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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 22/04/20 2:06 pm, Maurice Benayoun
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:CAEYfyDEXty1C-UmFwHUpEdUU=YjwQwfPZannFVoW6PaMKcTOkw@mail.gmail.com">
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">1/ Could we expect a constructive fight for values as a possible
outcome of the crisis?</pre>
</blockquote>
<br>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 23/04/20 7:56 am, Constanza Salazar
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:CABm-ZbTDxUZP+WkuEA6EtorjPboJRFt4YkF1QdJm9KXq2Ppc6A@mail.gmail.com"><span style="font-family:Roboto,sans-serif;color:rgb(32,33,36);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">How do we mobilize ourselves to think about care and about making a radical political act?</span></blockquote>
<br>
<p>by joining the resistance.</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:CAEYfyDEXty1C-UmFwHUpEdUU=YjwQwfPZannFVoW6PaMKcTOkw@mail.gmail.com">
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">
2/ can the artists be considered as viruses of social consciousness/awareness?</pre>
</blockquote>
<p><br>
</p>
<p>I don't know.</p>
<p>I hope not; and, I fear so.</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p>...</p>
<p>Not by refusing, and not by austerity, or out of purism, is it
possible by reducing to find something worth affirming?</p>
<p>I am inspired by these words of Enrique Vila-Matas for what they
leave said, or say and then leave, and for what they do not say,
and for the great<i> No</i> of Aldo Busi they recall: (but that is
not the quote I want to add here, so here's the alternative (and I
hope Enrique will forgive me for quoting it at such length), one
which starts with the injunction...):</p>
<p>..."we have to imagine ourselves at the most recent Barcelona
Book Day, a party that happens every April 23, where, as you may
know, roses and books are given as gifts, and the whole city
participates in this enormous event.
</p>
<p>"On this 23, right after I arrived at my spot in the tent to sign
books, I got to watch as a frenzied crowd tried to knock over the
barriers, apparently just to touch the forehead of a former
politician who is now a media titan. It was a moment of total
absurdity. And things had been arranged so that it would be hard
for anyone other than this celebrity to sign books.</p>
<p>"I closed my eyes and imagined that this best-selling author was
asking me about the future of literature. I immediately remembered
the “conversations with the retired mathematicians.” These were
gatherings that Ricardo Piglia had helped with at Princeton, and
he’d recently discussed them in an interview. Piglia said that the
mathematicians were brilliant people, extraordinarily
knowledgeable about Western literature, expert readers of Joyce
and his <em>Finnegans Wake</em>, experts in Robert Musil, Michel
Butor, Samuel Beckett, Witold Gombrowicz; they were the kind to be
fascinated by Hermann Broch, Arno Schmidt, Jorge Luis Borges . . .</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>"For Piglia, there weren’t any other readers like them in the
world: “Roberto Calasso, George Steiner, and Harold Bloom are
dilettantes next to these tired men: one learned Japanese at the
age of forty just to read Yasunari Kawabata. They all knew that
nothing was going to happen to them, so they still had their whole
lives ahead of them to dedicate to reading. Robert Hollander, the
great Dante scholar, gave a course on <em>The Divine Comedy</em>
in which they read just one canto per semester: there were six or
seven people seated around the roundtable, mostly mathematicians
and theoretical physicists; they finished reading the <em>Comedy</em>
after five or six years of classes, and then they began to read it
again. Thus will be the literature of the future, at least I
hope.”</p>
<p>"When I came to and opened my eyes, I considered the contrast
between the tired men at Princeton and the collective delirium of
that savage day.</p>
<p>"Then I said to myself: what’s good about this inaccessible spot
in the tent is that you don’t have to greet anyone, and nobody
greets you, no one bothers you. And then just a little bit later,
almost holding my breath, I thought: however, what’s bad about
this remote spot in the tent is that you don’t have to greet
anyone, and nobody greets you, no one bothers you.</p>
<p>"I was caught up in these thoughts when, to my surprise, I saw
that someone had overcome the sizable obstacles to arrive by my
side, extending his hand with a smile. I remained still with
happiness when I saw that I had myself a person, which,
considering everything, was a lot. Although, in another sense,
wasn’t this moment cruel? We began to talk as if we were two of
the tired men of Princeton. We talked about life, love, hate,
death. It was as if we had returned back to those days when life
was simply life, when you would chat and there weren’t emails or
iPhones, when everybody was freer, each alone with their own
metaphysics, and it was still possible for two people, in the
middle of general pandemonium, to talk about the world. I want to
think, I tell myself, that this is the literature of the future."</p>
<p><i>- from
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://tinhouse.com/the-literature-of-no-an-interview-with-enrique-vila-matas/">https://tinhouse.com/the-literature-of-no-an-interview-with-enrique-vila-matas/</a></i></p>
<p>Best,</p>
<p>Simon</p>
<p><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://squarewhiteworld.com">http://squarewhiteworld.com</a><br>
</p>
<p><br>
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