"No one survives alone over there, you survive in herds, flocks, packs. Literary species always move in formation, like dolphins. Together, coupled to one another, they form a garland, a swastika, a red star, according to the needs of the historical moment and the desire of the current master. They live on one another, they survive only in symbiosis. Not one of them nourishes a great talent; they feed on each other's. They live in sties, their rewards from the previous regime, and now they spit on that regime without, however, giving up their sties. After all, they waged all their battles for sties: an editorship, a literary prize, an important position. That was the peak, there was no higher they could go. They all gave somebody something in order to get something themselves, they all denied someone something for they had been denied themselves. They hate each other, scheme against one another, shed each other's blood, bare their teeth, bite, growl, bark, cluck, hiss, but they stay together, for they need each other, they can only survive together. They publish their books, big and small, and jostle on the shelves of their national literatures; there is no place for them, it seems, on any other shelf. They are isolated, and proud of it, only the isolated can occupy themselves uninterruptedly with their own activities. They show an enviable vitality, they hang on with parasitic tenacity. No storm has yet been able to move them. They are tough, swollen with blood, they don't miss a chance to sting each other. They possess an enviable elasticity, they can transform themselves in a moment, survival is more important to them than life. In the name of survival, they lower their moral standards, lie, mimic one another, mutate, disguise themselves. They are by nature denunciators and servants. They gladly pronounce big words, they concern themselves with "national affairs," culture, literature, art. Their intellectual activities are reduced to judgment: we'll throw this out, cut that, destroy this one, eliminate that one. They multiply, they accept the weak into their ranks just so that they themselves will appear stronger. They are greedy, they never have enough."
Sunday, April 22, 2007 
