Victor Pelevin “The Sacred Book of Werewolf”

Have you seen the hit of the last Venice Biennale – the haystack in which the first Belarusian postmodernist, Mikolai Klimaksovich, hid from his local police inspector for four years?  Alexander called this work plagiaristic and told Brian about the similar haystack famously used before the revolution by Vladimir Lenin.  Brian observed that repetition is not necessarily plagiarism, it is the very essence of the postmodern, or – to put it in broader terms – the foundation of the modern cultural gestalt, which is manifested in everything, from the cloning of sheep to remakes of old movies, for what else can you do after the end of history?  Brian said it was precisely Klimaksovich’s use of quotation that made him a postmodernist, not a plagiarizer.  But Alexander objected that no quotations would ever have saved this Klimaksovich from the Russian police, and history might have come to an end in Belarus, but there was not sign of it breaking down yet in Russia.

Then Brian showed Alexander a work by Asuro Keshami, one which he regards with especial affection, not least owing to the serious investment required for its production and installation.  Keshami’s work, inspired by the oeuvre of Camille Paglia, of whom you must have heard, consists of an immense tube of red plastic with projections on the inside in the form of white fangs.  It is proposed to install in the open air in one of London’s sports stadiums.

And now I am getting to the point.  One of the most serious problems in the world of modern art is the invention of original and fresh verbal interpretations of a work.  Literally just a few phrases are required, which can be reprinted in the catalogues and reviews.  This apparently trivial detail can often decide the fate of a piece of art.  It is very important here to be able to perceive things from an unexpected, shocking angle, and your friend, with his barbarically fresh view of the world, does this remarkably well.  Therefore, Brian would like permission to use the ideas expressed by Alexander yesterday for the conceptual support of the installation.  The accompanying text which I include below is by way of being a fusion of Brian’s and Alexander’s ideas:

Asuro Keshami’s work ‘VD-42 CC’ combines the languages of different areas – engineering, technology and science.  At the base level the subject-matter is the overcoming  of space: physical space, the space of taboo and the space of our subconscious fears.  The languages of engineering and technology deal with the material from which the object is constructed, but the artist addresses the viewer in the language of emotions.  When the viewer learns that certain people have given this little queer fifteen million pounds to stretch out a huge imitation-leather cunt above an abandoned soccer pitch, he remembers what he does in his own life and how much he is paid for it, then he looks at the photo of this little queer in his horn-rimmed spectacles and funny jacket, and experiences confusion and bewilderment bordering on the feeling that the German philosopher Martin Heidegger called ‘abandonment’ (Geworfenheit).  The viewer is invited to concentrate on these feelings, which constitute the precise aesthetic effect that the installation attempts to achieve.

My Next Calling

My next calling was discovered by my darling – “Mein Lieber A.”, Mr. “And your point being?”, “Mi Amore”, Mr. “I never promised you anything”, Mr. “I am Beautiful”, Mr. Denial (well, I am being creative with nicknames!)

I do have a soft spot for him, obviously.  He doesn’t reciprocate, but that is fine, it is to be expected.

He does not have such a good memory and my ability to pay attention and remember some of his words is the source of irritation for him.  Once he gave me permission to kick him out of his complacent condition, yet when I did, he did not like it all that much.  That is to be expected, too.

Quoting:

“If you wish to devote all your energy to keeping tabs on me on what I say then you may have found your next calling.”

I wish I had such sharp memory to remember everything he said, but I don’t.  But some things just stay, what can I do?

Certain sentences are repeated so many times, they become fixtures, motifs, cornerstones, whatever name you want to use.  “I never promised you anything” and “And your point being is?” are just a few of them.

Some sentences are just worth remembering.

“I never once refused not to help you.”

 

“I am beautiful.”

 

“I […] enter this forest at its darkest point; for it is at the darkest moment we see the light.”

How about that?

The best thing about him is not my infatuation, however sweet, intoxicating, euphoric and painful it might be, but the fact that he inspires me in a sense.  Is it he I like or my own reflection in him; for we can only see ourselves reflected in others?

Maybe I am not Light enough (my name literally means “Light”) for him to see, or maybe he is not in that dark forest anymore.  Maybe he never was there.  Of course, I am joking.  Most people (he is not an exception) take things way too seriously.

So my next calling is not to remember him and his every word, but to discover that Light within me that will bring me happiness and harmony.  Whether I can light anybody else’s life or not, we will see.  Discovering that Light would be my Success.  Yes, that one that is usually defined (limited!) by perseverance.

Talking about names!

“There’s a scientific hypothesis that every person’s name is a primary suggestive command that contains the entire script of their life in highly concentrated form. . . . According to this point of view, there is only a limited number of names, because society only needs a limited number of human types. Just a few models of worker and warrior ants, if I could put it like that. And everybody’s psyche is preprogrammed at a basic level by the associative semantic fields that their first name and surname activate.”
— Victor Pelevin (The Sacred Book of the Werewolf

If that is right, I must be Light.  The question is what Light is and what to do with it.

Quotes on the subject.

1. Love is not consolation.  It is light.  ~Friedrich Nietzsche

 

2. Someday perhaps the inner light will shine forth from us, and then we’ll need no other light.  ~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

 

3. Light gives of itself freely, filling all available space.  It does not seek anything in return; it asks not whether you are friend or foe.  It gives of itself and is not thereby diminished.  ~Michael Strassfeld

 

4. We are each gifted in a unique and important way. It is our privilege and our adventure to discover our own special light.  ~Mary Dunbar

 

5. Light, when suddenly let in, dazzles and hurts and almost blinds us: but this soon passes away, and it seems to become the only element we can exist in.  ~Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare, Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers, 1827

 

6. Light can be gentle, dangerous, dreamlike, bare, living, dead, misty, clear, hot, dark, violet, springlike, falling, straight, sensual, limited, poisonous, calm and soft.  ~Sven Nykvist

 

7. The black moment is the moment when the real message of transformation is going to come.  At the darkest moment comes the light.  ~Joseph Campbell

 

8. Beauty is not in the face; beauty is a light in the heart.  ~Kahlil Gibran

 

9. Your life is something opaque, not transparent, as long as you look at it in an ordinary human way.  But if you hold it up against the light of God’s goodness, it shines and turns transparent, radiant and bright.  And then you ask yourself in amazement:  Is this really my own life I see before me?  ~Albert Schweitzer

 

10. An age is called “dark,” not because the light fails to shine but because people refuse to see it.  ~James Michener

Coming back to

“I never once refused not to help you.”  He did help me.  By making me amorous, by irritating me, by making me think, by inspiring me.

“Why do you want to be infatuated with me?”  It was not my choice, mi amore, but it felt good, why is it so difficult to understand?  But he does not have to understand; searching for the Light and Meanings is my journey.

So there I go, full of Love in my heart and Hope and Light………………………………..

Victor Pelevin “The Sacred Book of Werewolf”

He smiled paternally, and I decided I must have got stuck with one of those soulful clients.  Those men who don’t just want your body for their two hundred bucks, but your soul as well.  They’re the ones who really wear you out.  To stop a soulful client getting carried away, you have to be morose and unsociable.  Let the nice man think the girl’s got adolescent problems.  During the period when their personalities are taking shape, teenagers are unsociable and uncommunicative, as every paedophile knows very well.  Therefore, that kind of behaviour rapidly inflames a pervert’s lust, which results in a saving of time and is helpful in obtaining better payment for your work.  But the important thing here is to shut yourself in the bathroom in good time.

Some foxes who live in North America and Europe take a scientific approach to the use of this effect.  That is, they think they take a scientific approach, because they prepare by reading the literature that ‘reveals the soul of the modern teenager’.  They are particularly fond of reading alleged fifteen-year-old authors who specialize in removing the panties from the inner world of their generation with a shy blush on their cheeks.  It’s ridiculous, of course.  Teenagers don’t have any common internal dimension – just as people of any other age don’t.  Each of them lives in his or her own universe, and these insights into the soul of the young generation are the market’s simulacra of freshness for the consumer who’s surfeited with anal sex on video, something like the chemical scent of lily-of-the-valley for toilets.  A fox who wants to imitate the behaviour of a modern teenager accurately shouldn’t read those books: instead of making you look like a teenager, they’ll turn you into an old theatrical queer acting out a travesty.

‘and when you feel happy for someone else, you fill emptiness with love.’

[...]

if you want a meaning for life, you’ll never find a better one.’

‘But love – isn’t it that emptiness, too?’

‘Sure.’

‘Then what’s the difference?’

‘The diffirence is emptiness, too.’

He thought for a moment.

‘But can you fill the emptiness … with justice?’

‘If you start filling emptiness with justice, you soon end up as a war criminal.’

Victor Pelevin “The Sacred Book of Werewolf”

You ask me what it’s like here.  To be brief, even the most hardened of optimists are now finding that any hope that the brown sea advancing on us from all sides consists of chocolate is melting away.  And, as the advert puts in so wittily, it is melting not in their hands, but in their mouths.

Victor Pelevin “The Sacred Book of Werewolf”

‘I’m so happy for you, darling!’ I said.

Not many were-creatures know what it is t feel happy for someone else.  And tailless monkeys know even less about it, all they know how to do is smile broadly in order to boost their social adaptability and increase the volume of sales.  While imitating the feeling of happiness for someone else, the tailless monkey actually experiences envy or, in the best case, remains indifferent.  But I really did experience that feeling, as pure and transparent as the water in a mountain stream.

‘You can’t imagine how happy I am for you,’ I repeated and kissed him again.

This time he didn’t move away.

‘Really?’ he asked.  ‘But why?’

‘Because after all this time you’re in a good mood.  You’re feeling better.  And I love you.’

His face darkened a little.

‘I love you too.  But I keep thinking that you’re going to leave me.  You’d probably be better off if you did.  But I won’t feel any happiness for you.’

‘In the first place, I’m not planning on going anywhere,’ I said.  ‘And in the second place, the feeling you speak of isn’t love, it’s a symptom of egoism.  To the male chauvinist in you, I’m merely a toy, a piece of property and a trophy status symbol.  And you’re afraid of losing me in the same way a property owner is afraid of being parted from some expensive item.  You can never feel happy for someone else that way.’

‘So how do you feel happy for someone else?’

‘For that you have to want nothing for yourself.’

‘You’re telling me you don’t want anything for yourself?’ he asked suspiciously.

I shook my head.

‘But why?’

‘I told you that once already.  When you look inside yourself for a long time, you realize that there’s nothing there.  How can you want something for that nothing?’

‘But if there’s nothing inside you, there’s nothing inside anyone else either.’

‘If you think about it properly, there’s nothing real anywhere,’ I said.  ‘There’s only the choice with which you fill emptiness.  And when you feel happy for someone else, you fill emptiness with love.’

‘Whose love? If there isn’t anybody anywhere, then whose love it?’

‘That does not matter to emptiness.  And don’t you get hot and bothered about it either.  But if you want a meaning for life, you’ll never find a better one.’

Victor Pelevin “The Sacred Book of Werewolf”

‘The real super-werewolf is a heavenly being.  A heavenly being never loses her connection with the heavens.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘In this world there is nothing but dust.  But when a heavenly being sees the dust, she remembers the light that makes the dust visible.  While a tailless monkey only sees the dust on which the light falls.  That’s why when a heavenly being dies, she becomes light.  But when a tailless monkey dies, he becomes dust.’

‘Light, dust,’ he said, ‘so there is something there after all!  There is some kind of individual personality.  You’ve definitely got one, Ginger.  I’ve felt that pretty strongly just recently.  Or will you tell me I’m wrong?’

‘This personality, with all its quirks and stupidities simply dances like a doll in the clear light of my mind.  And the more stupid this doll’s quirks, the clearer the light that I recognize over and over again.’

‘Now you’re saying “my mind”.  But you only just said it’s not yours.’

“That’s the way language works.  It’s the root from which infinite human stupidity grows.  And we were-creatures suffer from it too, because we’re always talking.  It’s not possible to open your mouth without being wrong.  So you shouldn’t haggle over words.’

‘All right.  But the personality that dances like a doll – that’s you, isn’t it?’

‘No.  I don’t think of this personality as me, because I’m very far from being a doll.  I am the light that makes it visible.  But the light and the doll are only metaphors, and you shouldn’t clutch at them.’

Victor Pelevin “The Sacred Book of Werewolf”

‘But it’s my mind, isn’t it? Then what’s the problem?’

‘The problem is that your mind isn’t actually yours.’

‘Then whose is it?’

‘It’s not possible to say that it is anybody’s at all.  Or what it’s like and where it is.  All these concepts arise within it, that is, it precedes everything else without exception.  Do you understand?  Whatever you imagine, consider, believe or know for sure, the mind’s what will do it.’

‘Are you talking about the brain?’

‘No. The brain is one of concepts that exist in the mind.’

‘But the mind arises because there is a brain,’ he said uncertainly.

‘Those villains have really brainwashed you out of your wits,’ I sighed.  ‘People have no idea what mind is.  Instead they study the brain, or the psyche, or Freud’s love letters to Einstein.  And scientists seriously believe that mind is the product of certain chemical and electrical processes in the brain.  That’s the same as thinking that a TV set is the cause of the film showing on it.  Or that a salary is the cause of human existence.’

‘That’s what economists do think.’

‘Right.  Well, let them think it.  Let them generate their electrical impulses, steal tranches of credit, make official protests, measure the amplitude and the velocity, give the blowjob and take the derivative coefficient, and then determine their rating.  Fortunately for this world, we foxes are here in it, as well as all those clowns.  We know the secret….’

Victor Pelevin “The Sacred Book of Werewolf”

I cannot say that she was especially good-looking.  On those occasions when I saw her after a long separation, I was amazed at how this skinny little creature with such fierce eyes could have become everything for me – love, life, death, the salvation of my soul.  But she only had to meet my glance, and everything changed.  First of all a started doubt that she was loved would appear in those green eyes.  At that moment it was obvious that there was nothing to love her for, and every time I experienced a wave of pity, merging into tenderness.  But she soaked up those feelings like a sponge soaking up wine, and immediately blossomed into a tormenting beauty that could drive a man insane.  A brief exchange of glances changed everything.  A moment before it, I was not able to understand how this essentially unlovely woman could have enthralled me, and afterwards I could not grasp how I could have doubted even for a minute the magical power of her features.  And the longer I gazed into her eyes, the stronger this feeling became, rousing me to ecstasy, to a state of physical pain – as if she had thrust a knife into a crack in the wall behind which I was trying to hide and, with a few swift movements of the blade, had loosened the brickwork so much that the wall had collapsed and I was left standing before her once again, as naked and defenseless as a child.  I have studied this metamorphosis through and through, but I have still not learned to understand the nature of the fire that has seared my soul and reduced it to ashes.

Alas it is true: beauty is like fire, it burns and consumes, driving you insane with its heat, promising that in the place to which it drives its victim there will be calm, cool shade and new life – but that is a deception.  Or rather, it is all true – but not for the victim, only for the new life that will take the victim’s place, and then also be consumed by this pitiless demon.

Victor Pelevin “The Sacred Book of Werewolf”

The cause of error by living beings is that they believe it is possible to cast aside the false and attain unto the truth.  But when you attain unto yourself, the false becomes true, and there is no other truth to which one need attain after that.