IL FAUT ETRE ABSOLUMENT POSTMORTEM

The attempt of writing a story without a precise idea was a situation that often occurred to me. I was searching for something innovating…I asked myself : “what should I write about? How should I start?” I wanted to create anew, but nothing came up to my mind.
I had a block. Discouragement and impuissance were binding me to the reality of my uselessness; they were straining my nerves and wearing out my energy.
Il faut etre absolument moderne. This was the rule I had to follow. This was the dogma that the word was imposing me.
The heavy task of stepping forward in the evolution of creation was smashing me to ground, and because of my poor talent, I had surrendered.
My weakness asked for mercy and I gave in.
The only thing left for me was to doze in a state of semi-unconsciousness, in which innocence comforted me, protected me. Until I floated in hallucination.
Emerging, in front of my eyes, was an incredible building.
It was an enormous white palace; defined, authoritative.
Step by step, I walked up to the palace’s portal. I looked around, but nothing was in site. Around the palace, just black.
In any moment, the black was going to devour the pale oasis, and it made me happy, almost peaceful. As a matter of fact, I was going to change my direction, but a voice stopped me: “Where are you going?”
I could not tell where that voice was coming from.
While I was searching with my eyes, I felt a tap on the back. I turned, and one foot from me was an elegant man. The elegant clothes he wore -a black suit with a tie- were not slightly as elegant as how he wore them: like an old man.
He starred at me for a moment, then spoke: “I hope you recognize me, rather than just starring without any fascination!”
“I don’t”. I answered.
“All the better! I am the doorman here,” he stated.
“Do I ruin everything by asking you if all this is more than just one of my dreams?”
“Not at all. This is, indeed, a dream, but you must be cautious when saying that it is your dream.”
While he was talking, what seemed to me nonsense, I studied his lean figure, and I noticed that his right eye was half closed. This reminded me of someone, but I forgot whom.
“ You will understand when you will look there.” He pointed out his finger toward the dark. I couldn’t see anything.
He repeated his command: “Look!”. But again, nothing. With patience he repeated: “Look at the fountain of Kubla Kahn.”
At once, an incredible fountain materialized opposite the building; it was glorious, mighty, holy!
Silence followed. Bewilderment on his face. His expression was suggesting me that I should have known.
As he didn’t receive any acknowledgment, he continued:
“You are in the highest state of mind; you are in the Parnassus. Here is where creation comes from. This is the source, the milk of Paradise.”
I look back once more, but the fountain was gone. It came, and disappeared like a meteorite.
But the name he pronounced brought me back to attention. The Parnassus. So this was where the muses lived, I asked.
“No one lives here, every one just is. You are here because you needed a book. Now, let us cross the portal that hides what you are looking for.”
“I am sorry to contradict you, but before reaching this place, I was looking for an idea to develop, a story to write, not a book.”
He gave me his back, and started to walk. Evidently, I had to follow him.
We went through the portal, and in the precise moment in which we were walking under the marble lintel, his right eye pierced my mind, and without his mouth moving, I heard his child-voice saying: “Development implies a change. Change alone is eternal, perpetual; immortal. Here is where the Book dwells. What you refer to is a declination of it.”
I doubted what he was saying. Moreover, I was surprise that in a dream I could feel irritated. Time was passing, and I was wasting it.
I was following him without enthusiasm; the overwhelming hall was drawing me away from the acute words of the doorman.
He was strange. He must have been as mythical as the place.
I decided to break the momentary silence. My practical duty helped me speak, while oppressing me at the same time. “I have decided to write a short story”.
I was too general. I had to add something: “I am thinking about a modern short story…a modern short story about a clochard.”
He stopped, smiled at me. Again I notice the elegance of an old man and the harmony of his movements, with which he took out of his jacket a booklet and passed his index finger through it. “Very well then. If that is what your wish, you shall find it in room 353. The room is on the second floor. To get there you must take the third stair case on the left wing of the palace.”
I thanked him, then moved toward the third stair case. Everything seemed puzzling to me, to the degree of ridiculousness. The formality of the man dressed in a suit and the holy “dome” were far from my reality, yet the realism of the dream, and my own sense of unreality, slid in improbability, and then to convincing surrealism.
After meandering with a mazy motion, I finally arrived in front of room 353. Franz was written on the door.
I knocked. Nobody answered. I opened the door. A small man was standing in the middle of the room.
I was silent. I had the impression that in this place I shouldn’t have opened my mouth if not asked to.
“Theoretically, you could be right now in one of my stories.”
“I beg you pardon?” I was taken aback.
“Don’t you see where you are?”
“Yes, in the Parnassus.”
“Who told you this?”
“The door man”.
“The door man has a very good sense of humor.”
“ Why is that?”
“ This is indeed the Parnassus,” he sounded confident, “but I guess that the door man didn’t tell you that it is more like a prison than a desirable place.”
I was confused. I knew who was in front of me. I could feel his aura of anguish. Finally his anguish peaked in despair: “There is hope, but not for us.”
He was a damned. And his sad face expressed the acceptance of desolation through its eyes.
“So this is the temple of the writers?”
“ Yes this is our hell, and you came to visit it. Therefore you could be one of my characters…you are here for no reason, hence you are already experiencing what this place is: bureaucracy.”
“I think that you are simply obsessed with the idea of bureaucracy and of imprisonment. I am here to write a story; that is enough of a reason to be here.
“If you think that this reason is good enough for you, suit yourself. But you still don’t know how this place works. Thus, you shouldn’t judge what I tell you before you have not seen it for yourself”.
This was going against all my principles. In my opinion, literature meant liberty, freedom. For this man it meant being in chains.
It happened often that I wanted to contradict a writer, so I took the occasion, and with arrogance, I said: “ I think you have a wrong image of writing. Writing makes a person free.”
What seemed to me a provocation didn’t have any effect on my interlocutor. Instead, he smiled, and continued:
“ I would argue many things you have said, but I’ll limit myself to what I am saying: You are still alive. We, who live in this place, are dead, but unfortunately, can’t rest in peace, because immortality (a state achieved by our words) has imprisoned us. Not even fire will be able to burn our words, and therefore it will not be able to set us free. And you would think that those words were conceived by us, but…”
“I am here to write my own words.” I interrupted him, because I was annoyed of the gargantuan ego of the former writers. Even when they are dead they had tt suffocate the up and coming! How unfair, how rude! I was really nauseated, and although what he was saying was fascinating, the story I wanted to write was my main concern.
Again he didn’t seem to accept my provocation. With a docile voice, as if he read in my mind, he told me that I shouldn’t worry, there would be always place in this prison: “It is infinite!”
Then he continued: “So you want to write a short story about a clochard. Is he going to be willingly alienated or is he a clochard because of destiny?”
Destiny. What an odd word pronounced by an odd man. Did I believe in destiny? I did not know how to answer my own question, so my answer to his was as simple as possible, something that could blend both ideas together:
“ He obviously is unsociable, hence it is difficult to determine whether he was born unsociable or he became unsociable. The importance is that unsociability drives him to exclusion. That is reason why I want to use a clochard -he is a heavy life-archetype, but that at the same time very light. He lives in the middle of a narrow border between life and death.”
The story is nothing new, he remarked.
“Well then it’s going to be a rich noble man, who will become a clochard. And the story is going to result a comedy!”
“I am still perplexed by your originality. Nonetheless, I want to help you. I don’t think I have a large amount of suggestion about the style you want to use. My stories are somewhat funny, although I can’t say they are comedies. Go to room 440; the person you will find there will be able to assist you.”
I asked where room 440 was.
“It is on the next floor, on the right wing of the building. You must first return to the ground floor, take the first staircase to the fourth floor. There you will find the room on your right.”
I didn’t understand why I was supposed to go somewhere else. The doorman told me that this was the place where I would find what I was looking for.
I decided to thank him anyway. While I was leaving the room, he told me: “ Now you will see what I was talking about. It has already started”.
I went down, then up. I made my way to the other room.
Room 440: Oscar.
“Come in, my dear friend. How are you?
I was surprised to find the room filled with candlelights. It was an absolute difference from the last room. In the middle of the room there was even a joyful table, with the most marvelous dishes and wines.
“Hello”.
“How may I help you?” He was tall with broad shoulders.
“A man called Franz, from room 353, told me to come here. We were discussing about my story. I told him that I fancied a comedy, so he sent me here, because he thought that you could help me better”.
“I love Frank’s hypocrisy. You were sent to see me for a problem that Franz might as well have solved himself. But no worry, we can see though it together.
“What do you mean? I thought that Kafka has not written comedies.”
“Kafka maybe has not. But he has to understand that, once he lives here, he isn’t anymore Kafka. We are all the same, we are all one…maybe with the exception of Shaw and his disliking friends.”
I was baffled. He noticed it, and he added: “You don’t have English humor, have you? It was a joke. Bernard and the rest of the Bolshevik-writers are also here. Obviously in the left wing.
You must grasp that our names represent, indeed, different ideas, and these ideas, when they clash together, create dissent and contradiction, but at the end, in this place, we flow into one wave, in which the ideas attached to our names are only symbolic.”
I tried to delve more into what Oscar had just revealed to me, but I had nothing to say except a stupid comment: “Franz told me that this is a sort of prison for writers. But I can see how a prison should have an authentic banquette in the middle of a room?!”
Oscar was in a very good mood. With his cheerful voice he said: “I always say ‘we are all in the gutter, and some of us-like me- are looking at the stars’. Anyway, don’t mind what he says. Franz is such a tragic person. Wasn’t it he, who said “There will be no proof that I was a writer”?! Well, there were many proofs, but now he has the occasion to hide. Every writer should long for concealment.”
“To reveal art and conceal the artist is art’s aim”; I interrupted him smartly.
“Precisely! The writer is more an actor than the actor, but this doesn’t entitle him to the stage.”
“I always thought that you lived on a stage”.
“The artist is not entitled to the stage, but the genius is!”
I was quite satisfied with his answer. But still I had a story to write.
“Anyway, I wanted to ask you some suggestions, Mr. Wilde.”
“About the story of the tramp?”
“Yes.”
“So this is a noble man, who becomes a clochard, am I right?”
“Yes.”
“He was certainly drunk to do something like that!”
“Also”.
“So if he is an alcoholic, why are you asking me?”
“Because I would like to limn him with a comic language and style.”
“I don’t think it would be a great idea. It is better to give it a naturalistic style, a dry, an authentic, a fierce and vigorous style that unfortunately I can’t give you.”
I knew what he was going to say next. I felt like I was a checker in a sadistic game, played by these artists. I thought that everyone belonged to the same contradictory source, I told him.
“We do belong to the same source. But it’s like asking a brain cell to do the job of a heart cell. Then, there is also the exception of the staminal cells.”
I guess so, I replied. I thought that his hypocrisy was too much, and I was happy I was able to go somewhere else.
“Who is this person?”
“He is an admirable man. A man with a past.” While he was saying this, he had a lecherous expression that I tried to ignore.
“Where is he?”
“He is at the first floor. Room 100. Second staircase.”
“Thank you very much”.
“It was a delight. Don’t forget: ‘The importance of being Ernest’.”
And with a flourish gesture he showed his farewell.
I closed the door. That baroque room was truly giving to my head. Everything was light and frivolous. There was no border between seriousness and joke. Oscar seemed to take everything like a game, a ceaseless game in the spiral of existence.
I descended to the ground floor, in order to go to the next room.
I hadn’t yet metabolized what Oscar told me, therefore there wasn’t any reason to go to the next room. Actually due to that guile artist I was having a painful headache. It was as if I was going from one dinner to the next, stuffing myself with things that I doubted at the moment or I couldn’t simply understand.
I tried to stay on a realistic level. I tried to compare the things I saw and not the things I heard, but it seemed it didn’t bring me anywhere, even thought I thanked God that I was away from that rake.
I was moving through the hall until I got to the right room.
I knocked on the door. A voice told me to come in.
A plenitude of alcoholic smell came from the room. Not only alcohol was in the air but also cigarette smoke was flooding the place. It was like being in a fog, I couldn’t still see the person I was looking for, maybe he was hidden at the very end of the room.
“Oscar sent me to see you.”
Silence. I struggled through the room, without the help of my eyes. Suddenly, I fell, tripping over something. Again, I endeavored to walk, but it was impossible; things that were lying on the ground obstructed the way.
“I thought I heard some one at the door. Is anyone here?”
Then I remembered that I should have looked at the name on the door before entering the room, but it was too late, I couldn’t see the way back.
I felt quite lonely. The silence was terrible. It was pounding on my ears, giving me the sensation of being lost. My hearing was completely useless and also my vision. In an attempt to save my balance I decided to sit down.
“Do you feel it?” finally the voice spoke. “Do you feel the heft of oblivion?”
The voice itself was the symbol of the rumple room.
“Yes, I can feel it”.
“No. You can’t. You can understand the difference between oblivion and fame. You haven’t touched these two absolutes.”
He was correct, I hadn’t. But why did he decide to have such a gloomy room, I asked.
“If you interpret the word gloomy as in a state of depression, you are wrong. As a matter of fact, I have never been this placid.”
“May I ask, who you are?”
“If I would tell you my name you wouldn’t know me, you would simply know how they called me. What I am now is not what I was before, because what I am now is not being.”
I was skeptical about his cunning sophism, but I tried not to interrupt him. I only emitted a nodding sound.
“My name is Hemingway, if this pleases you.”
“Nice to meet you mister Hemingway.”
Even though I had good intentions, my voice sounded fabricated. Maybe it was because my voice was in contrast with his, more hoarse. I wanted to save myself from my heedlessness. I continued: “I see Mr. Hemingway. I understand. You are one of those artists who prefer being secluded in concealment. You put art to the highest level of importance; you leave the podium to art and not to your ego! You are the artist of artists!”
“Nonsense! You don’t understand a damn,” his husky voice arose. “I couldn’t care less about my books! My books aren’t mine anymore. Furthermore, I don’t belong to myself.”
“It is difficult for me to follow you, I am sorry.”
“You are really obtuse!...Now listen, I don’t recognize the image the public gave of my life. The image of my life was integrally filed for the use of the public curiosity! And not only after my death, but also during my life.”
“Have you killed yourself in order to escape this looking and judging eye, which ruins everything that it stares?”
“No, I killed myself because the suffering had overwhelmed me. If I had wanted to committed suicide to kill my image, I would have pointed to my face and not to my temples. I wanted to destroy my brain, my intellect. That was the only thing in my power. To cancel my image was impossible. As I told you before it didn’t belong to me anymore. My image was immortal. A writer is unable to escape immortality once he has written books. Hopefully, sometimes immortality fades away with time.”
At this point I was completely confused. I craved for an explanation to my uncertainty: “I thought you had always designated your work to create a myth around your life, around your image. But now you deny everything.”
“What I did, was not more than writing books!”, the man was furious, “then I was put in the eternal trial, in which the fucking maid and clerk judged me probably without having even read what I had written. Indeed, they ignored my books. The character they wanted was Ernest Hemingway, nobody else.”
“You loved to be the centre of this trial, even with the maid and the clerk presiding it!” I was getting also annoyed.
Then his voice seemed calm again: “It is true that at the beginning I loved it, but when I became old, I neglected immortality, because it was a ridiculous illusion, an empty word.” There was a long pause. Then he continued. “Don’t fret yourself. You will understand what I am saying once you will die. You are still thinking with an mortal mentality. You are still in the world of images; for you everything must be represented, shown, declared, explained. Above all the seamy and the sordid.”
An undertow of friendliness was revolving around our discussion, as if we were in the same boot, and he was trying to save me from a terrible doom. This atmosphere touched me to the state of self-awareness; I knew that he had no intentions of helping me.
“I suppose that you will not help me with my story.”
“You suppose right. I want to save you from your bad intentions. Because I know that you will be tempted by the Icon like I was. Therefore, I will not suggest you another room for your whereabouts. You should simply leave this place.” The Hemingway priest had talked, and what was left for me to do, was simply to leave, without saying anything else.
I turned around, and I saw that a passage had opened; the smoke had moved, as if it was scattered to fragments; in the midst of the debris I could see my way out. I hurried to the door, afraid of its imminent closing. As I almost reached it, I felt a vague shadow behind me touching my back benevolently.
I closed the door. I was sure that the smell of alcohol was probably gone, although I couldn’t tell, because I was inured to it.
I recalled one of Oscar’s quotes, and decided to change it for the occasion: “We are all in the gutter, but some of us like it there!”
I strolled in the hallway, adrift in my reverie of what I had just experienced. Was I thinking more about my unfinished, and actually not even began story, or rather the entities of this place, in particular the last one? I didn’t know.
The more I wander, the more I felt tense. I had the opportunity of having Knowledge, but it was escaping, as soon as I took a grip on it. As a matter of fact everything appeared fugacious; the palace itself was slippery, indefinable. Although the palace was made out of defined and solid material, and it was designed in a Doric style, it played sly optical illusions, leading me to think that it didn’t have an end: I could see the end of the hallways, but I couldn’t get there…also the rooms, in their finite, were endless. It was a finite in its infinite, which obviously didn’t make sense, but the palace seemed to be mother of itself, in the sense that, as a paradoxical matryoshka, the big palace had hallways, these always had rooms, and these rooms seemed to contain the entire palace. Therefore, even without having tried, I predicted that in every room there should have been another door, other than the one I always took, and that the other door would have brought me to the main entrance, the portal; or moreover, it would have brought me to another place tout court. It was just an impression that, however, touched probability to the extent of certainty, from there to the extent of insanity.
I drifted until I bumped into something. Abruptly, I was stolen from my absorption, making me quite unbalanced, between annoyance and complete disorientation.
“Are you the person, who saunters around this dump?”
My eyes moved from the floor gradually up, until they found the man’s face.
The hesitation I had, was due more to his straightforwardness, than to surprise.
“Yes. And who are you?” I decided to use the same direct tone.
“I am Thomas Eliot.”
It was curious to grasp his relaxed ways, as if we knew each other. He went on: “I noticed that you were, not long ago, in Hemingway’s den”.
That was right, I answered. Then I asked him whether he had followed me or he had just happened to see me coming out of the room.
“Both. But who cares for explanations. Let’s not be fussy. Instead, tell me what did you think about old Ernest. Although the general indifference, I might say that every body here is worried about him.”
“I still hadn’t had the time to think much about it at all. He is as strange as any other person here.”
“This is your personal opinion. Even so, I wanted to tell you that Hemingway was seduced by the singing of his own image, rather than by the languid voice of death.”
“This could be.” I feebly said.
“Not could, it is. He was eaten by his on food. Besides, with all his endeavor to produce great books he has done a great but meaningless job, because -it is time to say it loud and clear- reading about Hemingway is one thousand times more fun and enlightening, than reading Hemingway.”
I was ashamed of the truth of this sentence. Yet, I thought I needed to contradict him; I had the duty to defend Hemingway’s honor.
“It is true that the most important thing for Hemingway is to be Hemingway. Nevertheless, he has separated himself from his face. He had the courage to overcome his tragedy.” I said.
After my statement, Eliot should have been apologetic; he should have felt like an insensitive, a crass and coarse person. But no…he was more persistent!
“You see in his action something noble…you are naïve. When Hemingway arrived here, after his death, he decided to toss his physical aspect, in order to be more unique than what he was in life. He realized that the body is a motif, which doesn’t change among people. It is a motif that bonds us all together in fraternity. To have a face means also to have a name, which are both commonplace. Hemingway hates faces, because they remind him of the equality in insignificance! Did he actually see you?”
“No, I don’t think so”, I quickly answered.
“That is better. He would have regarded your face as muck”.
Despite his eloquence, I wasn’t convinced. I had more to argue against.
So I started by asking: “Why should he seek for uniqueness in the body, when he already has it in his mind, in his ideas?”
“You are more naïve than I thought. You think that the people are more unique than ideas, that is to say people can create their own ideas in order to be unique, or what?!”
“Yes!” I tenaciously confirmed.
“Ahahah. The people are many, and the ideas are few. Why do you think I have always proclaimed that a real artist robs ideas, and doesn’t just imitate them? The artist must take pure ideas, not the ones he tries to befoul by counterfeiting. All this means that ideas were before man. Ideas are a primary source at the disposal of every one!”
This time, his platonic view struck me. Did good literature originate directly from these pure ideas, these archetypes? Who was allowed to use them…every one he said. But would godly ideas give themselves to anyone or would they pick their favorite? I didn’t want to ask.
This postulation was recurrent among these artists, but it appeared that a part of the reflection was missing, thus I tried to complete what he had said:
“Who decides the uniqueness of the artist? We have not spoken about it. At any rate, this is an easy question, which, nonetheless, hides a diabolic mechanism.
We both know that the artist has a public, on which he depends. This public judges the artist, but more importantly, this public remembers the artist, the artist’s name and the artist’s concepts. This means that those concepts will always have that specific name, which is memorized in the literary story. Consequently, writers who robbed, were punished by the public and by the critics; D’Annunzio is one of the best examples.”
“Your flaunty syllogism is fallacious. It is clear that you see literature as a series of virtuosities, which were made to be judge by a seedy critic. But, unfortunately for you, literature is not an arabesque, it is not a sophisticated jeu, in which the mannerism is displayed! Literature has an aim, which is the creation of an independent universe parallel to the existing one, but with the only difference that this humanly created universe is absolute, and the tangible one is relative. Here you are in the universal truth. Once you go back to the everyday, the experienced you have achieved here will be worth as much as any other prosaic information.”
He looked at me gravely, like a pedagogue in front of a dimwit scholar. I was wrong, he was right. There wasn’t much to do about it. I nodded, showing him that I understood his lesson.
“Thank you for clearing these ambivalent arguments”.
“As long as you like to hear what I have to say. You see, we are here to guide you, but many times this place is no more than a chattering drone.”
“A very interesting chattering drone.” I answered.
“Drones are always interesting, if the person is able to pick up the core of what is said.”
Then, he looked around. “I must go now. I must see my fried Ezra. Oh, yes, for your story, I suggest you to go to room 603, sixth floor, right wing. I’m sorry to leave you all alone”
“No problem.”
He left, while I started toward the room.
Up, up, up to the top. The never-ending stairs were producing a crawling ache in my legs. Up, up, up to the top. The more I climbed the stairs, the more I was sure I was going to find Beatrice at the landing. Up, up, up to the top. The hyperventilation was transforming my body in an acid block, through the loss of the carbon dioxide in my blood. I was thinking nothing. My eyes were looking nowhere.
Finally, I arrived to the sixth floor. I had to turn right and walk a little, until I arrived to the right door. 603: Milan.
I had no idea that Eliot wanted to send me to a city. Despite that, I knocked on the door for politeness (you never know!).
“Come in, come in. You know that you are allowed. Don’t be always obsequious.”
His voice had a strong exotic accent. I went into the room.
“Hello” I said.
“Again these civilities?”
“I am sorry, I can not help it.”
“Ok. Let’s get to the point.”
He was solemn. The way he talked was like a beheading guillotine. The atmosphere made me rigid. I simply agree.
“Why are you her?” he continued.
“I am here for inspiration. I am where the muses dwell.”
“Stop it with this betise! You are not here to be inspired. You are here for affirmation!”
“How dare you! Who are you to say that I am here to affirm myself?”
“Milan Kundera: a creation of you perverted mind.”
It was too much… “What do you mean with this? My creation? At last, the craziest of all: Milan Kundera! Have you gone completely insane?”
He turned his back to me. “You want to say that you are a simple traveler in these idyllic estate?”
“Sure. I asked the doorman, if this was a dream of mine. He answered me that it was a dream, but not mine.”
“Oh, you put Borges at the door. I don’t want to imagine what your unconscious wants to symbolize with this, but apparently it doesn’t want to contradict itself, or more specifically, it doesn’t want to confuse you.”
“You want to say that this is the result of my unconscious? What rubbish!”
“Do you know my name? Have you read something written by me?”
“I have”.
“You should know also that I am a contemporary writer”. What disgusting grin he made!
“So you aren’t dead; is that what you want to tell me? You want to say that it is incongruous for you to be here, that here only the dead writers reside?”
“I am sorry to inform you, that this place is not the source of literature, but a place, a dream, originated from a presumptuous wannabe-writer. You thought that being in the Parnassus meant being qualified as a writer.”
I didn’t answer or contradict him. I wanted him to continue…
“You needed to put together a educational trip, from one writer to the other, to be accepted, to become one of them. Therefore, you put in their mouths words that you read from them, in order to elevate what you think, and to elevate what you are doing. But what you didn’t realize, is that everything that was said was a banality; plain dull!”
“This does not make sense. Why did my mind stage such a complicated dream, just to be ruined at the end?...and by such a disagreeable person?!”.
He enjoyed my insult, and continued to talk with more pleasure than before.
“It is simple. You know that writing means being forced to write. You are aware that the real writers wrote because they had to, because they were compelled by a mysterious energy. You, however, didn’t feel at all this imperative; hence, to call yourself “writer”, you had to force yourself to write. The result of your self-imposed dictate is this dream.”
“Well, if everything you said is true, is there a difference between the two impositions? I think that it is the same thing at the end.” I said smartly.
“Of course, it is different! You can’t create something great; you can’t touch the absolute. You are simply unauthentic.”
I hoped that he was wrong. I hoped that it was just a mistake. “You are wrong”.
“Am, I?”
“Yes, because if it’s true that this dream originates from my mind, then it would mean that I feel the flow of literature. For this dream is a postmodern dream, and postmodernism is a literary movement!”
“Oh my god. Are you so desperate to become a writer? Postmodern dream…what are you going to say next?! Don’t you realize that you dream is not postmodern, but postmortem?! Every writer in this story is dead, and I am 79 years old. I am one of the last ones able to still reach the true source. I am truly able to reach the Parnassus. I have the possibility to see Kubla Khan. For you, there is no hope, because literature is dead, and your dream demonstrates it. You are out of poetry’s border, literature’s border! That’s why you were so attracted by the black around this palace.”
I woke up violently.
I had slept with my head on the table. My table full of books.
I threw those books on the floor. I was disgusted by them.
I wanted to go for a walk. I put my jacket on. I opened the door, and went out in the cold night.
I wanted to saunter in the world, where thesis, antithesis and synthesis didn’t exist. I wanted to glide in the freedom of the confusing universe. I wanted to flow in the evanescent anonymity of the night, beyond the borders of poetry.
I was a useless ghoul in the estate of insignificance.