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.
Tag: literature
If Something Is Published, It Will Be Read
If something is published, it will be read: this is an inevitable reality. But it is good to think that this will never happen, because then one can create with tranquility and independence. There is something beautiful and solemn about this silence that accompanies the creation and, more often than not, the reception of a work. It is an illusory but extremely stimulating silence, and has been present in most of the great works ever conceived. If he thinks of the natural breaking of this enchantment, the artist will judge it best never to publish anything, and therefore should not do so: he should allow himself to be deluded, and enjoy the stillness as if it were guaranteed and eternal.
Great Art Springs From a Non-Artistic Motivation
Great art springs from a non-artistic motivation; great art is what it becomes after being shaped by the artist. Making art for the sake of making it can only beget lesser art, and the examples are so abundant that it is correct to say that superior art will always be, to a greater or lesser extent, autobiographical. One does not need to know Shakespeare’s biography to know him, since his work proves what issues his mind was occupied with while he was alive. Shakespeare would not be who he is if he conceived his plays from the artistic effect he intended to produce; just as Dostoevsky would never have the same vitality if he wrote novels from “artistic motives”. Art is the form given to a motivation that does not require an artist to manifest itself—or to understand it.
Doctor Faustus, by Thomas Mann
The main problem with this work is expectation: it is the novel of an author who, twenty years earlier, published The Magic Mountain. We expect, then, that these two decades will be reflected in maturity and higher altitudes—something that does not happen, Mann seeming instead to have come down from the mountain. Doctor Faustus is a fine example of the authentically German defects: it is a work of almost fifty chapters that would be much better and more powerful if summarized in three. Its climax consists of the invocation of the devil, a character that is always interesting in itself. If the work was reduced to this moment and its consequences, perhaps we would have a different impression; but Mann makes sure to bore us with a few hundred idle pages. What to say? Carpeaux compared this work to Hermann Hesse’s The Glass Bead Game, saying that both authors took refuge in music. But oh, how different! It seems impossible to compare them without leaving Doctor Faustus completely humiliated: this is a work devoid of elevation, boasting a mediocre thoroughness, as written by the bourgeois who entertains himself by displaying useless knowledge and writes as a hobby. What a disappointment! It seems inevitable to imagine Mann, in his luxurious mansions, overcome by a boredom similar to that of the old Indians, unable to perceive himself fading the more he allowed himself to “take refuge.” It hurts to see him in this great writer…