destroys me is not
knowing the level of writer I’ll become. Many thoughts run through my head,
which I want to express but can’t. I don’t know how to express my thoughts
clearly in speech. If I try to write them down, the thoughts run away.
When we express ourselves, we also express the
collective. A fence gleaning. ***** What is shared by these
collectives: boredom, disgust, disillusionment. The romanticism of struggle is
over. What remains are the utterly naked facts. The cult of personality and its
collapse. Rethinking of everything. The masks are off (the mask of religion, the
mask of heroism . . . ).
Eye of the child: “Human nature seeks constantly to know
the world around it, but the desire decreases over time. As we grow older the
world loses its beauty and brilliance, but we can reclaim our acuity of vision,
the sunrise of the world, by way of the child who observes the world around him
with wide and curious eyes.”
September
September 2, afternoon: I dreamed of my father.
He was walking and he put his arm around my shoulder and embraced me. He seemed
strong, solid. He complained to me about the troubles and pains of last year. I
told him that as for myself, I’d been in pain since turning eighteen. It made me
happy to complain to him and expect some kind of relief. But he pointed to the
crowded tram and said, smiling kindly, “They’re going to pick each other’s
pockets,” and I realized he wanted to change the subject. Then he disappeared
and Adel H. took his place. ****** We walked next to each other
with his arm on my shoulder and I began to complain to him, too. He sympathized,
then left me when we reached a playing field. I was angry, because he had
listened to me only so that I’d accompany him to the playing field, not because
he was especially interested in what I was saying. I went away, after taking his
towel in revenge. I woke up and felt happy about seeing my father. I recalled my
feelings of delight, gladness, comfort at being able to complain to him and have
his help. I thought, if only there were no science of dreams. How wonderful it
would have been if this were a visit from my father’s spirit — a consolation, a
prophecy!
Read an article, “The Dialectic of Nature.” Planets in
motion, the earth cooling, establishing the conditions of life, the first cell,
the vertebrates, mankind, mankind in its most advanced stage, the extinction of
the earth (its cooling, its collapse into the sun), the persistence of matter in
alternate forms in an infinite universe. Subject for a great novel.
Virginia Woolf’s To The Lighthouse has opened up a new world for me. . . . Her idea of art seems to be the
same as that given in her novel by the painter: “One wanted, she thought,
dipping her brush deliberately, to be on a level with ordinary experience, to
feel simply that’s a chair, that’s a table, and yet at the same time, It’s a
miracle, it’s an ecstasy.” This is what Woolf does in the novel, handling
everything that is simple, ordinary, quotidian. She writes by magic, elegantly
and simply, without artifice: “But he did not ask them anything. He sat and
looked at the island and he might be thinking, We perished, each alone, or he
might be thinking, I have reached it. I have found it; but he said nothing.”
Anything that takes us beyond the limits of the
conventional novel, now exhausted, is worth doing. I believe writing, the
practice itself, will reveal the ingredients of experimentation, will be the
incarnation of its content.
How shall I write? I don’t think I have to write about
any given topic — that is, sit down to write it and find a suitable form. Not at
all. My feelings are set in motion by an idea, an experience, a memory, a style,
a form, and they demand release. In releasing them, they interact with my
rational mind, which determines their form and content.
Depths of the sea: a book by William Beebe, A Half Mile Down — “At a depth of eighteen meters,
knowing the level of writer I’ll become. Many thoughts run through my head,
which I want to express but can’t. I don’t know how to express my thoughts
clearly in speech. If I try to write them down, the thoughts run away.
When we express ourselves, we also express the
collective. A fence gleaning. ***** What is shared by these
collectives: boredom, disgust, disillusionment. The romanticism of struggle is
over. What remains are the utterly naked facts. The cult of personality and its
collapse. Rethinking of everything. The masks are off (the mask of religion, the
mask of heroism . . . ).
Eye of the child: “Human nature seeks constantly to know
the world around it, but the desire decreases over time. As we grow older the
world loses its beauty and brilliance, but we can reclaim our acuity of vision,
the sunrise of the world, by way of the child who observes the world around him
with wide and curious eyes.”
September
September 2, afternoon: I dreamed of my father.
He was walking and he put his arm around my shoulder and embraced me. He seemed
strong, solid. He complained to me about the troubles and pains of last year. I
told him that as for myself, I’d been in pain since turning eighteen. It made me
happy to complain to him and expect some kind of relief. But he pointed to the
crowded tram and said, smiling kindly, “They’re going to pick each other’s
pockets,” and I realized he wanted to change the subject. Then he disappeared
and Adel H. took his place. ****** We walked next to each other
with his arm on my shoulder and I began to complain to him, too. He sympathized,
then left me when we reached a playing field. I was angry, because he had
listened to me only so that I’d accompany him to the playing field, not because
he was especially interested in what I was saying. I went away, after taking his
towel in revenge. I woke up and felt happy about seeing my father. I recalled my
feelings of delight, gladness, comfort at being able to complain to him and have
his help. I thought, if only there were no science of dreams. How wonderful it
would have been if this were a visit from my father’s spirit — a consolation, a
prophecy!
Read an article, “The Dialectic of Nature.” Planets in
motion, the earth cooling, establishing the conditions of life, the first cell,
the vertebrates, mankind, mankind in its most advanced stage, the extinction of
the earth (its cooling, its collapse into the sun), the persistence of matter in
alternate forms in an infinite universe. Subject for a great novel.
Virginia Woolf’s To The Lighthouse has opened up a new world for me. . . . Her idea of art seems to be the
same as that given in her novel by the painter: “One wanted, she thought,
dipping her brush deliberately, to be on a level with ordinary experience, to
feel simply that’s a chair, that’s a table, and yet at the same time, It’s a
miracle, it’s an ecstasy.” This is what Woolf does in the novel, handling
everything that is simple, ordinary, quotidian. She writes by magic, elegantly
and simply, without artifice: “But he did not ask them anything. He sat and
looked at the island and he might be thinking, We perished, each alone, or he
might be thinking, I have reached it. I have found it; but he said nothing.”
Anything that takes us beyond the limits of the
conventional novel, now exhausted, is worth doing. I believe writing, the
practice itself, will reveal the ingredients of experimentation, will be the
incarnation of its content.
How shall I write? I don’t think I have to write about
any given topic — that is, sit down to write it and find a suitable form. Not at
all. My feelings are set in motion by an idea, an experience, a memory, a style,
a form, and they demand release. In releasing them, they interact with my
rational mind, which determines their form and content.
Depths of the sea: a book by William Beebe, A Half Mile Down — “At a depth of eighteen meters,
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