by Maria Popova
“There is a great deal that either has to be given
up or be taken away from you if you are going to succeed in writing a body of
work.”
The newly released volume
of Susan Sontag’s diaries, As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980(public library), from whence Sontag’s
thoughtful meditations on censorship andaphorisms came, is an absolute treasure trove of rare insight into one of the
greatest minds in modern history. Among the tome’s greatest gifts are Sontag’s
thoughts on the art, craft, and ideology of writing.
Unlike more prescriptive takes, like previously examined advice by Kurt Vonnegut, John Steinbeck, and David Ogilvy, Sontag’s reflections are rather meditative — sometimes turned inward,
with introspective curiosity, and other times outward, with a lens on the
broader literary landscape — yet remarkably rich in cultural observation and
universal wisdom on the writing process, somewhere between Henry Miller’s creative routine, Jack Kerouac’s beliefs and
techniques,George Orwell’s four motives
for writing, and E. B. White’s vision for the
responsibility of the writer.
Gathered here are the most compelling and profound of Sontag’s thoughts
on writing, arranged chronologically and each marked with the date of the
respective diary entry.
I
have a wider range as a human being than as a writer. (With some writers, it’s
the opposite.) Only a fraction of me is available to be turned into art. (8/8/64)
Words
have their own firmness. The word on the page may not reveal (may conceal) the
flabbiness of the mind that conceived it. > All thoughts are upgrades — get
more clarity, definition, authority, by being in print — that is, detached from
the person who thinks them.
A
potential fraud — at least potential — in all writing.
(8/20/64)
Writing
is a little door. Some fantasies, like big pieces of furniture, won’t come
through.
(8/30/64)
If
only I could feel about sex as I do about writing! That I’m the vehicle, the
medium, the instrument of some force beyond myself. (11/1/64)
Science
fiction —
Popular mythology for contemporary negative imagination
about the impersonal (11/1/64)
Greatest
subject: self seeking to transcend itself (Middlemarch, War
and Peace)
Looking for self-transcendence (or metamorphosis) — the cloud of unknowing that
allows perfect expressiveness (a secular myth for this) - (undated loose sheets, 1965)
Kafka
the last story-teller in ‘serious’ literature. Nobody has known where to go
from there (except imitate him) - (undated loose sheets, 1965)
John
Dewey — ‘The ultimate function of literature is to appreciate the world,
sometimes indignantly, sometimes sorrowfully, but best of all to praise when it
is luckily possible.’
(1/25/65)
I
think I am ready to learn how to write. Think with words, not with ideas. (3/5/70)
‘Writing
is only a substitute [sic] for living.’ — Florence Nightingale - (12/18/70)
French,
unlike English: a language that tends to break when you bend it. (6/21/72)
A
writer, like an athlete, must ‘train’ every day. What did I do today to keep in
‘form’? (7/5/72)
In
‘life,’ I don’t want to be reduced to my work. In ‘work,’ I don’t want to be
reduced to my life.
My work is too austere
My life is a brutal anecdote (3/15/73)
The
only story that seems worth writing is a cry, a shot, a scream. A story should
break the reader’s heart
[…]
The
story must strike a nerve — in me. My heart should start pounding when I hear
the first line in my head. I start trembling at the risk. (6/27/73)
I’m
now writing out of rage — and I feel a kind of Nietzschean elation. It’s tonic.
I roar with laughter. I want to denounce everybody, tell everybody off. I go to
my typewriter as I might go to my machine gun. But I’m safe. I don’t have to
face the consequences of ‘real’ aggressivity. I’m sending out colis piégés ['booby-trapped
packages'] to
the world. (7/31/73)
The
solution to a problem — a story that you are unable to finish — is the problem.
It isn’t as if the problem is one thing and the solution something else. The
problem, properly understood = the solution. Instead of trying to hide or
efface what limits the story, capitalize on that very limitation. State it,
rail against it. (7/31/73)
Talking
like touching
Writing like punching somebody (8/14/73)
To be
a great writer:
know
everything about adjectives and punctuation (rhythm)
have moral intelligence — which creates true authority in a writer (2/6/74)
‘Idea’
as method of instant transport away from direct experience, carrying a tiny
suitcase.
‘Idea’
as a means of miniaturizing experience, rendering it portable. Someone who
regularly has ideas is — by definition — homeless.
Intellectual
is a refugee from experience. In Diaspora.
What’s
wrong with direct experience? Why would one ever want to flee it, by
transforming it — into a brick? (7/25/74)
Weakness
of American poetry — it’s anti-intellectual. Great poetry has ideas. (6/14/76)
Not
only must I summon the courage to be a bad writer — I must dare to be truly
unhappy. Desperate. And not save myself, short-circuit the despair.
By
refusing to be as unhappy as I truly am, I deprive myself of subjects. I’ve
nothing to write about. Every topic burns. (6/19/76)
The
function of writing is to explode one’s subject — transform it into something
else. (Writing is a series of transformations.)
Writing
means converting one’s liabilities (limitations) into advantages. For example,
I don’t love what I’m writing. Okay, then — that’s also a way to write, a way
that can produce interesting results. (11/5/76)
‘All
art aspires to the condition of music’ — this utterly nihilistic statement
rests at the foundation of every moving camera style in the history of the
medium. But it is a cliché, a 19th c[entury] cliché, less an aesthetic than a
projection of an exhausted state of mind, less a world view than a world
weariness, less a statement of vital forms than an expression of sterile
decadence. There is quite another pov [point of view] about what ‘all art
aspires to’ — that was Goethe’s, who put the primary art, the most aristocratic
one, + the one art that cannot be made by the plebes but only gaped at w[ith]
awe, + that art is architecture. Really great directors have this sense of architecture
in their work — always expressive of immense line of energy, unstable + vital
conduits of force. (undated, 1977)
One
can never be alone enough to write. To see better. (7/19/77)
Two
kinds of writers. Those who think this life is all there is, and want to
describe everything: the fall, the battle, the accouchement, the horse-race.
That is, Tolstoy. And those who think this life is a kind of testing-ground
(for what we don’t know — to see how much pleasure + pain we can bear or what
pleasure + pain are?) and want to describe only the essentials. That is,
Dostoyevsky. The two alternatives. How can one write like T. after D.? The task
is to be as good as D. — as serious spiritually, + then go on from there. (12/4/77)
Only
thing that counts are ideas. Behind ideas are [moral] principles. Either one is
serious or one is not. Must be prepared to make sacrifices. I’m not a liberal. (12/4/77)
When
there is no censorship the writer has no importance.
So
it’s not so simple to be against censorship. (12/7/77)
Imagination:
— having many voices in one’s head. The freedom for that. (5/27/78)
Language
as a found object (2/1/79)
Last
novelist to be influenced by, knowledgeable about science was [Aldous] Huxley
One
reason [there are] no more novels — There are no exciting theories of relation
of society to self (soc[iological], historical, philosophical)
Not
SO — no one is doing it, that’s all (undated, March 1979)
There
is a great deal that either has to be given up or be taken away from you if you
are going to succeed in writing a body of work (undated, March 1979)
To
write one must wear blinkers. I’ve lost my blinkers.
Don’t
be afraid to be concise! (3/10/79)
A
failure of nerve. About writing. (And about my life — but never mind.) I must
write myself out of it.
If I
am not able to write because I’m afraid of being a bad writer, then I must be a
bad writer. At least I’ll be writing.
Then
something else will happen. It always does.
I
must write every day. Anything. Everything. Carry a notebook with me at all
times, etc.
I
read my bad reviews. I want to go to the bottom of it — this failure of nerve (7/19/79)
The
writer does not have to write. She must imagine that she must. A
great book: no one is addressed, it counts as cultural surplus, it comes from
the will. (3/10/80)
Ordinary
language is an accretion of lies. The language of literature must be,
therefore, the language of transgression, a rupture of individual systems, a
shattering of psychic oppression. The only function of literature lies in the
uncovering of the self in history. (3/15/80)
The
love of books. My library is an archive of longings. (4/26/80)
Making
lists of words, to thicken my active vocabulary. To have puny, not just little,
hoax, not just trick, mortifying, not just embarrassing, bogus, not just fake.
I
could make a story out of puny, hoax, mortifying, bogus. They are a
story. (4/30/80)
As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh is exquisite in its entirety — I couldn’t recommend it more heartily.
Nenhum comentário:
Postar um comentário