Ferdydurke (13 page)

And so, when a pianist bangs out Chopin in a concert hall, you say that the magic of Chopin's music, masterfully rendered by this master pianist, has thrilled the audience. Yet it's possible that actually no one in the audience has been thrilled. Let's not exclude the possibility that, had they not known Chopin to be a great genius, and the pianist likewise, they would have listened to the music with less ardor. It's also possible that when some listeners, pale with emotion, applaud, scream, carry on, writhe in enthusiasm one should attribute this to the fact that others in the audience are also writhing, carrying on, shouting; because every one of them thinks that the others are experiencing an incredible ecstasy, a transcendent emotion, and therefore his emotions as well begin to rise on someone else's yeast; and thus it can easily happen that while no one in the concert hall has been directly enraptured, everyone expresses rapture—because everyone wants to conform to his neighbor. And it's not until all of them in a bunch have sufficiently excited each other, it is only then, I tell you, that these expressions of emotion arouse their emotion—because we must comply with what we express. It's also true that by participating in the concert we fulfill something of a religious act (just as if we were assisting at the Holy Mass), kneeling devoutly before the Godhead of artistry; in this case our admiration is merely an act of homage and the fulfilling of a rite. Who can tell, however, how much real beauty there is in this Beauty, and how much of it is a sociohistorical process? Tut, tut, as everyone knows, mankind needs myths—it chooses this one or that one from among its numerous authors (but who can ever explore or shed light on the course that such a choice has taken?), whereupon it proceeds to elevate him above all others, to memorize his works, to discover in him its own mysteries, to subordinate its emotions to him—but if we were to elevate, with the same doggedness, some other artist, then he would become our Homer. Can't you see then, how many varied and often other than aesthetic elements (a list of which I could tediously extend
ad infinitum)
make up the greatness of the artist and his work? And you want to enclose this muddled, complicated, and difficult communion with art in the naive phrase: "the poet sings with inspiration, the listener lends his ear in admiration"?

Stop then pampering art, stop—for God's sake!—this whole system of puffing it up and magnifying it; and, instead of intoxicating yourselves with legends, let facts create you. And once you open your minds to Reality this alone may bring you great relief—at the same time stop worrying that it will impoverish and shrivel your spirit— because Reality is always richer than naive illusions and idle notions. And I will soon show you what riches await you on this new path.

Certainly art is the perfecting of form. But you seem to think—and here is another of your cardinal mistakes—that art consists of creating works perfect in their form; you reduce this all-encompassing, omni-human process of creating form to the turning out of poems and symphonies; and you've never been able to truly experience nor explain to others what an enormous role form plays in our lives. Even in the field of psychology you haven't been able to secure form its proper place. You still seem to think that emotions, instincts, ideas govern our behavior, while you're inclined to consider form to be a superficial appendage and a simple gewgaw. When a widow who walks behind her husband's casket cries and wails to the point of splitting her sides, you surmise she's wailing because she's overcome by her loss. Or when some engineer, doctor, or lawyer murders his wife, children, or friend, you think that he let himself be seized by bloodthirsty instincts. Or when a politician says something stupid, you think that he's stupid because he's talking nothing but nonsense. But in Reality matters stand as follows: a human being does not express himself forthrightly and in keeping with his nature but always in some well-defined form, and this form, this style, this manner of being is not of our making but is thrust upon us from outside—and this is why one and the same individual can present himself on the outside as wise or stupid, as bloodthirsty or angelic, as mature or immature—depending upon the style he happens to come up with, and in what way he is dependent on others. And just as beetles, insects chase after food all day, so do we tirelessly pursue form, we hassle other people with our style, our manners while riding in a streetcar, while eating or enjoying ourselves, while resting or attending to our business—we always, unceasingly, seek form, and we delight in it or suffer by it, and we conform to it or we violate and demolish it, or we let it create us, amen.

Oh, the power of Form! Nations die because of it. It is the cause of wars. It creates something in us that is not of us. If you make light of it you'll never understand stupidity nor evil nor crime. It governs our slightest impulses. It is at the base of our collective life. For you, however, Form and Style still belong strictly to the realm of the aesthetic—for you style is on paper only, in the style of your stories. Gentlemen, who will slap your pupa which you dare turn toward others as you kneel at the altar of art? For you form is not something that is human and alive, something—I'd say—practical and everyday, but just a feature for the holidays. And while you're leaning over a piece of paper you forget your own self—you don't care about perfecting your own individual and concrete style, you merely practice an abstract stylization in a vacuum. Instead of art serving you, you serve art—and with a sheeplike docility you let it impede your development, and you let it push you into the hell of indolence.

Now consider how different the stance would be of someone who, instead of feeding on the words of the concept makers, would sweep the world with a fresh look and with an understanding of the boundless importance of form in our lives. If he were to take up the pen it would not be for the sake of becoming an Artist but—let's say—to better express his individuality and explain it to others; or else to put his internal affairs in order, and also, perhaps, to deepen and sharpen his relationship with his fellow men because other souls exert an immense and creative influence on our soul; or, for example, to try to fight for a world as he would like it to be, for a world that is indispensable to his life. He would, of course, spare no effort to have his work attract people and win their hearts with its artistic charm-but in this case his chief goal would not be art but the expression of his own person. And I say "his own," not "someone else's," because it's high time you stopped thinking of yourselves as creatures of a higher order who are here to edify and enlighten someone else, to lead and raise someone else into the sublime, or to improve someone else's morals. Who has granted you this superiority? Where does it say that you now belong to a higher class? Who has promoted you to aristocracy? Who gave you a patent on Maturity? Oh no, this writer, the one I'm talking about, will not write because he considers himself mature but because he is aware of his immaturity, because he knows that he doesn't know everything about form, he knows he is still climbing and has not quite yet crawled to the top, that he is in the process of becoming but has not yet become. And if he happens to write something inept and silly he'll say: "Great! I've written something stupid, but I haven't signed a contract with anyone to produce solely wise and perfect works. I gave vent to my stupidity and I'm glad of it, because the animosity and harshness of others that I've aroused against me will now form and shape me, it will create me as if anew, and here I am—reborn." Which shows that the bard who has such a sound philosophy, one who is so well-grounded within himself that neither stupidity nor immaturity can threaten nor harm him, this bard can, his head raised high, express himself even as he is being indolent, while you, you can no longer express much of anything because fear deprives you of speech.

With all this in mind, the reform I recommend should bring you considerable relief. One must add, however, that only a masterly writer cognizant of these matters would be equal to grappling with this problem, which, thus far, has dealt you the worst possible pupa— and the problem which I raise here is, very likely, the most fundamental, the most awesome, and the most brilliant (I have no hesitation in using this word) of all the problems of style and culture. Here is a graphic way of formulating the problem: imagine that the adult and mature bard, leaning over a piece of paper, is in the process of creating . .. but on his back a youth has squarely settled himself, or some semi-enlightened fellow from the semi-intelligentsia, or a young maiden, or some nondescript slouch of a soul, or some kind of juvenile, lowbrow, ignorant creature, and then—this creature, this youth, this maiden, or lowbrow fellow, or for that matter any muddle-headed son of the unenlightened quarter-culture—suddenly pounces on his soul and drags it down, constricts it, kneads it with his paws, yet at the same time, by embracing this soul, by soaking it up, sucking it in, he rejuvenates it with his youth, seasons it with his immaturity, and prepares it to his own liking, then he brings it down to his own level—and oh, into his arms! But this author, instead of pitting himself against his assailant, pretends that he does not see him and—what idiocy!—he thinks he'll avoid being violated by putting on a face as if he were not being violated. Isn't this exactly what happens to you, beginning with great geniuses all the way to mediocre bards in the gallery? Isn't it true that every being who is at a higher level of development, who is older and more mature, is dependent in a thousand different ways on beings who are less well developed, and doesn't this dependence permeate us through and through, to our very core and to the extent that we can say: the elder is created by the younger? When we write, don't we have to accommodate the reader? Just as when we speak—don't we depend on the person we're addressing? Are we not mortally in love with youth? Are we not obliged then, at every moment, to ingratiate ourselves with beings who are below us, to tune in with them, to surrender, be it to their power or to their charms—and isn't this painful violence that's being committed on our person by some half-enlightened, inferior being the most seminal of all violence? Thus far, however, and contrary to all your rhetoric, you have only been able to hide your head in the sand, and your scholarly and didactic mentality, suffused with conceit, has made you unaware of this matter. In reality you're constantly being violated, yet you pretend that nothing is happening— because you, oh mature ones, keep company solely with other mature ones, and your maturity is so mature that it can only chum up with maturity!

If you were, however, less concerned with Art or the edifying and perfecting of others and more with your own pitiful selves, you would never acquiesce to such a terrible violation of the self; a poet, instead of creating poems for another poet, would feel that he's being suffused and created by forces from below, forces of which, thus far, he had not even been aware. He would realize that only by accepting them would he be able to free himself of them; and he would do his best to show, in his style, in his artistic as well as everyday attitude and form, a clear link with all that's inferior to him. He would then feel not only like a Father, but like a Father and a Son: he would write not solely like a wise, refined and mature one, but rather like a Wise One who benefits from stupidity, like a Refined One who profits from being tirelessly brutalized, and like a Mature One who is being ceaselessly rejuvenated. And if, upon leaving his writing desk, he were to run into that youth or that lowbrow he would no longer pat him condescendingly on the back like a preacher or a pedagogue, but instead he would wail and roar in holy trembling, and perhaps even fall to his knees! Instead of fleeing from immaturity and shutting himself within the ambit of the sublime, he would realize that a universal style is one that knows how to embrace lovingly those not quite developed. And this would finally lead all of you to a form that would pant with creativity and be filled with poetry, so much so that the whole bunch of you would transform yourselves into powerful geniuses.

Take note then, what hope I send your way with such an individually personal concept—and what perspectives! But, for this idea to be a hundred percent creative and definitive, you must take yet another step forward—but this step must be so bold and resolute, so limitless in its possibilities and destructive in its consequences, that my lips will mention it only softly and from a distance. Here it is: the time has come, the hour has struck on the clock of history—make an effort to overcome form, to liberate yourselves from it. Stop identifying yourselves with that which delimits you. You, artists, try to avoid all expression of yourselves. Don't trust your own words. Be on guard against all your beliefs and do not trust your feelings. Back away from what you are on the outside and tremble with fear at any self-manifestation, just as a little bird trembles at the sight of a snake.

I don't know, truly, whether such things should pass my lips this day, but the stipulation—that an individual be well defined, immutable in his ideas, absolute in his pronouncements, unwavering in his ideology, firm in his tastes, responsible for his words and deeds, fixed once and for all in his ways—is flawed. Consider more closely the chimerical nature of such a stipulation. Our element is unending immaturity. What we think, feel today will unavoidably be silliness to our great grandchildren. It is better then that we should acknowledge today that portion of silliness which time will reveal... and the force that impels you to a premature definition is not, as you think, a totally human force. We shall soon realize that the most important is not: to die for ideas, styles, theses, slogans, beliefs; and also not: to solidify and enclose ourselves in them; but something different, it is this: to step back a pace and secure a distance from everything that unendingly happens to us.

A Retreat. I have a hunch (but I don't know whether my lips should confess it now) that the time for a Universal Retreat is at hand. The son of earth will henceforth understand that he is not expressing himself in harmony with his deepest being but always in accordance with some artificial form painfully thrust upon him from without, either by people or by circumstances. He will then dread that form of his and feel ashamed of it, much as he had thus far idolized and flaunted it. We will soon fear our persons and our personalities, because it will become apparent that they are by no means truly our own. And instead of roaring: "I believe in this—I feel it—that's how I am—I'm ready to defend it," we will say in all humility: "Maybe I believe in it—maybe I feel it—I happened to say it, to do it, or to think it." The bard will scorn his own song. The leader will shudder at his own command. The high priest will stand in terror of the altar, and the mother will instill in her son not only principles but also ways of escaping them so that they do not smother him.