MURTI-BING
545
as cloak-room attendants and to hold the coat of a fonner employee
of whom they said, in pre-war days,
"It
seems he writes." We must
not oversimplify, however, the gratifications of personal ambition;
they are merely the outward and visible signs of social necessity,
symbols of a recognition that strengthens the intellectual's feeling
of
belonging.
Even though one seldom speaks about metaphysical motives
that can lead to a complete change of one's political opinions, such
motives do exist and can be observed in some of the most eminent,
most intelligent, and most neurotic people. Let us imagine a spring
day in a city situated in some country similar to that described in
Witkiewicz's novel. One of his heroes is taking a walk. He
is
tor–
mented by what we may call the
suction of the absurd.
What is the
significance of the lives of the people he passes, of the senseless
bustle, the laughter, the pursuit of money, the stupid animal di–
versions? By using a little intelligence he can easily classify the
passers-by according to type; he can guess their social status, their
habits and their preoccupations. A fleeting moment reveals their
childhood, manhood and old age; and then they vanish. A purely
physiological study of one particular passer-by in preference to
another is meaningless. Yet if one penetrates into the minds of these
people, one discovers utter nonsense. They are totally unaware of
the fact that nothing
is
their own, that everything is part of their
historical fonnation; their occupations, their clothes, their gestures
and expressions, their beliefs.-and ideas. They are the force of inertia
personified, victims of the delusion that each individual exists as
a self.
If
at least these were souls, as the Church taught, or the
monads of Leibniz! But these beliefs have perished. What remains
is an aversion to the domination of the detail, to the mentality that
isolates
every phenomenon, such as eating, drinking, dressing, earn–
ing money, fornicating. And what
is
there beyond these things?
Should such a state of affairs continue? Why should it continue?
Such questions are almost synonymous with what is known as hatred
of the bourgeoisie.
Let a new man arise, one who, instead of submitting to the
world, will transfonn it. Let him create his own historical fonna–
tion, instead of yielding to its bondage. Only thus can he redeem
the absurdity of his physiological existence. Man must
be
made
