It was Faulkner, I think, who said that the writer can sleep even on the floor, but needs a decent place to work. The idea is interesting in many ways. First, it shows the need for seriousness in dealing with one’s work; otherwise, it is difficult to do anything of value. Having a “decent” place to work, even if there are no decent conditions in the rest of life, is a proof of priority, of respect for one’s occupation. Psychologically, it is to know that there is the most important moment of the day, the moment for which the routine is shaped and efforts must converge. With this, several problems are overcome. There is another noteworthy aspect: the comfort of a “decent” place confronted with the “sleeping on the floor” is satisfaction for someone who, used to inadequate conditions, settles down in a propitious and stimulating environment. A reasonable chair, a table, light, and silence; a set schedule and a commitment set in stone—thus, excuses arising from mental weakness are burnt away.
Tag: literature
The Creation of Imaginary Friends
As Fernando Pessoa wisely recommended, the creation of imaginary friends, the exercise of mental conversations that would never be carried out in life, the realization of the impossible by the mind, all this, besides the benefits from the infinite novelties, brings invaluable contributions to the organization of reasoning. It is a practice that tests limits, exposes counterpoints, broadens horizons, and fills the need arising from the limitation of experience. The mind is strengthened because it has exercised and learned more, thought takes on more solid contours, and the habit, with time, becomes a healthy, pleasurable, and irreplaceable psychic and existential need.
It Seems That the Traits Placed by Dostoevsky…
It seems that the traits Dostoevsky placed, especially, in the personality of Myshkin would be inconceivable to someone who never observed them acting in real life. Inconceivable because they would seem absurd and unconvincing. But there it is: this innocence that seems to be and is not stupidity, this absolute lack of astonishment, this benevolence without limits, this speech that errs in the choice of words, this acting that is a little shy, a little confused, that seems indecisive and generates so much strangeness… All this complexity that always seems to be what it is not, added to the look of those who know and accept it, without fear, without surprise, without judgment and without reaction, leads those who observe it to a perplexity that logic is unable to explain. Reasoning cannot accept what it sees and, lacking a better explanation, puts everything on the account of folly and absurdity. Myshkin, however, is real, and contrary to the expectations of a race imprisoned in the meanness of spirit, he shows that the human soul, by raising itself up, gets rid of what ties it to the ground.
Happy Are Those Who Discover…
Happy are those who discover that it is not necessary to answer when they are addressed, that it is not necessary to pay attention to those who demand it, that it is not necessary to bow down to the theater of convenience and become a slave to this social game. Happy are the misanthropes, the brutish cave-dwellers, the hermits, the pilgrims, the rebels, and all those who are repugnant to socializing!—for happiness, after all, is not to be a wretch.