Hope

I disapprove of Cioran, and when I ask myself why, I find the answer, he is too satisfied with the forms his writing takes – with the essay, the aphorism, and perhaps with himself, too. Oversatisfied in being himself, he is not claimed, by the indecency of writing from the ‘I’, relying on the ‘I’, leaning upon it, upon what he takes to be himself, it’s as if writing – the experience of writing – never touched him. Of course, he writes,

My books, my work: the grotesquerie of such possessives. Everything was spoiled once literature stopped being anonymous. Decadence dates from the first author.

But look how he writes – in an isolated aphorism set alongside others … why do I suspect him of bad taste? Why do I think he wrote in bad taste, as if it mattered – as if my opinion mattered? He is complacent, I think to myself. He is obdurately himself, despite everything, despite writing, despite everything he’s written.

Perhaps I cannot bear him because I once admired him … I read him at that time when books formed a magic circle around me. I wanted to be protected, I think that was it. I was looking for something – what? – at the heart of the circle? I even recommended Cioran to others … I find that, too unbearable; I want to wash my hands.

Admiration for those for whom writing, the experience of writing, is itself something. For whom something is at stake, and for whom writing is hope – a ‘merciful surplus of strength’, a last strength at the bottom of weakness. And even the only hope … How melodramatic! How necessary!

This, from an old post from This Space:

There is one reason that keeps me writing: hope. The hope that I might be able to write what I need to say because it could not be said in any other way.

That said, I am not writing.

There is also the hope of reading, which is much the same: to find, at last, the narrative that allows me to breathe and to step forward actually; not vicariously through a character or the author’s experience, but actually to step forward. The metaphor is the only means.

That said, I am not reading either.