How Bioy Casares redeemed himself 25 years after writing a harsh preface
“If a writer live long enough he will discover in his works plenty of mistakes and not to be conformed with this fate is a sign of intellectual presumption.” – Adolfo Bioy Casares
Any reader who have found the works of Adolfo Bioy Casares, Jorge Luís Borges or Silvina Ocampo knows the power contained in the writings of these icons of south American literature. And they themselves read and considered important? According to Bioy, in one of their reunions they decided to gather the best fantastic tales they knew and edit them in a single volume. That’s how in 1940 the “Anthology of Fantastic Literature” was born, a book made famous both by it’s anthologists and the stories it contains.
However, in 1965 a post-scriptum was added to the book in order to fix certain affirmations made in the first preface from 1940, both written by Bioy Casares:
“To console myself, I once argued, if a writer live long enough he will discover in his works plenty of mistakes and not to be conformed with this fate is a sign of intellectual presumption. However, I’ll try not to waste the possibility of rectification.”
Borges (left) and Bioy Casares (right).
In the first preface he criticized of Kipling’s stories and Marcel Proust’s writing. Joking about a curse in the text and trying to remember the mindset under which he wrote these words he not only denies his attacks but also pays homage to the authors.
“Such critic and not a word about merits configure an opinion that’s not mine. Probably the paragraph in question was cursed. In it I not only attack a favorite story but also find a way, despite the natural rhythm of the language, that do not tolerate such long parentheses, of adding a reference to Proust, as arbitrary as depreciating. I accept when many things remain unsaid, but not saying what I don’t think. Occasional irreverence can be healthy, but to aim it at those we admire the most? (Now I think I remember that there were a moment in youth when the incomprehensible sacrifice filled me with pride.)”
He also explains his attack were a reflex of an understanding, at that time, that the romance had forgotten the essential to him: to tell stories. However, he himself accepts that the psychological romance wasn’t at risks because of the critics and the same would happen to the fantastic literature:
“The fantastic short stories is also safe against those whose disdain demand a more serious literature, capable of bringing answers to the perplexities of the – do not detain yourself here my nib, write the glorious words – modern man. Hardly the answer will mean a solution, out of the reach of the novelists and writers; probably it will insist in commenting, considering, divagating, maybe comparable to the act of ruminating, about some contemporary theme: politics and economics today and yesterday or tomorrow, the corresponding obsession. The fantastic short story corresponds to an aspiration of a man less obsessed, more permanent along the course of life and history: the unending desire of hearing tales; this satisfies him more than anything, because it’s the story of the stories, those of ancient and oriental collections and, as said by Palmeirin of England, imagination’s golden pommel.”
The preface and the post-scriptum this Anthology are, by themselves, a lesson about critic and respect, a way of redemption lacking for many of us. The texts compiled there are rich and deserving of a full reading. Read also the interview where Borges talks about his love for literature and what it takes to be a great writer.
The death of the moth, Virginia Woolf
The death of the moth
Moths that fly by day are not properly to be called moths; they do not excite that pleasant sense of dark autumn nights and ivy-blossom which the commonest yellow-underwing asleep in the shadow of the curtain never fails to rouse in us. They are hybrid creatures, neither gay like butterflies nor sombre like their own species. Nevertheless the present specimen, with his narrow hay-coloured wings, fringed with a tassel of the same colour, seemed to be content with life. It was a pleasant morning, mid–September, mild, benignant, yet with a keener breath than that of the summer months. The plough was already scoring the field opposite the window, and where the share had been, the earth was pressed flat and gleamed with moisture. Such vigour came rolling in from the fields and the down beyond that it was difficult to keep the eyes strictly turned upon the book. The rooks too were keeping one of their annual festivities; soaring round the tree tops until it looked as if a vast net with thousands of black knots in it had been cast up into the air; which, after a few moments sank slowly down upon the trees until every twig seemed to have a knot at the end of it. Then, suddenly, the net would be thrown into the air again in a wider circle this time, with the utmost clamour and vociferation, as though to be thrown into the air and settle slowly down upon the tree tops were a tremendously exciting experience.
The same energy which inspired the rooks, the ploughmen, the horses, and even, it seemed, the lean bare-backed downs, sent the moth fluttering from side to side of his square of the window-pane. One could not help watching him. One was, indeed, conscious of a queer feeling of pity for him. The possibilities of pleasure seemed that morning so enormous and so various that to have only a moth’s part in life, and a day moth’s at that, appeared a hard fate, and his zest in enjoying his meagre opportunities to the full, pathetic. He flew vigorously to one corner of his compartment, and, after waiting there a second, flew across to the other. What remained for him but to fly to a third corner and then to a fourth? That was all he could do, in spite of the size of the downs, the width of the sky, the far-off smoke of houses, and the romantic voice, now and then, of a steamer out at sea. What he could do he did. Watching him, it seemed as if a fibre, very thin but pure, of the enormous energy of the world had been thrust into his frail and diminutive body. As often as he crossed the pane, I could fancy that a thread of vital light became visible. He was little or nothing but life.
Yet, because he was so small, and so simple a form of the energy that was rolling in at the open window and driving its way through so many narrow and intricate corridors in my own brain and in those of other human beings, there was something marvellous as well as pathetic about him. It was as if someone had taken a tiny bead of pure life and decking it as lightly as possible with down and feathers, had set it dancing and zig-zagging to show us the true nature of life. Thus displayed one could not get over the strangeness of it. One is apt to forget all about life, seeing it humped and bossed and garnished and cumbered so that it has to move with the greatest circumspection and dignity. Again, the thought of all that life might have been had he been born in any other shape caused one to view his simple activities with a kind of pity.
After a time, tired by his dancing apparently, he settled on the window ledge in the sun, and, the queer spectacle being at an end, I forgot about him. Then, looking up, my eye was caught by him. He was trying to resume his dancing, but seemed either so stiff or so awkward that he could only flutter to the bottom of the window-pane; and when he tried to fly across it he failed. Being intent on other matters I watched these futile attempts for a time without thinking, unconsciously waiting for him to resume his flight, as one waits for a machine, that has stopped momentarily, to start again without considering the reason of its failure. After perhaps a seventh attempt he slipped from the wooden ledge and fell, fluttering his wings, on to his back on the window sill. The helplessness of his attitude roused me. It flashed upon me that he was in difficulties; he could no longer raise himself; his legs struggled vainly. But, as I stretched out a pencil, meaning to help him to right himself, it came over me that the failure and awkwardness were the approach of death. I laid the pencil down again.
The legs agitated themselves once more. I looked as if for the enemy against which he struggled. I looked out of doors. What had happened there? Presumably it was midday, and work in the fields had stopped. Stillness and quiet had replaced the previous animation. The birds had taken themselves off to feed in the brooks. The horses stood still. Yet the power was there all the same, massed outside indifferent, impersonal, not attending to anything in particular. Somehow it was opposed to the little hay-coloured moth. It was useless to try to do anything. One could only watch the extraordinary efforts made by those tiny legs against an oncoming doom which could, had it chosen, have submerged an entire city, not merely a city, but masses of human beings; nothing, I knew, had any chance against death. Nevertheless after a pause of exhaustion the legs fluttered again. It was superb this last protest, and so frantic that he succeeded at last in righting himself. One’s sympathies, of course, were all on the side of life. Also, when there was nobody to care or to know, this gigantic effort on the part of an insignificant little moth, against a power of such magnitude, to retain what no one else valued or desired to keep, moved one strangely. Again, somehow, one saw life, a pure bead. I lifted the pencil again, useless though I knew it to be. But even as I did so, the unmistakable tokens of death showed themselves. The body relaxed, and instantly grew stiff. The struggle was over. The insignificant little creature now knew death. As I looked at the dead moth, this minute wayside triumph of so great a force over so mean an antagonist filled me with wonder. Just as life had been strange a few minutes before, so death was now as strange. The moth having righted himself now lay most decently and uncomplainingly composed. O yes, he seemed to say, death is stronger than I am.
The colossal profundity inhabiting the insignificance, explored by Virginia Woolf
“It was superb this last protest, and so frantic that he succeeded at last in righting himself.” – Virginia Woolf
One of the greatest achievements of important writers is to show us, through the most obvious things surrounding us, the richness and deepness that we can’t easily see without their literary efforts. In this category, Virginia Woolf wrote one of the most meticulous works based on almost nothing; to her a moth trapped in a window-pane was enough. That’s how she wrote “The death of the moth”, first published in 1942.
Describing the tiny existence of the insect, Woolf echoes what Camus makes explicit while talking about the Myth of Sisyphus, the possible insignificance of life and the tragic aspect that arises when we are conscious of it:
“The possibilities of pleasure seemed that morning so enormous and so various that to have only a moth’s part in life, and a day moth’s at that, appeared a hard fate, and his zest in enjoying his meagre opportunities to the full, pathetic. He flew vigorously to one corner of his compartment, and, after waiting there a second, flew across to the other. What remained for him but to fly to a third corner and then to a fourth? That was all he could do, in spite of the size of the downs, the width of the sky, the far-off smoke of houses, and the romantic voice, now and then, of a steamer out at sea. What he could do he did.”
Virginia humanizes, or even better, she made us sensible to the life of that small creature in a way that halfway through the essay it isn’t about the moth anymore, we facing something much bigger, a clash common to all living beings:
“After perhaps a seventh attempt he slipped from the wooden ledge and fell, fluttering his wings, on to his back on the window sill. The helplessness of his attitude roused me. It flashed upon me that he was in difficulties; he could no longer raise himself; his legs struggled vainly. But, as I stretched out a pencil, meaning to help him to right himself, it came over me that the failure and awkwardness were the approach of death. I laid the pencil down again.”
Einstein said that he would never get tired of contemplating the mystery of life, even if his efforts were not enough for the task. Likewise, Woolf communicate to us, if not an answer, at least a well developed form of seeing this fascinating aspect of life:
“Nevertheless after a pause of exhaustion the legs fluttered again. It was superb this last protest, and so frantic that he succeeded at last in righting himself. One’s sympathies, of course, were all on the side of life. Also, when there was nobody to care or to know, this gigantic effort on the part of an insignificant little moth, against a power of such magnitude, to retain what no one else valued or desired to keep, moved one strangely. Again, somehow, one saw life, a pure bead.”
Virginia Woolf did in just a few pages what many writers don’t achieve in a lifetime, The death of the moth is a small essay thatmust be read in it’s entirety, because as Hilda Hilst claimed, “facing death we are never really conformed” and the written word has an important rola in our lives.
A clumsy question and Faulkner’s powerful answer
“But as—about reading, any experience the writer has ever suffered is going to influence what he does” – William Faulkner
60 years old William Faulkner had some clues on the importance of his works and what would be his legacy when he accepted to be the first writer in residence at the University of Virginia. He wrote while he was there but he also had a lot to say. For his interviews and seminars he even accepted to read again some of his works, something uncommon for him who believed authors had no need to revisit their own books.
The two stays in 1957 and 1958 generated a lot of content, both from the author and the academics. In the website dedicated for this period it’s possible to hear Faulkner talking art, literature and even his hesitations towards cinema.
In one of these lectures Faulkner reads excerpts from “The sound and the fury”, his favorite. Of course, such a statement wouldn’t go unnoticed and a participant asked him the reasons for this:
Unidentified participant: What is the reason that this book from which you read is your favorite [novel]?
William Faulkner: I think that—that no writer is ever quite satisfied with—with the book. That's why he writes another one. That he is trying to put on paper something that is going to be a little better than anybody else has put on paper up to date, and this is my favorite one because I worked the hardest on it, not to accomplish what I hoped to do with it, but I anguished and—and raged over it more than over any other to try to make something out of it, that it was impossible for—for me to do. It's the same feeling that the parent may have toward the—the incorrigible or the abnormal child, maybe.
Echoing the position of Anne Marie-Willis about how the world can influence ourselves, William Faulkner points the importance of the most indirect activities for the artist development:
Unidentified participant: Your books have been compared to Bach's fugues. Do you objectively plan out that they're going to have that [...] effect or does it just come naturally?
William Faulkner: Well, it's—it's not quite planned because probably I am not capable of that, but I think that there's too much work goes into—to any book to call it a natural process. But as—about reading, any experience the writer has ever suffered is going to influence what he does, and that is not only what he's read, but the music he's heard, the pictures he's seen, and it wasn't that I went to Bach to—to get myself out of a—a—a jam in the work, but probably what I had heard of Bach—at the moment when I needed to use counterpoint, there it was.
For Jorge Luís Borges the accident that risked his literature would also be denying the meaning of his life if his fears proved real. This passion followed by a profound sense of meaningfulness is also present in Faulkner’s words while answering to a clumsy question:
Unidentified participant: Do you think—what I'm trying[...] . [audience laughter] [...]. Do you—do you think before you write or do you write— [audience laughter]
William Faulkner: Well, I'm glad you stopped there. Thank you. [audience laughter] Did—I think I know what you mean by the stimulus. It's—you're alive in the world. You see man. You have an insatiable curiosity about him, but more than that you have an admiration for him. He is frail and fragile, a web of flesh and bone and mostly water. He's flung willy nilly into a ramshackle universe stuck together with electricity. [audience laughter] The problems he faces are always a little bigger than he is, and yet, amazingly enough, he copes with them, not individually but—but as a race. He endures. He's outlasted dinosaurs. He's outlasted atom bombs. He'll outlast communism. Simply because there's some part in him that keeps him from ever knowing that he's whipped, I suppose. That as frail as he is, he—he lives up to his codes of behavior. He shows compassion when there's no reason why he should. He's braver than he should be. He's more honest. The writer is—is so interested, he sees this as so amazing and—and you might say so beautiful. Anyway, it—it's so moving to him that he wants to put it down on paper or in music or on canvas, that he simply wants to isolate one of these instances in which man—frail, foolish man—has acted miles above his head in some amusing or dramatic or tragic way. Anyway, some gallant way. That, I suppose, is the incentive to write, apart from it being fun. I sort of believe that is the reason that people are artists. It's—it's the most satisfying occupation man has discovered yet, because you never can quite do it as well as you want to, so there's always something to wake up tomorrow morning to do. You're never bored. You never reach satiation.
Complement your reading with this text by one of the greatest female brazilian writers, Lygia Fagundes Telles, on the role of the writer.