I see literature as a mere social occupation and those who do literature as a mere guild, such as shoemaking, binding books, law, politics, carpentry, and so on. No other guild is as vain and presumptuous as the poets'. The shoemaker does not claim he does a metaphysical act when he sews a slipper. But the literature maker has always claimed that, when he sews a rhyme. Indeed, the literature maker is apparently superior when compared to a shoemaker, a lawyer, a banker, or a carpenter. He uses a certain language material, which is somewhat suggestive (life, death, suffering, love, and so on), which is predisposed to confusion, and which lends to him some honor and significance. In fact, these notions are just the homonyms of the real life, death, suffering, and love. Because, let us make things clear, suffering is in literature a mere professional theme, a game. Poetry is culture. It is not understood, and has no use, except in the continuation and rhythm of a tradition, of a technique. The poet does not learn from life, he learns from masters, from literature. He does not write to express reality, he writes to express a conventional, professional reality. He writes because his forerunners have written. Poetry (literature, actually) cannot be placed in front of life and judged through it. Poetry must be placed in front of culture, in front of the literary technique, and judged through the literary technique. The poet does not tell the truth (in the meaning of a true intuition of reality), but he does not say beautiful things either (in the meaning of idealization or interpretation), he says things technically differently from poets 50 years ago. As of the moment it speculated the interjection and pure scream (it was bound to integrate into culture, technique), poetry has become a way of having fun – a mere social occupation. We most certainly do not ascribe a metaphysical or transcendental meaning to literature. Making nuances out of the interjection, the scream means non-authenticity, doing away with emotion. A futile game of the spirit on serious issues. It has betrayed reality. More: it can be accused of having perverted reality (not by sublimation, but by making it vulgar and futile), seen through this mechanical, literary optic. The literary optic, by making the real so futile, has created the vision of the commonplace. The diminished and superficial (exterior) sense of the eternal, of life is commonplace. * Therefore, literature does not mean life. It is not the dream of life. It is pure, mechanical, exterior technique. Comprehensible only as part of a tradition. Let us not ascribe to the written, technical poetry any other significance than pure dexterity. It is not life, it is the parallel of life. It does not meet with life. * Those who can only know the false reality of books are sad, poor, sterile. Not fulfilled. Like a ball, they are thrown by literature into the life they do not recognize – and from life back to bookish sterility. Facla, Volume X, no. 426, October 12, 1931, p. 3
by Eugen Ionescu (1909-1994)
