All this affliction experienced by the serious writer could be mitigated if it were possible for him to promise and deceive himself, with each new work, that after completing it he would stop writing. Therefore, to see the present work as the last, always. Thus, the illusion of later relief would give strength so that the very painful work of the moment would not afflict, but rather motivate, because it is the last of a spirit that is one step away from rest. Unfortunately, this is not possible. What is possible is to see in dismay how much one still has to do, is to feel imprisoned by duty, obliged to force lines that refuse to come out, and then to fry oneself in a terrible process in which the satisfaction is strange and the result is always the same affliction.
Tag: literature
If Language Is Authentic, It Can Never Be Imitated
If language is authentic, it can never be imitated. But it happens that an authentic author never limits himself to language. This, by the way, is why translations sound so strange: because language is more than just words. The same idea is not the same in two languages, and a literal translation is almost always insufficient to translate it. So a translated work is always another, different from the original. Authentic language, therefore, is the personal vehicle of a personal expression; and even if one tries, it is impossible to copy this entirely individual character that remains impregnated, whether one likes it or not, in the lines of an author.
If a People Had No Distinctive Features
If a people had no distinctive features other than language, this would already be enough to give it an entirely original literature, even if it were limited to remaking what has already been done in other languages. That is to say: if the language is authentic, it can never be imitated, because there will always be something unique about it. But beyond this: the greatest literature will be that which encompasses, in its own language, the widest range of models and themes, and therefore it is more than convenient, but necessary, to rethink in one’s own language what has already been thought of in others, to recreate what has already been created, endowing it, through language, with authentically vernacular colors: this is the only way to build a vigorous literary tradition of universal value.
There Are Sentences That Are Worth More Than Books
There are sentences that are worth more than books, and it is interesting to note how in-depth study is not always the source of the greatest inspiration. There are those for whom a powerful phrase or even a summary resonates with an intensity capable of generating decisive, transforming, and unimaginable consequences. These are cases in which the impact, by its own force, does not require any further analysis or reflection. And then the phrase, assimilated, remains in the mind associated with the flash it carried with it. It is about knowing how to value them.