I have models; models consciously chosen and forcibly incorporated into my literature; models that represent, in my judgment, what is aesthetically best in all genres. But a model is, if anything, an inspiration, an influence for a different creation. I cannot even imagine the feeling of someone like Baudelaire, who found his own aesthetic theory described by Poe. How is it possible? Perhaps it is, here as in everything else, a matter of feeling some belonging, of being or not being able to experience a full identification—a matter, in short, psychological-existential.
Tag: literature
Great Artists Always Survive
Thinking coldly, Pound’s judgment that great artists always survive and always will is dubious. Although time often makes corrections to the fortunes of many authors, it is difficult to conclude that it is an infallible avenger. One need only think of the number of lost works from antiquity—a rather forceful objection. But it is also possible to think of the artists who have never been contemplated. How many would there be?… We are forced to admit that luck is always the determining factor.
Literature Is an Answer
Another by Pavese: “La letteratura è una difesa contro le offese della vita”—I add: not only a defense, but an answer. Perhaps because he did not see it and, at some point, thought that the defense was useless, Pavese resorted to suicide. Suicide only serves as an affirmation for the artist who, for a moment, completely loses hope in art. By killing himself, Pavese renounced his genius, the possibility of recording in literature the uniqueness of his experience; he finally assumed the uselessness of art, its inability to overcome life while filling it with meaning. In short, this is the judgment the poet bequeathed us.
“Heroes” Worthy of Contempt
The way in which, in War and Peace, Tolstoy repeatedly scorns the “military genius” who left Russia destroyed, and all his vile admirers, is an overwhelming demonstration of his nobility and moral high-mindedness. The disservice historians do by idolizing murderous madmen, slaves to the most abject ambitions who made human flesh the springboard for their petty desires, presenting them as superior creatures and models of virtue, is worthy of total repulsion. Such historians, mediocre bootlickers, often find the admirable in perverts responsible for astonishing carnages, and narrate it with the pomp of a patriotism clothed in honor—but they are the same ones who, in life, sell honor for public praise and beg on their knees for acceptance.