The Museum of Eterna's Novel

LETTER TO THE CRITICS

I’m the only one who understood you, gentlemen; the first who grasped your basic vocation: those eternally in hope of Perfection, who are daily reduced to eulogizing book binding, driven to it by the continual failure of the poem, the novel, the printed word, one after the other and day after day; you, gentlemen, are the only lovers and connoisseurs of Perfection. No such thing for the writers, the publishers of sketches, hasty books, opportune books, party books; someday Perfection will come in the form of a book, just as you rightly hoped and planned: until now Perfection has only been seen in the grace and moral power of certain men and women, known to all of us, who will never gain either historical or name recognition.

But it’s good that you wait, and I’m sure the day Perfection appears as a Book you will all applaud, unanimously and immensely gratified.

Writers have always understood that for some time now we should have been in compliance with this critical attitude. But knowing how terribly fatiguing it is to construct a novel according to strict artistic standards, and what little hope there is of getting it right, not only do we suffer, but we also waste our talents since we don’t write the Book, and in waiting to write, we forget the nicety of waiting to find perfection in the efforts of others.

I didn’t find an easy way to execute my own artistic theory. My novel is flawed, but I would like to be recognized as the first who has attempted to use that prodigious instrument, the commotion of consciousness — that is, the novelistic character in its proper efficiency and virtue. By this I mean the total commotion of consciousness of the reader, and not the trivial occupation of the attention with a particular, precarious, ephemeral topic: itself. With this and some other thoughts formulated in the course of the book, I approach this Perfection you gentlemen expect, and set an example as well: a rigorous doctrine of the literary art.

If I’m wrong, I won’t be the first, or the last. You may give me the maximum sentence.

I know very well that my work will keep you waiting in your quest for

Perfection, but perhaps I may succeed in whetting your appetite. If your appetite is whetted, then my book was good enough.

I realized that all you really know is what Perfection is not.

— M.F.