Selected Cronicas

SILKEN THREADS

A friend of mine who thought Henry James was a marvellous writer suggested that I should start reading his work. Henry James can be hermetic yet at the same time so lucid. In quoting from one of his essays, I hope my readers won’t find me hermetic. That would be most unfortunate. But there are certain things I feel I must express and they are not easy. I suggest you read the following passage several times:

Experience is never limited and it is never complete; it is an immense sensibility, a kind of huge spider’s web of the finest silken threads, suspended in the chambers of consciousness and catching every air-borne particle in its tissue. It is the very atmosphere of the mind; and when the mind is imaginative — more so when it happens to be that of a man of genius — it takes to itself the faintest hints of life, it converts the very pulses of the air into revelations.

Far from being a genius, how many revelations, how many air-borne particles I find myself catching. And that huge spider lurks in the chamber of my consciousness. Ah, how wonderful life is with its ensnaring webs.

Warn me if I start becoming too personal. That is a weakness of mine. But I am also objective. So much so that I can transform those subjective threads of the spider into objective words. Any word, for that matter, is an object and therefore objective. Moreover you may be certain that one does not have to be intelligent: the spider is not intelligent, and as for words, words are inevitable. Do you get my meaning? Never mind. Simply accept what I am offering you. Accept me with silken threads.