10.27.09
Posted in Life Betwixt Book Covers at 9:15 pm by Miracle ♪♫
Never Let Me Go initiated me last year into the pensive and compelling realm of Kazuo Ishiguro’s storytelling, and since then, I have hoped to enter this realm more often. Reading The Remains of the Day and When We Were Orphans recently, reinforced what Never Let Me Go forecasted – that Ishiguro will persist as one of my favorite novelists.
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When We Were Orphans traverses the life of Christopher Banks from his childhood in Shanghai in the early 1900’s, on to his orphaned life back in England after both his parents vanish mysteriously one after another, and then to his return to Shanghai as a successful detective with high hopes of solving their disappearances. I have found congruences between When We Were Orphans and Remains of the Day, but revealing one of them would incline such clues into spoilers, so I shall only mention the most evident; that of the noticeable and enormous employment of memory – something Proust bequeathed to our modern novelists, I believe. Yet while maintaining his elegantly painful tone, the distinct compositions of each book are also attestations of Ishiguro’s versatility as an author.
The Remains of the Day explores the nature of “greatness” and “dignity” through the eyes of a butler in post-World War England. When his new American employer generously suggests that he take a drive around the country so he could see the beauty that lay beyond his confined geographic sphere, the reader is propelled towards scenic descriptions and reflections as he recalls his years under grand Darlington Hall and his service to the gentleman, Lord Darlington. Its tale of love is subtly and masterfully weaved into the story, a trait, I have noticed, unique to very few authors.
The protagonist of The Remains of the Day is very admirable in the way he accepts his station in life honourably. In fact, I have not come across a more admirable literary character for quite some time. No wonder they found no one more suitable than Anthony Hopkins to act out the character in the film adaptation of the book, but let me go back to my thread. The book serves as a reminder that whatever our occupations or positions in life, despite all our different liberties and constraints, sacrifices are inevitable, and our actions affect a grander scheme and it is required of us to do even the seemingly trivial things with the best of our abilities.
Aside from acquainting me with historical politics, the “Isighuro Duet” made me ponder on deeper issues in life. Needless to say, I loved reading the books, and Ishiguro is superb, superb, superb.
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Posted in 2009 Medley at 10:34 am by Miracle ♪♫
As if children and education have not amply been my mind and heart’s constant occupation, Misha and I were invited to perform at the Provincial Children’s Congress last Friday. The whole-day affair touched and entertained me greatly and I had to hold back tears when the programme unfolded with orphans singing “God Will Make A Way”. It was such a privilege to be able to share music with provincial kids, most of who did not even know what a violin was.
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It is not seldom that I lament the noticeable stagnation or regression of my musical abilities, but the occasion reassured me that if God still uses me as an instrument to inspire and give hope to those who need it most, then music, even in its humblest form, has given purpose to life once again. God will always make a way… =)
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10.19.09
Posted in Uncategorized at 9:04 am by Miracle ♪♫
He heads back from work each day when the sun is no longer to be found, not even behind the distant mountains specked with coconut trees. In the course of his homeward trips, he would dream of finally outrunning the sun home, but he would always reach the doorstep long after the sun has descended from the heavens to repose beyond the mountains. But the sun, he thought, in truth never ever descends, it is only the earth momentarily turning one of its many faces away from the sun, and the sun, the sun was always home. There was no chance of beating that.
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Then there was “home”. What he currently calls home is a concrete frame of a house lent by a more privileged relative. With a plastic bag in one hand filled with daily necessities and books on the other, what he comes home to, is a kind but powerless mother who his worthless father long ceased to be faithful to, and a little sister – another manifestation of a failing educational system – whom he had to tutor in basic academics regardless of exhaustion from his laborious but minimum-waged office obligations. He prays that a drunk father would not be what greets him the moment he opens the door, although that is not his main worry, for his father is rarely home anyway. Nevertheless, this fact does not spare him from a flying chair hurled violently by his dipsomaniac father every now and then.
He is a man who has seen too much and knows too much for someone in their mid-twenties, but he has ambitions. Among others, ambitions of improving the corrupt state of his country, and earning a lucrative degree, but only so he could provide for his mother and sister and an imagined future family. Yet in a land where education demands a high price, his meager salary and the time his job requires from him are not ideal formulas that could result to the fulfillment of his dreams. In any case, he is a genius forced to live a harsh and ordinary life. He philosophizes about life and everything around him, he strives to repay the goodness of a mother who dutifully raised him despite being a mere high school graduate, he struggles to ensure a future for his sister even without any stark manifestations of hope, and he braves emotional and physical abuse from his father but always regains his dignity every time the sun reappears in the morning, and for this he knows so much.
What he does not know is that he has already achieved his ambitions. What he does not know is that he is an unsung Filipino hero, and what he lacks is a hero’s welcome and a place he could truly call home where he could ponder leisurely of matters such as the sun. The constant sun who is always home.
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10.15.09
Posted in Life Betwixt Book Covers at 10:15 am by Miracle ♪♫
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The perfect writings on Christianity would be those that emphasize the gravity of God’s Word, and the importance of reading it. In so doing, the reader and author would both have a firm basis of the truth of which they claim to hold, and one would know whether the other is still in the bounds of Truth or whether one is relying on his personal speculations and “going beyond what is written”. For what is a more indisputable and abiding basis of our faith than His Word?
For this reason, I find religious writings not altogether futile but also not entirely necessary. The Bible is not destitute that we should seek Godly wisdom from any other source. It is even more ironic how we read more of these Christian books but never read the Bible with the same zeal.
After stating all those things, I hope I will be forgiven and understood when I confess to reading Blaise Pascal’s Pensées for its literary value rather than for matters of faith. By doing this, I was able to embrace what was faithful to the Word and consider, respect, but not always agree with those portions that were labeled as religious but went beyond the gospel truth. Because he is Pascal does not mean his word is always truth but that does not mean we reckon ourselves better than this great man but that we should always examine truth according to the Bible and be very cautious when it comes to such matters. This attitude should not be misunderstood as presumptuous but to accept it as our duty.
Much has been said about Kierkegaard’s Catholic counterpart and the Pensées, and personally, when Pascal laid outlines on how to know God, I think he failed to stress the weight of The Word. On the other hand, reading this has enriched my starved understanding of Existentialism and of how one can incorporate Existentialism in the Christian life. I have always noted how existentialists seem to be the world’s gravest pessimists, but now I perceive that it is because they know the human condition all too well and they are the ones who are brave enough to scrutinize such a daunting subject. Furthermore, what makes the Christian existentialists superior is that they do not end with the discovery of our true state, but with the acknowledgment that we are in dire need of a saviour.
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One of the things I did not expect from Pascal was his view of baptism that harmonizes well with the Bible but is ignored in today’s practices - both in Catholic and Protestant churches:
“In the present day, Baptism having, for very important considerations, been granted to infants before the use of reason, the negligence of their relations allows these Christians to grow old without any knowledge of our religion.
When instruction preceded Baptism, all were instructed; but now baptism preceding instruction, that instruction which before was necessary in order to receive the sacrament, is become optional: it is consequently neglected, and almost abolished. Reason teaches the necessity of instruction, so that when instruction preceded baptism, the necessity of the one naturally led to the practice of the other: but now, baptism preceding instruction, as men are made Christians without instruction, they believe they may remain Christians without it.”
While Pascal may have referred to this baptism as the physical baptism, one can also apply this same view to the true spiritual baptism - not as an initiation to a religion but as a symbol of the remission of sins. So yes, what sins have infants committed in order that they should be washed? As much as they are incapable of sinning, they are also still incapable of repenting.
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Now in the hope of becoming a “mogul diamond” of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s classification of readers, I wish for others to profit by this reading with these excerpts from the Pensées. =)
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Posted in Life Betwixt Book Covers at 10:14 am by Miracle ♪♫
It is dangerous to show man in how many respects he resembles the inferior animals, without pointing out his grandeur.It is also dangerous to direct his attention to his grandeur without keeping him aware of his degradation. It is still more dangerous to leave him ignorant of both but to exhibit both to him will be most beneficial.
Man is the feeblest reed in existence, but he is a thinking reed.
Let man then estimate himself justly. Let him love himself, for he has a nature capable of good; but let him not, on this account love the vileness that adheres to it.
We are not content with the life we have in ourselves, and in our individual being; we wish to live an imaginary life in the thoughts of others, and for this purpose, strive to make a figure in the world.We labour incessantly to cherish and adorn this imaginary being, and neglect the real one…
Men in general wish for knowledge merely that they may talk about it.
Certainly, to be full of defects is an evil; but it is a much greater evil, if we are full of them, to be unwilling to know the fact…
Hence it comes to pass, that if any persons are solicitous to gain our kind regard, they avoid a service which they know would be disagreeable to us; they treat us as we wish to be treated: - we hate the truth, they withhold it; we like to be flattered, they flatter us; we like to be deceived, they deceive us.
And thus human life is nothing but a perpetual illusion, and interchange of flattery and deception.
If we do not think enough, or if we think too intensely, we become fanciful and unable to discover truth.
Let any one examine his thoughts, he will find them always occupied with the past and the future.We scarcely think of the present, or if we allow it to enter our thoughts, it is only to borrow light from it, for the regulation of the future.The present is never our aim.The past, and the present, are looked upon as means: the future is our main object; we are never living, but hoping to live; and whilst we are always preparing to be happy, it is certain, we never shall be so, if we aspire to no other happiness than what can be enjoyed in this life.
…to know the one we must know the other.
This is the origin of all the busy pursuits of mankind, and of everything called diversion of pastime, in which men’s real aim is, to beguile time away, as not to be reminded of it, or rather of themselves; and by this oblivion of life… there needs no more than to compel it to see itself, and to be alone with itself.
Let it be remembered, however, that I have been describing the state of those persons only, who look not into their own hearts, without having felt the power of religion.
[Man] would not engage in such a multiplicity of pursuits, if he had not an indistinct conception of the happiness he has lost; but unable to find it in himself, he seeks for it ineffectually in external things, without ever being satisfied, because it cannot be obtained from ourselves nor from any created beings, but is in God alone.
It is absurd for reason to demand from the intuitive sense the proofs of first principles before it will assent to them, as it would be for the intuitive sense to demand from reason a perception of the truth of all the propositions that are capable of demonstration. The proper effect of this inability should be to humble the pride of that reason which would make itself the universal arbiter of truth, and not to unsettle our belief, as if nothing but reason could instruct us.Would to God, on the contrary, that we could dispense with it entirely, and that we had all our knowledge by instinct and intuition! But this is a privilege nature will not grant: an extremely small portion of our knowledge is received through this channel; all the rest must be acquired by reasoning.
Let us next consider man in reference to Happiness, that object pursued with such ardour in all his actions: for all men, without exception, wish to be happy… It is the primary motive of all the actions of mankind, not excepting those who hang and drown themselves: and yet, through all ages, no one, otherwise than by faith, ever attained this end.
…God has fixed competent marks in his church, that he may be discovered by those who sincerely seek him, and that, nevertheless, these marks are so far concealed, that they can be perceived only by those who seek Him with all their hearts: when the case is so, I would ask those persons who do not so much as pretend to exert any serious diligence, in order to ascertain the truth respecting religion, how they can think they are bringing an argument against religion, in protesting they do not find it true, when the very fact of their perceiving no evidence serves to establish one of the two points above mentioned, and does not affect the other; and thus, instead of subverting, confirms the doctrine of the church.
To give any validity to their opposition, they must be able to declare, that they have spared no efforts to discover the truth.
A knowledge of human nature is essential to the true religion…
A religion purely of intellectual might suit cultivated minds, but would be entirely useless to the generality.The Christian religion alone is suited to all…
Christianity instructs mankind of these two truths: That there is a God whom it is possible for them to resemble and enjoy, and that the corruption of their nature renders them unworthy of Him… the knowledge of these truths apart, produces either the pride of philosophers who know God, but not their fallen state; ir the despair of atheists who know their fallen state, without knowing a Redeemer.
How, indeed, could they apply the remedy, when they were ignorant of the disease? Your chief maladies are pride, which draws you off from God, and the love of sensible objects, which chains you to the earth; and philosophers, in attempting to check the one, have only aggravated the other.
Acknowledge then, proud being, what a paradox thou art to thyself. Let thy powerless reason be humbled, let thy feeble nature be silent.Learn that man infinitely surpasses the comprehension of man, and be taught by the Maker, what thou knowest not – thy true condition.
No one is so happy as the true Christian…
Man, so far from knowing what God is, does not even understand his own nature, and yet, perplexed with his own condition, he ventures to affirm that God cannot restore him to communion with himself! But let me ask, whether God demands anything excepting to love and know Him?
The highest attainment of reason is to know that there are an infinite number of things beyond its reach.
To despise philosophy is to act the part of a true philosopher.
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Return to Pensées on Pascal’s Pensées
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10.10.09
Posted in Uncategorized at 11:03 pm by Miracle ♪♫
From Dora to Barney, Teletubbies to Bob the Builder, or Sesame Street to Little Einsteins, and many others unmentioned, I am blown away by all the TV shows and books for children that have sprouted like mushrooms overnight! Pre-schoolers and even 11-year-old children are amongst those that are catered with this sort of media, and yet we do not bite our nails over this matter because these are supposedly educational and are much safer than other forms of entertainment anyway - and they are our children’s main babysitters. I am 24 years old. I do not have kids, but I worry.
In my daily life, I encounter different types of kids. This allows me to observe children – especially their extraordinary potentials. Most kids nowadays are smarter than I remember, compared to those during my time. There is no end to my amazement with these brilliant little people. However, despite their intelligence, despite formula milk’s brain enhancers and other programs for advancement, I feel that something is missing in their growth, or moreover, that something is hampering their capabilities. (Never mind the educational system for now. Let us reserve volumes for that. Let this simple blog be about the little things we can do outside the academe.)
Scrutinize a child, any child, and take note of his potentials. Notice how the greater part of these potentials are not being channeled towards accomplishments but are instead clouded by these so-called educational inputs that are so easily available to them even though they are capable of imbibing more mature influences that suit their intelligence, which is, by the way, more absorbent to learning than those of adults.
My brothers and I read at the age of 3, thanks to our mom’s magic technique. Since we did not have many children’s books and a television set as kids, my older brother already read the whole Bible by age 7. I was always the lesser reader (I preferred running off to the fields to collect flowers) therefore I can tell that as a child, I was not as smart as these kids I’m observing today. And here we are, instead of encouraging them to produce outputs of their remarkable intelligence, we provide them with more programs that are apparently much too elementary for such bright minds.
Does it not break your heart to see 11-year-old children in front of a television watching kiddie shows, or reading puerile books that are stunting great possibilities? Dear parents, it would be very wise to weigh whether entertainment is taking the place of cultivation. There must be a limit. Keep in mind that we are talking about little people whose reasoning are beyond their years; who are capable of writing the most interesting essays, and marking the profoundest observations. I am certainly not suggesting the mass production of Pascals, but are we willing to submit these precious minds to the world of “educational” entertainment until they eventually lose track of their marvelous potentials?
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10.09.09
Posted in Life Betwixt Book Covers at 7:56 am by Miracle ♪♫
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Through the waving, dancing sleeves
Could you see a heart
So stormy that it wished to be still?
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From the longest conventionally-read novel, we come to the arguable first novel: The Tale of Genji, attributed to Murasaki Shikibu. Written in 11th century Heian Japan, it manifests the period’s poetic and artistic pinnacle.
The cultivation of the cast’s intimate and inward characterization is so remarkable that the writing has even been compared to that of Proust’s, and when we imagine that this work appeared centuries before Chaucer and Shakespeare, we remain in wonder. Yet, its merits do not end there. Despite being originally scribed for a female audience, even the 1968 Nobel Laureate Yasunari Kawabata attests that it is Japanese literature’s zenith; and come to think of it, The Tale of Genji was written by a woman.
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None of my quasi-reviews would be quite complete without the personal impressions a book has left on me, so please bear with me. Even though I was swooning over the very beautiful narrative and the way the characters conversed in poems, I was afraid during the earlier part of the book that all it did was chronicle the amorous adventures of this “shining Genji” who is both brilliant in artistic talents and appearance. Genji is portrayed as being lovable and the reader cannot help but adore his qualities, but being a sort of Casanova repulsed me somehow. Fortunately, he desired to make amends towards the end. Nevertheless, understanding that the tale was written by a woman, I saw it not as a depiction of an emperor’s favorite son, but more of the women’s lives in such a setting and period… and this aspect brought me to such a lovely pensiveness. These women had beauty, musical and artistic talents, and everything in between – but seldom true love, and certainly, not freedom.
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Note: The edition I have is the “Seidensticker Genji” and all three hundred and sixty pages is a mere abridgement, also by Seidensticker. He has purportedly omitted the parts that are unessential to the main story, but I am still curious about those portions and would love to read an unabridged publication later on.
Thank you, Tonet, for the pretty souvenir from Japan. The Japanese girl bookmark deserved to be amidst the pages of such a rarity.
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10.08.09
Posted in Eavesdroppings at 9:44 am by Miracle ♪♫
Characters:
A retired professor, a graduate of Stanford and Harvard
Papa
Mama
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.[Our living room with an unobstructed view of my library]
The Professor: (Eyes books and chuckles) It is not usual that one finds more than two books in a Filipino home.
Mama: Oh, these are my daughter’s.
The Professor: (Approaches a shelf and directs his gaze to Papa) …and she doesn’t have just two, but rows of them! Your daughter is going to have a tough time (looking for a man)…
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Note: I did not mind the remark so much. He is inviting the whole family to his home this coming Sunday where thousands of books reputably reside. Hurrah!
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10.01.09
Posted in Life Betwixt Book Covers at 8:11 am by Miracle ♪♫
The journey that began on the 9th of June this year has finally concluded, and yet, I know that its repercussions will forever reach me and find me, wherever I may go. It was expected that the journey which began in Swann’s Way would have impacting results, but now that I have finally confronted this expectation, I am still left astounded.
Proust spoke unfavorably of the prolonged reading of a book, so I did my best to maintain a fair, steady pace while tarrying intentionally on essential passages, and reading lighter books in between volumes. But these other books only fueled my desire to at last conquer Proust. Reading Time Regained meant being knee deep in Proust’s pensées on time, reality, literature, real art, artistic creation, genuine artistic appreciation, and the elements of which this entire opus is constructed, and I was torn between the rejoicing of its culmination and the wistful realization that one of the most colossal and extraordinary journeys of this page-turner has come to an end.
Since the month of June, I had already envisioned what my final “review” of Proust would be like, but a more analytical outline lay abandoned on pages of yellow pad paper. Now I know how futile it would be to even attempt to analyze Proust, otherwise, that would only thwart what he set out to accomplish.
I thought more modestly of my book and it would be inaccurate even to say that I thought of those who would read it as “my” readers.For it seemed to me that they would not be “my” readers but the readers of their own selves, my book being merely a sort of magnifying glass …it would be my book, but with its help I would furnish them with the means of reading what lay inside themselves.
The beauty of Proust’s language greets the reader the instant one treads through Swann’s Way, and if one perseveres, the reader comes in proximity with the narrator’s exceptional insight, his philosophic observations, and eventually, even his weaknesses, but it is really only after the destination, the sublime Time Regained, that one can truly affirm that the journey was worth it, and reading In Search of Lost Time is indeed capable of changing a life. As the Bible transforms the spiritual lives of those with open hearts, I believe that In Search of Lost Time can also lead to a rebirth of one’s artistic life.
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Addendum: To borrow Proust’s penchant for metaphors (that which he describes as “comparing a quality common to two sensations,” and then “succeeding in extracting their common essence and reuniting them to each other” and liberating them from the contingencies of time), my literary appetite after reading In Search of Lost Time can be compared to that of an espresso connoisseur who, after tasting a supreme blend of espresso, refrains from putting anything else in his mouth to extend the espresso’s lingering impression.Therefore I shall devote a week to the absorbing and further savoring of this most wonderful synthesis… until another aroma beckons from my shelves.
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Other Entries on Proust:
Losing Time in Proust
Swann’s Way
Within a Budding Grove
The Guermantes Way
Sodom and Gomorrah
The Captive
The Fugitive
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Posted in Uncategorized at 7:35 am by Miracle ♪♫
- But excuses have no place in art and intentions count for nothing: at every moment the artist has to listen to his instinct, and it is this that makes art the most real of all things, the most austere school of life, the true last judgment.
- Authentic art has no use of proclamations… it accomplishes its work in silence.
- The idea of a popular art, like that of a patriotic art, if not actually dangerous seemed to me ridiculous. If the intention was to make art accessible to the people by sacrificing refinements of form, on the ground that they are “all right for the idle rich” but not for anybody else, I had seen enough of fashionable society to know that it is there that one finds real illiteracy…
- I had arrived then at the conclusion that in fashioning a work of art we are by no means free, that we do not choose how we shall make it but that it pre-exists us and therefore we are obliged, since it is both necessary and hidden, to do what we should have to do if it were a law of nature - to discover it. But this discovery which art obliges us to make, is it not, I thought, really the discovery of what, though it ought to be more precious to us than anything in the world, yet remains ordinarily for ever unknown to us, the discovery of our true life, of reality as we have felt it to be, which differs so greatly from what we think it is…
- This work of the artist, this struggle to discern beneath matter, beneath experience, beneath words, something that is different from them, is a process exactly the reverse of that which… is at every moment being accomplished by vanity and passion and the intellect, and habit too, when they smother our true impressions, so as entirely to conceal them from us, beneath a whole heap of verbal concepts and practical goals which we falsely call life. In short, this art which is so complicated is in fact the only living art. It alone expresses for others and renders visible to ourselves that life of ours which cannot effectually observe itself and of which the observable manifestations need to be translated and, often. to be read backwards and laboriously deciphered. Our vanity, our passions, our spirit of imitation, our abstract intelligence, our habits have long been at work, and it is the task of art to undo this work of theirs, making us travel back in the direction from which we have come to the depths where what has really existed lies unknown within us.
- To try to perceive the little furrow which the sight of a hawthorn bush or of a church has traced in us is a task that we find too difficult. But we play a symphony over and over again… which goes by the name of erudition - we know them… as well as and in the same fashion as the most knowledgeable connoisseur of music… And how many art-lovers stop there without extracting anything from their impression so that they grow old useless and unsatisfied, like celibates of Art!
They get more excited about works of art than real artists, because for them their excitement is not the object of a laborious and inward-directed study but a force which bursts outwards, which heats their conversations and empurples their cheeks; at concerts they will shout “Bravo, bravo” till they are hoarse at the end of a work they admire and imagine as they do so that they are discharging a duty. But demonstrations of this kind do not oblige them to clarify the nature of their admiration and of this they remain in ignorance.
And indeed, since they fail to assimilate what is truly nourishing in art, they need artistic pleasure all the time, they are victims of a morbid hunger which is never satisfied.
- The greatness, on the other hand, of true art… lay… elsewhere: we have to rediscover, to reapprehend, to make ourselves fully aware of that reality, remote from our daily preoccupations, from which we separate ourselves by an even greater gulf as the conventional knowledge which we substitute for it grows thicker and more impermeable, that reality which is very easy for us to die without ever having known and which is, quite simply, our life. Real life, life at last laid bare and illuminated…
- But art, if it means awareness of our own life, means also awareness of the lives of other people… the uniqueness of the fashion in which the world appears to each one of us, a difference which, if there were no art, would remain for ever the secret of every individual.
- Through art alone are we able to emerge from ourselves, to know what another person sees of a universe which is not the same as our own and of which, without art, the landscapes would remain as unknown to us…
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Posted in Uncategorized at 7:35 am by Miracle ♪♫
On Theories and Criticisms:
- Quality of language, however, is something the critical theorists think that they can do without, and those who admire them are easily persuaded that it is no proof of intellectual merit, for this is a thing which they cannot infer from the beauty of an image but can recognize only when they see it directly expressed. Hence the temptation for the writer to write intellectual works - a gross impropriety. A work in which there are theories is like an object which still has its price-tag on it.
- I began to perceive that i should not have to trouble myself with the various literary theories which had at moments perplexed me - notably those which practitioners of criticism had developed at that time… according to which “the artist must be made to leave his ivory tower” and the themes chosen by the writer ought to be not frivolous or sentimental but rather such things as great working-class movements…
- The truth is that as soon as the reasoning intelligence takes upon itself to judge works of art, nothing is any longer fixed or certain: you can prove anything you wish to prove. Whereas the reality of talent is something universal, whether it be a gift or an acquirement, and the first thing that a reader has to do is to find out whether this reality is present beneath a writer’s superficial mannerisms of thought and style, it is upon just these superficial mannerisms that criticism seizes when it sets out to classify authors.
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On Writers and Writing:
- Yet it happens to many writers that after a certain age, when more mysterious truths no longer emerge from their innermost being, they write only with their intellect, which has grown steadily in strength, and then the books of their riper years will have, for this reason, greater force than those of their youth but not the same bloom.
- As for the inner book of unknown symbols… if I tried to read them no one could help me with any rules, for to read them was an act of creation in which no one can do our work for us or even collaborate with us. How many for this reason turn aside from writing! What tasks do men not take upon themselves in order to evade this task! Every public event… be it war, furnishes the writer with a fresh excuse for not attempting to decipher this book: he wants to ensure the triumph of justice, he wants to restore the moral unity of the nation, he has no time to think of literature. But these are mere excuses, the truth being that he has not or no longer has genius, that is to say instinct. For instinct dictates our duty and the intellect supplies us with pretexts for evading it.
- The impression is for the writer what experiment is for the scientist, with the difference that in the scientist the work of the intelligence precedes the experiment and in the writer it comes after the impression. What we have not had to decipher, to elucidate by our own efforts, what was clear before we looked at it, is not ours. From ourselves comes only that which we drag forth from the obscurity which lies within us, that which to others is unknown.
- So that the essential, the only true book, though in the ordinary sense of the word it does not have to be “invented” by a great writer - for it exists already in each one of us - has to be translated by him. The function and the task of the writer are those of a translator.
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