Elsewhere Is A Negative Mirror.

I Had Fallen In Love. What I Mean Is: I Had Begun To Recognize, To Isolate The Signs Of One Of Those From The Others, In Fact I Waited For These Signs I Had Begun To Recognize, I Sought Them, Responded To Those Signs I Awaited With Other Signs I Made Myself, Or Rather It Was I Who Aroused Them, These Signs From Her, Which I Answered With Other Signs Of My Own . . .

You Have With You The Book You Were Reading In The Cafe, Which You Are Eager To Continue, So That You Can Then Hand It On To Her, To Communicate Again With Her Through The Channel Dug By Others' Words, Which, As They Are Uttered By An Alien Voice, By The Voice Of That Silent Nobody Made Of Ink And Typographical Spacing, Can Become Yours And Hers, A Language, A Code Between The Two Of You, A Means To Exchange Signals And Recognize Each Other.

What Romantic Terminology Called Genius Or Talent Or Inspiration Is Nothing Other Than Finding The Right Road Empirically, Following One's Nose, Taking Shortcuts.

In An Age When Other Fantastically Speedy, Widespread Media Are Triumphing, And Running The Risk Of Flattening All Communication Onto A Single, Homogenous Surface, The Function Of Literature Is Communication Between Things That Are Different Simply Because They Are Different, Not Blunting But Even Sharpening The Differences Between Them, Following The True Bent Of Written Language.

When Politicians And Politically Minded People Pay Too Much Attention To Literature, It Is A Bad Sign - A Bad Sign Mostly For Literature. But It Is Also A Bad Sign When They Don't Want To Hear The Word Mentioned.