410
PARTISAN REVIEW
I'M
STROLLING THROUGH PARIS. Neither children nor cats pay the
slightest attention to me as
I
mumble bitterly under my breath. Thus is
the emigrant's lot. Suddenly
I
burst out laughing, at myself, at my own
exaltation. The children stop short, the cats beat a hasty retreat.
OUR SPIRITUAL LIFE is shaped by alternating currents of exaltation and
demysticization. Since we're now in a period of universal demysticiza–
tion, we should expect a return to religious dogmatism in the foresee–
able future. Which would place me in an awkward situation;
I
prefer
opposing decadence to butting heads with fundamentalists.
" ...You
WILL NEVER LOVE art well, till you love what she mirrors bet–
ter."-John Ruskin.
This doesn't mean that art, and poetry with it, are simply a mirror
held up to reality, as the advocates of realism would have it. No, Ruskin
has something else in mind : that art springs from the most profound
admiration for the world, both seen and unseen . (And also that it isn't
just for aesthetes .)
I
LIKE WRITERS AND PHILOSOPHERS who know how to rebel against
themselves. For example, when someone asked Maurice Barres near the
end of his life what action he was most ashamed of, he said, "That
I
always voted for my own party." Barres, an ardent nationalist, nonethe–
less remarked in
Mes cahiers
that
"nationalisme manque d'infini,"–
"nationalism lacks infinity."
WHY ARE DETECTIVE NOVELS so boring? Because they deal with a single
mystery, the simple question of who killed Mr.
L.
But there's only one
real mystery, one real question: What is the world? Fire. Air.
Translated from the Polish
by
Clare Cavanagh
