One Man`s Bible

24

Is it worth writing pure literature, that pure literary form where style, language, word games, linguistic structures, patterns simply follow their own course, but which is unrelated to your experiences, your life, the dilemmas of life, the quagmire of reality, or you, who are a part of the filth? Pure literature is a subterfuge, a shield, a limitation, and there is no need for you to crawl into a cage demarcated by others or yourself.

Your writing is not in the cause of pure literature, but neither are you a fighter using your pen as a weapon to promote truth. You don't know what truth is, but you don't need someone else to tell you what is. You know you are certainly not the embodiment of truth, and you write simply to indicate that a sort of life, worse than a quagmire, more real than an imaginary hell, more terrifying than Judgment Day, has, in fact, existed. Furthermore, it is very likely that when people have forgotten about it, it will make a comeback, and people who have never gone crazy will go crazy, and people who have never been oppressed will oppress or be oppressed. This is because madness has existed since the birth of humanity, and it is simply a question of when it will flare up again. Then are you trying to play the role of a teacher? Many have worn themselves out as teachers and preachers, but have people become any better?

It is best not to strive to make yourself despair, so why go on relating all this misery? You are distressed, but even if you wanted to, you can't stop. You must have this release, it has become an affliction, and the reason, you suspect, is because you yourself have this need.

You vomit up the folly of politics, yet, at the same time, you manufacture another sort of lie in literature, for literature is a lie that hides the writer's ulterior motive for profit or fame. However, what guides or stops the pen are not utilitarianism and vanity, but a deep, instinctual, animal drive, and differences within the species are due to the persistence of this drive, which is not affected by temperature changes, whether one is hungry or not, or the seasons. It is just like shit; if there is the need to, it is discharged. But it is unlike shit in that it is discharged in different places, and what is discharged must be endowed with sensuality and aesthetic beauty-for example, linking grief to your enjoyment of language. While exposing the land of your ancestors, the Party, the leaders, the ideals, the new people, and also that modern superstition and fraud-revolution-you use literature to create a gauze curtain, so that, viewed through it, that trash can at least be looked at. Hidden on this side of the curtain, in the dark with the audience, you derive pleasure; so doesn't this provide satisfaction?

Lies are everywhere in the world, and you are similarly creating lies in literature. Animals do not tell lies but exist in the world no matter how it is, whereas humans need to use lies to adorn this forest of humanity, and it is this that distinguishes animals from humans. More cunning than animals, humans need to use lies to conceal their own ugliness in order to seek a reason for living: to articulate pain in order to alleviate pain seems to make pain bearable. In ancient times, the dirges at funerals in the villages had the effect of drugging the senses, and, like the singing of Mass in churches, the singing of these could be addictive.

Pasolini adapted for cinema Sade's exposes of the evil of political power and human nature; by using only the screen to separate the audience from reality, he made people feel that they were viewing the violence and evil from the outside. That there can be a tantalizing quality in violence and evil is probably the wonder of art and literature.

Sincerity is the same for the poet and the novelist. The writer hides like a photographer behind the camera, affecting impartiality and detachment behind an objective camera, but what is projected on the negative is still self-love and self-pity, masturbation and sadism. That eye with its pretense of neutrality is driven by all sorts of desires, and what is manifested is tinged with aesthetic taste while claiming to look with indifference upon the world. It is best that you acknowledge that your writing strives for reality but that it is separated from reality by a layer of language. It is by cloaking naked reality with a gauze curtain, ordering language and weaving into it feelings and aesthetics that you are able to derive pleasure from looking back at it, and are interested in continuing to write.

You articulate in language your feelings, experiences, dreams, memories, fantasies, thoughts, assessments, premonitions, sensations, as well as providing the music and rhythms for linking these to the existences of real people. In the process of linguistic actualization, the present and past history, time and space, concepts and knowledge, all become fused and leave behind magical illusions created by language.

The magic of literature lies in willingness on the part of the author and the reader. Unlike political frauds that even the unwilling are forced to accept, literature may either be read or not, there is no coercion. You do not choose literature because of a belief in its purity; for you, it is simply a means of release.

Also, you are not polemical. You do not extend or amputate according to the other person's height, do not tailor yourself to the framework of theories, do not restrict what you say to what interests others. Your writing is only to bring pleasure and happiness to your life.

And you are not a superman. Since Nietzsche, there has been a glut of both supermen and common herds in the world. You are, in fact, very ordinary, the epitome of ordinariness and practicality. You are relaxed and at ease, have a smile like Buddha's, although you are not Buddha.

You absolutely refuse to be a sacrifice, refuse to be a plaything or a sacrificial object for others, refuse to seek compassion from others, refuse to repent, refuse to go mad and trample everyone else to death. You look upon the world with a mind that is the epitome of ordinariness, and in exactly the same way you look at yourself. Nothing inspires fear, amazement, disappointment, or wild expectation, hence, you avoid frustration. If you want to enjoy being upset, you get upset, then revert to this supremely ordinary, smiling, and contented you.

You do not detest the world and its ordinary ways that will always be fashionable. By not exaggerating your challenge to those in power, you have survived to enjoy freedom of speech. You have also received kindness from others and, as far as you are concerned, the principle "I don't want others to owe me anything and I don't want to owe others anything" is wrong. You are indebted to others, and others are indebted to you, but adding together all the kindness you have received from others, you have certainly received much more than you have given. Indeed, you are very lucky, so why are you complaining?

You are not a dragon, not an insect, not this, not that, so, "are not" is thus you, but rather than negation, "are not" is a sort of reality, a trace, a cost, or a result. At the end point, that is, at the brink of death, you are merely an indication of life-expression and speech that confronts "are not."

You have written this book for yourself, this book of fleeing, your One Man's Bible, you are your own God and follower, you do not sacrifice yourself for others, so you do not expect others to sacrifice themselves for you, and this is the epitome of fairness. Everyone wants happiness, so why should it all belong to you? However, what should be acknowledged is that there is actually very little happiness in the world.