'Have No Mission'

Beware of advice, including this. When it’s not pontification it’s probably manipulation with a smiling face. The right most resented by busy-bodies is the right to be left alone, to think one’s own thoughts, regardless of how stupid or hateful they might be, without meddling. 

Here’s a rare exception to the anti-advice advice, though it too should be closely examined. Collected in Homo Poeticus: Essays and Interviews (1995) is “Advice to a Young Writer” (trans. Ralph Manheim) by Danilo Kiš (1935-89). Kiš was a Yugoslav writer, dead on the cusp of the Soviet Bloc’s dissolution, whose father was murdered in Auschwitz. Among his best books are A Tomb for Boris Davidovich, The Encyclopedia of the Dead and Hourglass. His “Advice” consists of 106 aphoristically concise sentences. The first:

 

“Cultivate the suspicion of reigning ideologies and princes.”

 

One feels embarrassed having to say that, as though the twentieth century taught us nothing. Two entries later, Kiš offers an addendum: “Do not soil your language with the jargon of ideologies.” Some writers in print and many in conversation are voiceless without the dead language of politics. Think of the words they have killed, beginning with “community.” Here is perhaps my favorite among Kiš’ words of advice: “Do not believe in statistics, figures, or public statements: reality is what the naked eye cannot see.” I know people for whom “data” has replaced thought. More Kiš favorites:

 

“Keep your distance from economics, sociology, and psychoanalysis.” [Amen.]

 

“Do not team up with anyone: the writer stands alone.”

 

Kiš often deals in paradox, as in these successive entries:

 

“Do not let anyone tell you that what you write has no ‘socially redeeming value.’”

 

“Do not imagine that what you write has ‘socially redeeming value.’”

 

And this variation on a Marxian (as in Groucho) tenet: “Question any organization that claims you as its own.”

 

At the heart of so many Kiš apothegms is radical distrust of the crowd, the herd, the collective: “Reject all literary schools imposed upon you.” For sheer pithiness I like this: “Have no mission.” Kiš has no use for the tiresome narcissism we’ve grown accustomed to.

 

Most movingly, Kiš returns to his Mitteleuropean roots: “Should anyone tell you Kolyma was different from Auschwitz, tell him to go to hell.”

 

Though from another country and language, and from a radically different historical setting, Kiš often reminds me of the Columbian thinker Nicolás Gómez Dávila, known as Don Colacho. Their thoughts seems so weathered, so worldly compared to what we hear every day with tedious regularity.