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To reveal art and conceal the artist is art’s aim.
(Wilde, Gray)
…
Borges, writing of Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan,” a poem written in a dream, notes that the original, historical Kubla Khan conceived of his palace in a dream. Centuries later, an English poet who didn’t know the palace he was writing about came out of a dream, dreamt a poem in which a palace is built. Borges writes, “Perhaps an archetype not yet revealed to mankind, an eternal object, is gradually entering the world; its first manifestation, the palace; its second, the poem.” The character of Madeleine, an invention of Gavin Elster — a daydream, at least, if not a dream proper — is the second manifestation of an archetype not yet revealed to mankind. Its first manifestation, Carlotta’s child, was conceived as though in a dream, with a man not Carlotta’s husband, a nightmare in which the child is taken away and raised as if Carlotta does not exist. Borges says that a dream leading first to a palace, and then, centuries later and continents distant, to a poem, is more incredible than all of the levitations, resurrections, and apparitions of the Scripture. But the passage of time and the great distance covered aren’t really important, are they? Isn’t it incredible enough that a dream can be shared by two men? A dream, which we still believe, because of Freud, to be a reflection of the individual, an expression of one particular brain? How can more than one person have the same dream? First Elster, then Scottie, then Judy. Now you and I.
…
After my trip to San Francisco, there was an unexpected new coolness between my wife and I. Because I got home very late, and because she worked the next morning, I didn’t see her until the following evening. She didn’t ask about the trip. I tried to tell her about what I had seen, but her questions, though seeming perfectly reasonable to me later, at the time struck me as mocking. She didn’t believe me, and I had no evidence that what I said was true.
What made matters worse was that I could not leave it alone. I brought the man up several times that week, and her objections were always so rational — and my memories so immaterial — I started to share her doubts. Could I have seen what I thought I had seen? I showed her the report from stillman.com. She asked how much I had paid for it. She told me, “You get what you pay for.” This was wisdom with which I could not argue, having, after all, found the address listed on the report uninhabited and, theoretically, still under construction. But, all along and despite her infectious suspicions, I was afraid. This man had entered the world like an incursion from my nightmares. I didn’t want to see him ever again. I wanted her to see him, but I couldn’t bear to.
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The highest as the lowest form of criticism is a mode of autobiography.
(Wilde, Gray)
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Fabrice comes to visit, and talks to me about the book I’m writing. He fixes on the construction of the chapter about the Night of the Long Knives: this series of phone calls, according to him, evokes both the bureaucratic nature and the mass production of what will be the hallmark of Nazism — murder. I’m flattered but also suspicious, and I decide to make him clarify what he means: “But you know that each telephone call corresponds to an actual case? I could get almost all the names for you, if I wanted to.” He is surprised, and responds ingenuously that he’d thought I’d invented this. Everyone finds it normal, fudging reality to make a screenplay more dramatic, or adding coherence to the narrative of a character whose real path probably included too many random ups and downs, insufficiently loaded with significance. It’s because of people like that, forever messing with historical truth just to sell their stories, that an old friend, familiar with all these fictional genres and therefore fatally accustomed to these processes of glib falsification, can say to me in innocent surprise: “Oh, really, it’s not invented?”
(Laurent Binet, HHhH)
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I bring up my trip to San Francisco during dinner. My wife and I sit facing the television; she’s on the couch, I’m in my chair. She has been ignoring me all night. When I tried to give her a kiss after she got home, she leaned over to open the oven door. When I tried to give her a hug, she twisted away to clean off a plate. She has checked her cell phone more times than I can count. She has gone into our bedroom to charge it, gone into our bedroom to get it, partly charged. Now we are sitting down. She is eating, with her iPad in front of her and the tv playing something neither one of us is watching. When I mention the man again, I see that, rather than ignoring me, she has been shaking with anger. She looks up from her plate, straight at the tv. She says we couldn’t afford the trip in the first place. She doesn’t make enough to support us both much less pay for me to go on vacations without her, and now that I’m home, when I should be looking for work, I’m obsessing over this. whatever this is. She is sick of it. When she says this, she looks me right in the eye. She is angry. She is so angry I am scared. Not that she would do anything violent, but I’m scared that I’ve crossed some line, that we’ve crossed some line.
What is it about the eye that communicates so much of what we’re feeling? What physically, objectively, changes when we think we see emotion in another person’s eyes? Does it have to do with the pupil? With the shape of the eye (i.e., with how open or closed it is, whether the top eyelid is more closed than the bottom one or vice versa, what position the eyebrow’s in, etc.)? Or do we really somehow see through the eye into the soul? My wife’s eyes are focused on my own. Her eyelids aren’t closed, but her eyebrows are very, very close to her eyes, nearly folding over her top eyelids. Her pupils seem almost to have disappeared. The rest of her face remains completely still. I am finding it difficult to keep looking. It is uncomfortable. I am self-conscious. If I believe in what I’ve been saying, I should maintain eye contact. Maybe it’s not the eyes that express emotion, I think later, but their reflection in the perceiver’s eyes.
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[INT. Livery Stable (DAY)]
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How can you tell the main character of a story? By the number of pages devoted to him? I hope it’s a little more complicated than that.
(Binet, HHhH)
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To influence a person is to give him one’s own soul. He does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions. His virtues are not real to him. His sins, if there are such things as sins, are borrowed. He becomes an echo of someone else’s music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him. The aim of life is self-development. To realize one’s nature perfectly — that is what each of us is here for. People are afraid of themselves, nowadays. They have forgotten the highest of all duties, the duty that one owes to one’s self.
(Wilde, Gray)
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I am too much concentrated on myself. My own personality has become a burden to me. I want to escape, go away, to forget.
(Wilde, Gray)
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It’s not fair. It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. It shouldn’t have happened.
(01:15:12)
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[INT. Church Tower (DAY)]