Oblivion

All men, says Socrates in the Symposium, want a kind of immortality. To leave a child, a work – to let your name resound from one generation to another, and then down all the ages: this is the dream; this is what drives desire.

But then, with Christianity, a new kind of desire, already known in the East: to be forgotten in the future; to lose your name. A monk takes the name of a dead monk, known for his deeds – Cyprian, say, after Cyprian the devout, who fasted in a cave. And now this new Cyprian will also fast – fast in the name of his predecessor, and whose name is his.

The second name unravels in the first; it dissipates, like night mists in the morning. How beautiful to desire oblivion. To live and die as the shadow of another, as his echo.

I would like to call myself Duras, and live and die under her name. I would like to call myself Green. Laughter … For the monks strengthen their names, hardening them into history. That is how saints are made, I imagine: as the new Cyprian lives up to his predecessor; as newer Cyprians will come, each of whom will fast, and for longer and longer periods.

And I, what will I do? Write? Not write, rather, and know writing by its absence, by the fact I am not Duras, I am not Green.