Tag: writing

The truth is that making good verses is difficult: it requires precision, patience, elevation of ideas… whereas, to make so-called good verses, an affinity is enough. It happens that being exotic, in poetry, is sometimes captivating; sometimes the technical novelty amuses and even impresses; however, after a few pages, it ceases to impress and the places inhabited by the creative mind become evident. If there is no ingenuity, if there is no greatness, if there is no depth, if the verses boil down to playfulness and futility, all of this becomes impossible to hide.

The modern poet, adept at the fashionable practices of exterminating punctuation, altering the spelling, ignoring capital letters, drawing with letters, repeating words exhaustively, etc., etc., has to concentrate very hard not to pass for a child or, in more serious cases, for a mental retard. How just a few pages are enough to make one sick of such gimmicks! Then we are left to wonder: what else? Often, we have to conclude that they are nothing more than disguises for an inability to work words in a dynamic and interesting way, showing mastery and making creative use of the resources offered by the language. We end up reflecting on what the Latinists repeat so often, and it seems that intelligence is related to the ability to articulate language…

Although it is not possible to say that there is such a thing as an ideal narrative method, it is admirable to see the author who interweaves sounds and images, actions and thoughts, as if stimulating our whole imaginative apparatus. Such a balance gives a stimulating dynamic to the lines we read, and it seems that a great part of the effects of the work derives from these variations that make the singularities more salient. A static, descriptive scene is followed by a sudden action, which leads to reflections, and so on; that is to say: each passage ends up emphasized in contrast with the previous and the following one; and, perhaps, this is something positive for the whole.

It is with great enthusiasm that I read notes from writers justifying, in this century, the use of ink and paper. It is the arguments concerning productivity that most impress me: for many, the cerebral rhythm seems to fit better with manual writing. I am amazed to note that, for centuries, this is exactly how literature has been made, by this method that is as averse to my way of writing. There is no doubt that there is a certain charm, a certain enchantment in seeing the ink on the paper, in seeing in the handwriting another trace of the author’s uniqueness, in seeing the natural cadence of handwriting, whereby slowly the letters take shape, the idea turns into words, and the mental creation materializes. It is all stimulating. But… what to say? These writers claim that the slowness of the method favors fair reflection and, therefore, more precise words emerge. For my part, I only know writing as a process much more like the destruction and reconstruction of sentences: the mind, aided by the rapid beating of the fingers on the keys, spits out ideas disorderly on the screen; the brain then reasons and goes about ordering and shaping these ideas, which are then rewritten in a more appropriate manner. Every two sentences, one is completely erased and better conformed in a new attempt; at the end of the paragraph, new corrections… So here I am left wondering what I would do if I had to adapt myself to paper and ink: and it seems to me, more than ever, that Kafka’s ever-burning fire is justified.