“But what is the rule? Of what does it consist? What is the nature of its intrinsic essence, intrinsic exclusively to this and not to any other substantive predication? In this regard I’m afraid I shall have to talk about things that you are not accustomed to hearing about, things you will not find pleasant to hear… Greatness. Ah, how much has been said, painted, danced, and sung about it! What would the human race be without the category of greatness? A gang of naked monkeys that would make even Hnoipek look like the apex of civilization, would it not? After all, no specific, individual Hnoipek knows the proper measure of things—‘modus in rebus.’ Nature has taught him only how to digest and reproduce. Any other action performed by the aforesaid Hnoipek cannot be independently evaluated by him as being either good or bad or useful, nor as being either futile or harmful—and precisely as a consequence of this very situation, other things being equal, sooner or later each specific, individual Hnoipek finds himself facing a field court martial, and this court decides how to deal with him… Thus, the absence of any internal court that passes judgement is naturally compensated, I would even say fated to be compensated, by the presence of an external court, for instance a field court martial… However, gentlemen, a society consisting of Hnoipeks and also, without a doubt, of Skanks, is simply not capable of devoting such a huge amount of attention to the external court—it matters not if it be a military court martial or a jury court, a secret inquisition court or a lynching court, a Vehmic court or a so-called honor court. Not to mention comrades’ courts and other such instances… It became necessary to find a form for organizing the chaos consisting of the sexual and digestive organs of both Hnoipeks and Skanks, a form for this shambolic universal bedlam, such that at least some of the functions of the aforementioned external courts could be transferred to an internal court. And that was when the category of greatness became both necessary and serviceable! The point being, gentlemen, that in the vast and entirely amorphous horde of Hnoipeks, in the vast and even more amorphous horde of Skanks, from time to time individuals appear for whom the meaning of life is by no means primarily or entirely limited to the digestive and sexual functions. There is, if you will, a third need! This individual is not content merely to digest something and derive pleasure from the physical charms of others. In addition to this, you see, he wants to create something remarkable and out of the ordinary, something that never existed before. For example, some multileveled or, let’s say, hierarchical structure. Or some kind of wild mountain goat on a wall. With balls. Or he wants to write a myth about Aphrodite… What the hell he needs all this for, he himself doesn’t really understand. And indeed, what would Hnoipek want with Aphrodite born of the sea foam, or that wild mountain goat on a wall. With balls. Hypotheses do exist, of course—there are quite a few of them! After all, a wild mountain goat is a great deal of meat, isn’t it? I won’t even go into the subject of Aphrodite. However, if we are to be entirely honest and frank, the origin of this third need remains a mystery for our materialistic science as yet. But at the present moment this should not be of any interest to us. What is important to us at the present moment, my friends? The sudden appearance in the gray common herd of an individual who is not content with crud like oatmeal porridge or a filthy Skank whose legs are a mass of red blotches; he’s not content with the universally accessible realism but starts idealizing and abstracting, the lousy pest; he starts mentally transforming oatmeal porridge into a juicy wild mountain goat covered in garlic sauce and transforming a Skank into a voluptuous, well-washed creature with hips—she came out of the ocean, he says. Out of the water… Why, heavens above! A man like that is invaluable! A man like that should be set upon a high place and the Hnoipeks and Skanks should be led out to him by the battalion, in order to teach the parasites to know their place. Hey there, you crummy bastards, can you do what he can? Hey there, you lousy redheaded jerk, can you paint a burger that looks so juicy, it makes you want to gobble it down on the spot? Or make up a little joke at least? You can’t? Then what makes you think you can set yourself on the same level as him? Go and work, work, work your asses off. Catch fish, gather mussels!”
Andrei pushed himself back from the table and walked to and fro again, exultantly rubbing his hands together. It had all turned out just great. Magnificent! Without any synopses. And all these tedious old fogies had listened with bated breath. Not a single one had moved. Oh yeah, that’s me! Of course, I’m not Katzman, I keep quiet most of the time, but if they wind me up, if they ask me, dammit…
Uh oh, looks like someone else has started up down there at the invisible end of the table. Some Jew or other. Maybe Katzman crept in after all? Well, we’ll see who comes off best.
“And so, greatness as a category arose out of creativity, for only he who creates is great, only he who creates something new, previously unheard of. But let us ask ourselves, dear sirs: In that case who’s going to stick their noses in the shit? Who’s going to say to them, where are you going, scumbag, who do you think you are? Who will be, so to speak, the creative individual’s high priest?—I’m not afraid to use that term. The one who will be his priest, dearest gentlemen, is the individual who can’t paint the aforementioned burger or Aphrodite, say, but no way does he want to gather mussels—the creative organizer, the creative liner-up in ranks, the creative extorter of gifts and likewise distributor thereof! And this brings us face-to-face with the question of the role of God and the Devil in history. A question that is, quite frankly, a highly complex, knotty tangle, a question concerning which everyone has piled lie upon lie… After all, even a babe in arms with no religion knows that God is a good person, and the Devil, conversely, is a bad person. But this is driveling gibberish, gentlemen! What do we really know about them? That God set about chaos and organized it, while the Devil, on the contrary, strives every day and every hour to demolish this organization, this structure, and return it to chaos. This is true, is it not? But on the other hand, the whole of history teaches us that man as an individual aspires precisely to chaos. He wants to exist on his own terms. He wants to do what he feels like doing. He constantly clamors about how he is free from nature. And we don’t have to look far for examples—take our notorious Hnoipek yet again! You understand, I hope, what I’m driving at? What, let me ask you, has been the stock-in-trade of the most savage tyrants throughout history? They have all, without exception, striven to take the aforementioned chaos, intrinsic to man, that selfsame chaotic, amorphous hnoipekoskankness, and arrange it in decorous order, organize it, institutionalize it, neatly line it up—preferably in a single column—aim it at a single point, and generally clamp down on it. Or, to put it more simply, to do it in. And by the way, as a general rule, they have succeeded! Although, it’s true, not for very long, and only at the cost of spilling a lot of blood. So I ask you: Who is really the good person here? The one who aspires to allow the free play of chaos—a.k.a. freedom, equality, and brotherhood—or the one who aspires to reduce this hnoipekoskankness (read as ‘social entropy’!) to the minimum? Who? And that’s the whole point!”