Ferdydurke (12 page)

It's hard not to play little games and make fun of the subject. Making fun is the name of the game. Because we've learned long ago to make fun of that which too scathingly makes fun of us. Will there ever be a sufficiently serious-minded genius who will look life's trivia in the eye without bursting into a dumb giggle? Someone whose greatness will ever be a match for triviality? Hey-ho, I'm setting here a tone, a tone for my carefree feuilleton! But let's note further (to drain the chalice of particles to the last drop) that the cannons and principles of construction to which we so slavishly adhere are also the product of a mere part, and a rather minuscule part at that. It's only an insignificant part of the world, a scant circle of experts and aesthetes, a small world no bigger than one's little finger, a world that could fit in its entirety into one café, that constantly shapes itself, squeezing out ever more refined postulates. But what's worse, their tastes are not actually tastes—no, their fancy for the construction of your work is only a small part, the larger part being their fancy for their own expertise on the subject of construction. Is this why an author tries to show his skill in the way he constructs his work, so that an expert may show off his expertise on the subject? Quiet, shush, something mysterious is happening, here before us is a fifty-year-old author, on his knees at the altar of art, creating, thinking about his masterpiece, about its harmony, precision, and beauty, about its spirit and how to overcome its difficulties, and there is the expert thoroughly studying the author's material, whereupon the masterpiece goes out into the world and to the reader, and what was conceived in utter and absolute agony is now received piecemeal, between a telephone call and a hamburger. Here is the writer who with all his heart and soul, with his art, in anguish and travail offers nourishment—there is the reader who'll have none of it, and if he wants it, it's only in passing, offhandedly, until the phone rings. Life's trivia are your undoing. You are like a man who has challenged a dragon to a fight but will be yapped into a corner by a little dog.

But to go on, I want to ask you (to take one more swig from the chalice of particles)—in your opinion—does a work that obeys all the cannons express a whole or only a part? Indeed! Doesn't all form rely on the process of exclusion, isn't all construction a process of whittling down, can a word express anything but a part of reality? The rest is silence. And finally, do we create form or does form create us? We think we are the ones who construct it, but that's an illusion, because we are, in equal measure, constructed by the construction. Whatever you put down on paper dictates what comes next, because the work is not born of you—you want to write one thing, yet something entirely different comes out. Parts tend to wholeness, every part surreptitiously makes its way toward the whole, strives for roundness, and seeks fulfillment, it implores the rest to be created in its own image and likeness. Out of the turbulent sea of images our mind catches a certain part, let's say an ear or a leg; then, right at the beginning of a work, the ear or the leg drifts under our pen, and henceforward we can no longer extricate ourselves from this part, so we continue with it, it imposes on us all the remaining body parts. We wrap ourselves around that part like ivy round an oak tree, the beginning sets up the end, and the end—the beginning, while the middle evolves between the beginning and the end. A total inability to encompass wholeness marks the human soul. What are we then to do with a part that has turned up and is not in our likeness, as if a thousand lustful, fiery stallions had visited the bed of our child's mother—and hey! if only to save some semblance of paternity we must, with all the moral power at our disposal, try to resemble our work, but it doesn't want to resemble us. Indeed, I remember a writer I knew years ago who, at the outset of his career, happened to write a heroic book. With his first words, and quite accidentally, he struck a heroic chord—he could equally well have struck a skeptical or lyrical note—but the first few sentences happened to sound heroic, therefore, out of consideration for the harmony of construction, he couldn't help but to go on enhancing the heroism, step by step, to the very end. And he continued roundingoff the edges of his material, polishing and perfecting it, revising it, matching the beginning with the end, and the end with the beginning, until the work emerged like a living thing, full of deep convictions. But what could he do with those deep convictions? Could he then turn around and deny them? Can an author who is responsible for his every word admit that he just stumbled upon a heroic theme, that those deep convictions are not his deep convictions at all, that they had somehow crept in from outside and had crawled over, ambled, and clambered into his text? Absolutely not! Because such trite methods as stumbling upon, crawling over, or creeping in have no place in a sophisticated piece of work, they are a makeshift approach suitable only for a frothy and playfully unimportant magazine article. In vain did our hapless heroic writer hide in embarrassment and try to weasel out of the part that caught hold of him, while the part, once having grabbed him, would not let go, and he had to adapt to it. And he continued to become more and more like the part until, at the end of his writing career, he became just like it, and just as heroic— though a rather weakly victim of his heroism. And he avoided his colleagues and companions from the time of immaturity like the plague, because they marveled at the whole that had so closely been matched with the part. And they called to him: "Hey, Bolek! Do you remember that fingernail ... the fingernail . . . Bolek, Bolek, little Bolek, do you remember the fingernail on the green meadow? The fingernail? That fingernail, Bolek-boy, where is it now?"

These are then the basic fundamental and philosophical reasons that have induced me to build a work on a foundation of individual parts—treating the work itself as a particle of the work, man as a union of parts, and mankind as a composite of parts and pieces. But if anyone were to complain: this part-concept is not—if truth be known—a concept at all but sheer nonsense, a mockery and leg-pulling, and that I'm trying, instead of complying with strict rules and cannons of art, to evade them by mocking them—I would reply: yes, yes indeed, these and none other are my intentions. And—so help me God—I don't hesitate to admit it—I don't want to have anything to do with your Art, gentlemen, which I can't stand, just as much as I don't want to have anything to do with you .. . because I can't stand you, with your ideas, your artistic posturing, and all that artistic little world of yours.

Gentlemen, there are on this earth societies that are more or less ridiculous, more or less degrading, shameful and humiliating—and the amount of stupidity is also variable. So, for example, a guild of hairdressers may seem, at first sight, more prone to stupidity than a guild of cobblers. But what goes on in the world of art beats all for stupidity and degradation—and to such a degree that someone who has some sense of decency and balance can't help but lower his brow in burning shame when confronted with this childish and pretentious orgy. Oh, those inspired songs to which no one listens! Oh, the connoisseurs' clever talk and their enthusiasm at concerts and poetry readings, oh, the initiations, valorizations, discussions, and oh, the faces of those who recite or listen to poetry and collectively celebrate the mystery of beauty! By what painful paradox does everything you say or do transform itself, under these circumstances, into the ridiculous? When, over time, a society lapses into fits of stupidity, one can definitely say that its ideas are not in keeping with reality, that it simply stuffs itself with bogus ideas. And, without a doubt, your artistic concepts have also reached the peak of conceptual naivete; but if you want to know how and in what sense they should be revised, I'll tell you soon enough—but you have to lend me your ear.

What is it that someone really desires these days when he feels a calling to take up the pen, the brush? He yearns, first and foremost, to be an artist. He yearns to create Art. He dreams of satiating himself and his fellow men with Beauty, Goodness, Truth, he wants to be their high priest of art and their bard by offering up all the riches of his talent to thirsting mankind. And perhaps he also wants to offer his talent in the service of some great idea as well as of his Nation. What lofty goals! What magnanimous undertakings! Wasn't this the role of all the Shakespeares and the Chopins? But, mark you, here is the catch: you are not, as yet, Chopins nor Shakespeares, you are not, as yet, fully fledged artists nor high priests of art; you are at most, in the present phase of your development, merely half-Shakespeares and quarter-Chopins (oh, those accursed parts again!)—and therefore your posturing does nothing but expose your miserable deficiencies—it's as if you wanted, at any cost, to jump onto a pedestal, thereby endangering your precious and sensitive body parts.

Believe me: there is a great difference between an artist who has realized his potential and a horde of half-artists and quarter-bards who merely dream of doing so. And that which befits a fully fledged artist has, when it comes from you, an entirely different ring. Yet you, instead of conceiving ideas to your own measure, ideas that fit your own reality, you adorn yourselves with someone else's feathers—and this is why you become mere hopefuls, forever inept, whose grades will never be' more than a puny C, you servants and imitators, vassals and admirers of Art, which keeps you in its antechambers. Truly, it's a terrible thing to watch you try and not succeed, to watch you push on with new works and try to foist them on others even as you're being told "that's not quite it," to watch you boost yourselves with awful, second-rate little successes, pay each other compliments, arrange artistic soirées, and persuade yourselves and others to create ever new disguises for your own ineptness. And you don't have the consolation that what you write and concoct is of any value whatsoever, even to yourselves. Because all of it, I repeat, all of it, is mere imitation, it's been picked up from the masters—it's nothing but a premature illusion that your quality is being recognized, that you have attained a measure of worth. Your situation is false and, being false, must bear bitter fruit, therefore animosity, disdain, maliciousness grow ripe among you, and everyone looks down on everyone else and on himself in particular, you are a brotherhood of disdain— until you'll finally scorn each other to death. What is the situation, actually, of a second-rate writer if not one of major rebuff? The first and merciless rebuff is inflicted upon him by the ordinary reader who simply refuses to relish the writer's works. The second shameful rebuff is meted out to him by his own reality, which he has been unable to express. And the third rebuff, the most shameful of all and a real kick in the pants, is dealt him by art itself, the art to which he has turned for shelter but which regards him with utter disdain, as inept and inadequate. And this fills the cup of disgrace. This is where true homelessness begins. This is how the second-rate writer becomes the butt of ridicule from all sides, caught as he is in the crossfire of rebuff. Truly, what can be expected of a man rebuffed three times, each time more shamefully than the time before? And when he's dressed down like this, shouldn't a man pack his bags and leave, shouldn't he hide somewhere so he can't be seen? Can inadequacy which parades in the light of day and which craves honors be wholesome, won't it provoke one's nature to hiccup?

But first tell me this—in your opinion, are Anjou pears better and juicier than Bosc pears, aren't you more partial to the former than to the latter? And do you like to eat them while sitting comfortably in wicker chairs on the porch? For shame, gentlemen, for shame, shame, and shame again! I'm not a philosopher and theoretician, no—but I'm talking about you, I'm thinking about your life, do understand me, I'm purely and simply troubled by your personal situation. You just can't break free. Oh, this inability of yours to cut the umbilical cord that ties you to mankind's rebuff! A soul rebuffed—a flower unsniffed—a candy that wants so much to be tasty but pleases no one—a woman spurned—all these have always caused me sheer physical pain, I just can't bear this lack of fulfillment, and when I meet one of those artists downtown and realize to what extent an ordinary rebuff lies at the basis of his existence, how his every move, every word, how his beliefs, his enthusiasms, his every comma, his hurt ego, his pride, his crying shame and suffering, how they all give off the smell of an ordinary and unpleasant rebuff, I too feel shame. And I feel shame not because I commiserate with him but because I live side by side with him, because his grotesque nature touches me and everyone else whose consciousness it has penetrated. Believe me, it's about time to decide and settle the status of the second-rate writer, otherwise everyone will be left nauseated. Isn't it strange that people who dedicate themselves
ex professo
to form and therefore, one would think, are sensitive to style, give in without a protest to such a false and pretentious state of affairs? Can't you understand that from the point of view of form and style nothing can be more disastrous in its consequences—because whoever finds himself in such a false situation, in such entirely shoddy circumstances, cannot utter a single word that won't be shoddy.

How should we then—you'll ask—express ourselves in a way that would be congruent with our reality, yet at the same time be autonomous? Gentlemen, it's not within your power to transform yourselves, well, let's say from Tuesday to Wednesday, into mature masters, but you could save your dignity to some degree by distancing yourselves from Art, which sticks it to you with that disconcerting pupa. To begin with, part company forever with the word: art, and that other word: artist. Stop wallowing in these words and repeating them with such endless monotony. Isn't everyone a bit of an artist? Isn't it true that mankind creates art not only on paper or on canvas, but also in every moment of everyday life—when a young girl pins a flower in her hair, when in the course of conversation a little joke escapes your lips, when we melt with emotion at the beauty of twilight's light and shadow, what is all this if not the practicing of art? Why then this odd and idiotic division into "artists" and the rest of mankind? Wouldn't it be more wholesome if you simply said: "perhaps I busy myself with art a little more than others do," rather than to proudly declare yourselves artists? Further, what use is it to you, this worship of the art contained within the so-called "works of art"—how did you dream it up, what's given you the daft idea that man has such a great admiration for works of art, that we swoon in heavenly bliss when we listen to a Bach fugue? Have you ever thought how impure, murky, and immature is the artistic aspect of culture— the aspect that you want to lock up within your simplistic phraseology? The mistake that you so commonly and flagrantly make is primarily this: you reduce man's communion with art to artistic emotion alone, and, at the same time, you define this communion in utterly egocentric terms, as if each one of us were experiencing art totally on our own—a single-handed, single-legged experience—and in hermetic isolation from your fellow men. Yet in real life we're dealing with a blend of many emotions, of many individuals who, acting on each other, create a collective experience.