The Book of Disquiet (34 page)

Thus was born a literature and art made of the lower elements of thought – Romanticism. And with it, a social life made of the lower elements of action – modern democracy.

Souls born to rule had no recourse but to abstain. Souls born to create, in a society where creative forces were flagging, had no world to mould to their will besides the social world of their dreams, the introspective sterility of their own soul.

We apply the name ‘Romantics’ both to the great men who failed and to the little men who showed themselves for what they were. But the only similarity between the two is in their overt sentimentality, which in the former denotes an inability to make active use of the intelligence, while in the latter it denotes the lack of intelligence itself. A Chateaubriand and a Hugo, a Vigny and a Michelet, are products of the same age. But Chateaubriand is a great soul that was diminished, Hugo a little soul that was inflated by the winds of the day. Vigny is a genius that had to flee, Michelet a woman that was forced to be a man of genius. In the father of them all, Jean Jacques Rousseau, the two tendencies coincide. He possessed, in equal measure, the intelligence of a creator and the sensibility of a slave. His social sensibility infected his theories, which his intelligence merely set forth with clarity. His intelligence served only to bemoan the tragedy of coexisting with such a sensibility.

Rousseau is the modern man, but more complete than any modern man. From the weaknesses that made him fail, he extracted – alas for him and for us! – the forces that made him triumph. The part of him that went forward conquered, but when he entered the city, the word ‘Defeat’ could be read at the bottom of his victory banners. And in the part of him that stayed behind, incapable of fighting to conquer, there were crowns and sceptres, a ruler’s majesty and a conqueror’s glory – his legitimate inner destiny.

II

We were born into a world that has suffered from a century and a half of renunciation and violence – the renunciation of superior men and the violence of inferior men, which is their victory.

No superior trait can assert itself in the modern age, whether in action or in thought, in the political sphere or in the theoretical sphere.

The downfall of aristocratic influence has created an atmosphere of brutality and indifference towards the arts, such that a refined sensibility has nowhere to take refuge. Contact with life is ever more painful for the soul, and all efforts are ever more arduous, because the outer conditions for making an effort are forever more odious.

The downfall of classical ideals made all men potential artists, and therefore bad artists. When art depended on solid construction and the careful observance of rules, few could attempt to be artists, and a fair number of these were quite good. But when art, instead of being understood as creation, became merely an expression of feelings, then anyone could be an artist, because everyone has feelings.

250

Even if I wanted to create .....

The only true art is that of
construction
. But the present-day milieu makes it impossible for constructive qualities to appear in the human spirit.

That’s why science developed. Machines are the only things today in which there’s construction; mathematical proofs are the only arguments with a chain of logic.

Creativity needs a prop, the crutch of reality.

Art is a science…

It suffers rhythmically.

I can’t read, for my hypercritical sensibility notices only flaws, imperfections, things that could be improved. I can’t dream, for my dreams are so vivid that I compare them with reality and quickly realize they’re unreal, hence without value. I can’t enjoy innocently gazing at people and things, for my longing to dig deeper is inexorable, and since my interest can’t exist without this longing, it must either die at its hands or wither [on its own]. I can’t be satisfied by metaphysical speculation, for I know all too well (from my own experience) that all systems are defensible and intellectually possible, and to enjoy the intellectual art of constructing systems, I would have to be able to forget that the goal of metaphysical speculation is the search for truth.

A happy past in whose remembrance I would also be happy, with nothing in the present that would cheer or even interest me, with no dream or possibility of a future that could be any different from this present or have a past other than this past! – here lies my life, a conscious ghost of a paradise I never knew, a stillborn corpse of my unrealized hopes.

Happy those who suffer as unified selves – whom anxiety alters but doesn’t divide, who believe at least in unbelief, and who can sit in the sun without mental reservations!

251

F
RAGMENTS OF AN
A
UTOBIOGRAPHY

First I was engrossed in metaphysical speculations, then in scientific ideas. Finally I was attracted to sociological [concepts]. But in none of these stages of my search for truth did I find relief or reassurance. I didn’t read much in these various fields, but what I did read was enough to make me weary of so many contradictory theories, all equally based on elaborate rationales, all equally probable and in accord with a selection of the facts that always gave the impression of being all the facts. If I raised my tired eyes from the books, or if I
distractedly shifted focus from my thoughts to the outside world, I saw only one thing, which plucked one by one all the petals of the notion of effort, convincing me that all reading and thinking are useless. What I saw was the infinite complexity of things, the vast sum
, the utter attainability of even those few facts that would be necessary for the formation of a science.

♦

I gradually discovered the frustration of discovering nothing. I could find no reason or logic for anything except a scepticism that didn’t even seek a self-justifying logic. It never occurred to me to cure myself of this. And indeed, why be cured of it? What would it mean to be ‘healthy’? How could I be sure that this attitude meant I was sick? And if I was sick, who’s to say that sickness wasn’t preferable or more logical or more
than health? If health was preferable, then wasn’t I sick due to some natural cause? And if it was natural, why go against Nature, which for some purpose or other – if it has any purpose – must have wanted me to be sick?

I never found convincing arguments for anything other than inertia, and over time I became ever more keenly, sullenly aware of my inertia as an abdicator. Seeking out modes of inertia, pleading to evade all personal struggle and social responsibility – this is the
substance from which I carved the imaginary statue of my existence.

I got tired of reading, and I stopped arbitrarily pursuing now this, now that aesthetic mode of life. Of the little I did read, I learned to extract only the elements useful for dreaming. Of the little I saw and heard, I strove to take away only what could be prolonged in me as a distant and distorted reflection. I endeavoured to make all my thoughts and all the daily chapters of my experience provide me with nothing but sensations. I gave my life an aesthetic orientation, and I made that aesthetic utterly personal, exclusively my own.

The next step in the development of my inner hedonism was to shun all sensibility to things social. I shielded myself against feeling ridiculous. I learned to be insensitive to the appeals of instinct and to the entreaties of .....

I reduced my contact with others to a minimum. I did my best to lose all attachment to life ..... In time I even shed my desire for glory, like a sleepy man who takes off his clothes to go to bed.

♦

After studying metaphysics and
sciences, I went on to mental occupations that were more threatening to my nervous equilibrium. I spent frightful nights hunched over tomes by mystics and cabbalists which I never had the patience to read except intermittently, trembling and ..... The rites and mysteries of the Rosicrucians, the
symbolism of the Cabbala and the Templars ..... – all of this oppressed me for a long time. My feverish days were filled with pernicious speculations based on the demonic logic of metaphysics – magic,
alchemy – and I derived a false vital stimulus from the painful and quasi-psychic sensation of being always on the verge of discovering a supreme mystery. I lost myself in the delirious subsystems of metaphysics, systems full of disturbing analogies and pitfalls for lucid thought, vast enigmatic landscapes where glimmers of the supernatural arouse mysteries on the fringes.