In search of lost worlds

What is literature about? About loss, of course. Loss of a past or present world; of the ability to express in words one’s experience (no matter if it is great or traumatic, solemn or tragic); of loved ones and strangers; and of oneself. Literature is a celebration of loss because that is the way it should be.

First there comes a signature, a sign that seems to be fully ours and representative of who we really are. “It was six o’clock in the morning and Sonia, standing by the window sill, trembling with cold,
put her signature. She shortened her name to a modest initial in an attempt to become distant and, embarrassed, leave just a trace – the least significant possible – of her presence.”

Sonia is the hero of Tworki – a book by Marek Bieńczyk, whose narrator, to be identified (yet not fully, as is often the case among novelists) with the author, decides to respond to a call found in an incomplete signature.

Does it have to be this way? Yes. Culture – and particularly Western culture – is based on the idea of bringing back the absent and searching for the lost. Images replace people who disappeared from the stage of this world long time ago and texts fill the void that makes life impossible.

But the thing is not as simple as it seems. Yearning for a presence which we have so far associated with a noble longing for the absent, may also assume an ominous form. It is easy to understand that when one looks at the relationship between Marcel and his lover Albertine as described by Proust in his novel In Search of Lost Time.

There is a paradox lying at the heart of the relationship between Marcel and Albertine: he loves her, but he does everything – on purpose or not – to destroy the love he had so much sought. What happens when the woman starts to live together with him?

“Is not history ultimately the result of our fear of boredom?” asked Emile Cioran. In the face of this question human experience seems to be twofold. On the one hand, it is deprived of time, crushed by the very fact of people’s meaningless existence. And on the other hand, it is not only immersed in time, but actually it is time.

And now for something completely different. “My springs gush out from a garden at the gateway of which an angel holding a fiery sword is standing.” Who starts his text in such a strong manner? Gombrowicz, of course.

“Two tasks: to protect the new from the old and to combine the two,” wrote Nietzsche in 1973, while working on Untimely Meditations. The first task was to fight against antiquarian historiography which, by definition, worships the old, everything new being viewed as secondary. It is a strange logic (is it not?), a perverse one, based on the assumption that past things are good for the very reason that they are no longer accessible to us.

At the beginning of The Spirit of Utopia Ernst Bloch wrote: “Ich bin. Wir sind. Das ist genug. Nun haben wir zu beginnen. In unsere Hände ist das Leben gegeben,” which means: “I am. We are. That is enough. Now we have to start. In our hands is the life.”

And now for something completely different.