to explain that what is common is not an almost desperate desire to absorb the essentials of these tens of centuries and thousands of works? There seems to be no rational explanation for any of this.
Tag: literature
Once, a Few Years Ago…
Once, a few years ago, I was told that there was a piece of music whose weight was so tremendous, so dark and so dramatic that it seemed to contain something infernal. It was Prokofiev. I recognized the music immediately and smiled. Then, to make it clear that there was nothing exaggeratedly tremendous, dark or dramatic about it, I played a track from the Réquiem. At the first note, astonishment and certainty, opened up by an overwhelming contrast. The same feeling was repeated last night when, after four years, I returned to my favorite novelist, to the author to whom I have devoted the most hours and from whom I cannot separate myself. On the same day, I finished a work by Thomas Bernhard, a work in which the same technique is used exhaustively to express psychological tension, affliction, restlessness, despair, and who knows what else. So, Dostoyevsky. No need to say anything more.
Tolstoy and Dostoevsky’s Superiority
Tolstoy and Dostoevsky’s superiority over other novelists is not technique and has nothing to do with technique, which shows that, in literature, it does not take precedence over artistic motivation, which is the essence of a work. What we notice in the novels of both writers is that, when we read them, we feel entirely absorbed by the narrative and an infinity of ideas move through our mind, but never those related to the artifices of narration, which go unnoticed unless we set out to analyze them exclusively. They are both superior because their motivations are superior.
Literary Idolatry Endures and Ceases Just Like All the Others
Literary idolatry endures and ceases just like all the others: it endures through ignorance, and ceases the moment the idolater realizes that the idolized does not fully conform to his individual convictions. That is why it easily turns into hatred in the most fanatical minds. The other path is that of maturity, which prescribes understanding that a great author will never entirely conform to our thinking; otherwise, he would have nothing to teach us. But how difficult it is, oh, how difficult it is for man to put aside his vanity and recognize in the other the different, how difficult it is to admit and accept the greatness that does not bow to the dictates of his convictions! In short, it’s the usual lesson: great authors are as they are, not as we would like them to be.