CHAPTER 23. THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE INTELLECTUAL.

February 23, 1967.

“…Other than fame, I had nothing, and for many people, that's already a lot, it must be admitted. But what kind of fame was it? The fame of a great writer, even though none of my works were finished. By acquainting many with the first chapter of one of my books, I quickly gained the recognition of society, which, in turn, desperately wanted to see the continuation of this philosophical treatise. I had no other choice now but to either finish the work I had started, adhering to the principles of genius, or to disgrace my name and my reputation forever. Permanently indulging in the sweet feelings of fame, I now had to pay with my labor… or with my honor! In this life, nothing appears without a cause, and nothing disappears without a trace. For every thought, every feeling, every word, and every action or inaction, a person always bears external or internal responsibility. It must be noted that despite a certain inclination toward literature in my being, I did not possess eloquence and even less so talent. I was only capable of a certain understanding of this world. The degree of this understanding was entirely determined by the view that gazed upon it at any given moment. All my works, including the formally undefined ones, were the result of the hard work of my being's thought and feeling, but by no means anyone's gift or blessing. This was my burden, this was my cross, this was my onus… Obscurity! How I adored its limits and spaces. Only after leaving that place, which was native to me, did I fully realize that my salvation lay precisely there. As long as no one knew me, I was free to speak and act as my nature desired. Now, I am completely dependent on human opinion; I must speak and act as society desires… otherwise… the price of free will is my reputation! From now on, to some extent, human rumor governs my creativity, just as a theater artist governs a small puppet with strings, but… what about the responsibility to the truth?! To betray myself to contempt and, accordingly, to oblivion, or to betray my very self and, accordingly, the truth?! Collaboration, tolerance, and accordingly, lies, or intolerance toward lies, and accordingly, truth?! A lie for the good of society or the truth for the sake of man?! A lie… no matter how exquisite and plausible it seems, it still remains a lie, and therefore honor taints its essence no less than cherry juice taints a snow-white parchment. The former cannot be washed off the latter; it is now part of it forever!... To write! To create! To scribble!… But how can I create a work of genius?! Maybe I should first study the theory?! No, to hell with Boileau!… To write! I need to write even more! Practice! When a small child first gets to his feet, he does not pick up a book; he does not study how exactly he should walk, how to hold his posture, how long his stride should be, and what rhythm he needs to follow. He does not indulge in the study of theory; he achieves his goals only with the help of constant exercises… To write! To write not only on paper, but, most importantly, in my mind, creating an infinite number of plots! For example, while I was scribbling these lines, a plot about beauty came to my mind: a certain person came to a flower garden to admire the gentle beauty of snow-white roses, to breathe in their sweet scent, to completely surrender to their extremely sensual influence. Thus, striving for beauty and completely entrusting his being to the abyss of feelings, he completely forgot about the real reality, which was personified by a poisonous snake. A bite! A moment! The man died! A wonderful plot! Was the man punished for his desire for beauty?! Or was he punished for losing touch with reality?! But what, perhaps, should a person not strive for beauty at all out of fear of being bitten by a snake or pricked by rose thorns?! No! If a person is given a sense of beauty, despite its harmfulness or the possible consequences of this harmfulness, it should be savored. If wine is poured into a glass, it should be drunk, not poured on the floor… however, it should be drunk without forgetting what kind of world you live in: in a world where danger lurks around every corner for a person!… No, writing about a person, and accordingly more about vice than about virtue, is a thankless task. It will never be accepted by society, for what poor person likes to be called poor? Every lieutenant colonel is always pleased when he is called a colonel: calling him a major is, perhaps, the most terrible of all existing sins… It is better to write fables! For example, a plot about two spiders fighting with each other for a fly, while a dragonfly watches them… a plot about a cockroach who wanted to rule lions… a plot about a snake who did not want to help a wolf get out of a hole, and when the latter got out, she began to convince him that it was her sister, and not her… No! I am a person and I must write about a person—I bear a certain responsibility before a person!… I need to add a woman to the book—she will ruin the main character: usually the greatest men are ruined by the lowest women, and therefore she will prefer everything worldly and transient. My hero will be in love with her to death—mentally he will be free, but he will not be free in his heart… Magnificent! In essence, a writer is no different from a sculptor—he has at his disposal blocks of stones in the form of hundreds of thousands of words of all possible languages: he does not need to create the appropriate forms-images, he needs to reveal them—in turn, they cannot be revealed with the help of rough blows of a chisel; this requires subtle and well-thought-out movements… Who will deceive my hero? He himself! No one can deceive a person faster and better than he can deceive himself!… He will be deceived by his own feelings! Our world is like that. It is difficult to be a human in it, but it is even more difficult to be a living human!… Perhaps my hero will be a writer? Wonderful! Perhaps, like me, he will have to write a work of genius for the sake of saving his reputation? Great! He will have nothing but fame, and that, it must be admitted, is already a lot for many people! He will love philosophy and, like every intellectual, he will have to bear a certain responsibility to society… “Philosophy is an immense abyss, and therefore, plunging into the abyss, one must be aware of the consequences that may appear later: one of these consequences is an infinite attraction to that which has neither beginning nor end!”—that's his quote! “What is a word? Form or meaning?! A single word is an individual, a string of words is a crowd! No! A word is a woman: you can decorate her flesh with white paint and blush, but she is truly beautiful only when she is clothed in natural beauty! No! A word is just a tool: it's a shovel in agriculture or a theorem in mathematics! But what is a word compared to a language?! A language is the leader of words! It must be able to lead words—if it does not know how to control its people, its army, then woe to the subjects: a leader should not run away when it is not needed, but should not be too modest either…”—that's his reflection! He, like me, will be admired and loved for non-existent works! Thus, he will be the complete opposite of Martin Eden! He will walk this path in the opposite direction—without creating anything brilliant, everyone will admire him: as he creates his greatest, most brilliant books, people will hate him more and more!… “Martin Eden is not a book about love, but about achieving a goal: when a person acquires what he has been striving for for so long, he loses the meaning to exist, because at that very moment, the moment of achieving the goal, faith, diligence, and most importantly, hope slowly begin to fade in him! Martin Eden is not a book about love, but about the background, about the scenery that surrounds a brilliant person at one time or another: for example, Ruth is just one of an infinite number of sceneries that illuminates certain thoughts and corresponding changes in the main character. There are no other heroes in this book except Martin Eden! Lizzie O'Connolly is a different background, as is Brissenden! Martin Eden is a plot about the confrontation between the mind's mercenariness and a sense of self-worth: he was sensual and gentle with them, they rejected him; he became a leader and assertive, they laughed at him; he became indifferent to them, they wanted to be with him! It was then, when he began to despise life, that it began to play, like a colorful fish in the sun, with all sorts of colors. Martin Eden is a story about a primitive man, the story of Adam, who for the first time tasted a fruit he had not known before—not knowing the taste of it, he risked his life by tasting it: this fruit was destructive—knowledge always has a certain toxicity. Feeling the gentle matter of this fruit in his mouth, Martin Eden, perhaps for the first time in his life, felt sweetness—he wanted to grow it, spread it, and plant it as much as possible, to get even more pleasure, to experience that sweetness even more and more often! He did so, but Martin Eden himself did not notice how he became a slave to this passion, how he grew a dependence on this pulp in his soul—at certain moments of his life, he was, very likely, the richest winegrower of his time, but… “I undertook great works: I built myself houses, I planted myself vineyards… And I looked at all the works that my hands had made, and at the labor that I had toiled to do: and behold, all was vanity and a striving after wind, and there was no profit from them under the sun!”… I say along with Ecclesiastes. Martin Eden is a book about human life, and human life, in turn, is… an unusually vivid memory after us in those who loved us!”—he will once say to his beloved and evoke a sympathetic expression on her face!… And then, then… out of hopelessness… he will take a pencil in his hands and in the light of a candle, the price of which does not exceed 50 cents, he will create the very work whose price no existing and no person who has ever existed on earth will be able to determine!…