I do not comprehend the difference between literature and fiction—between a parable and a story, for instance. I have become used to it in bookstores, where the distinction appears in bold letters. Still, I have a hunch that fiction is for some reason shameful: it reeks of the circus, of dissimulation, of make-believe. Literature, on the other hand, is somehow connected with notions such as dignity and truth and time. That is all that I can go by, from day to day. And that is not enough, for my notions of dignity, etc., as well as my longings for a parable, even a single parable of my own, demand much more than mere hunches, no matter whether correct or not.

Addendum I (January 2, 1984)

A parable! Listen, it’s very presumptuous to say: “I’ve written a parable!” Parables are written by peoples, not by authors.

From Yuri Trifonov’s The Long Goodbye, New York, Evanston, San Francisco, and London: Harper and Row, 1978, p. 313.

Addendum II (January 11, 1984)

Let us suppose that you read an excellent political novel and afterward find out it is by Lenin; your opinion of both would be changed, and to the disadvantage of both. Nor would Confucius be allowed to write a play by Euripides; it would be thought undignified. Yet his parables are not.

From Bertolt Brecht as quoted by Walter Benjamin in his Reflections, New York and London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book, 1978, p. 205.

Addendum III (January 19, 1985)

Parables are born of those who had forfeited the present, and thus discovered that the past and the future merged across the horrible vacuum. In time without center and its perimeter, even the reference points slide freely in defiance of time’s gravity.

Addendum IV (December 23, 1986)

The very possibility that I would one day be called a writer or an author disgusts me. This is not an exaggeration. Whenever I search for an appropriate calling for myself, that is, a title or a profession I would not mind being associated with, I cannot come up with anything palatable. The only exception may be the term “scribbler,” but this term leaves much to be desired, too. That negative conclusion never ceases to amaze me.

Another association which I find distasteful is that with art in general. The supposed connection between art and creativity positively horrifies me. This applies especially to the notion of the so-called creative writing, which seems to be inextricably bound with fiction. The travesty of art today, with all the trappings of laissez faire in markets for entertainment, sexual titillation, and collectibles, thus leads me to an ever more isolated position with respect to the bulk of artistic production of all sorts.

Of course, the association with philosophy, as an organized field of human activity, fares no better in my mind. I do not see any reason to engage in discussion of my own thoughts, recollections, and indiscretions, let alone an organized discussion conducted in public. The remote possibility that I would one day be called a thinker I therefore find appalling, as well. Parenthetically, I feel that way about Montaigne, Nietzsche, and Adorno, for example, whom I do not dare categorize as thinkers, either. At their best, they are simply Montaigne, Nietzsche, and Adorno.

Trite as this may sound, I simply want to become Ranko Bon one day—unclassifiable, indigestible, unfathomable. I want to become an individual sensu stricto. Every other possibility I have considered would be demeaning and unbearable, no matter how likely it might be in the last analysis. Regardless of our true potentials, we should at least have noble objectives.

Addendum V (January 11, 1990)

When I compare in my mind the relative strength of the forces that I experience in my quotidian life—the pull of the divine and the push of the profane—I am ashamed to admit that the latter dominates the former by a wide margin. In other words, the need for individuation is so much weaker than the loathing of the multitudes. My only consolation is a petty thought that my own experience of the two forces is true to their actual relative strength.

Addendum VI (December 26, 1990)

Neither master nor servant. A solitary aristocrat.

From Eugene Ionesco’s Fragments of a Journal, London and New York: Quartet Books, 1987 (first published in 1967), p. 87.

Addendum VII (November 10, 2003)

The hold that the theme of Hadji Murat exercised over Tolstoy between 1896 and 1904 is particularly remarkable in view of the author’s at best ambivalent, and generally negative, attitude towards the genre of fiction in the closing decades of his life. He objected to the invention required in the composition of the novel, and considered it entirely inappropriate for a man of his age and standing. Thus he wrote to his wife that he was ashamed to be working on Hadji Murat—yet he had to confess that he could not leave it alone. Doubtless the historical basis of the story and the immense amount of research that he carried out to achieve as historically authentic a canvass as possible made this novel a less reprehensible sort of work in his eyes than the likes of Anna Karenina.

From Hugh Alpin’s Introduction to Leo Tolstoy’s Hadji Murat, London: Hesperus Press, 2003, pp. xi-xii.

Addendum VIII (February 11, 2015)

So many years later, I still do not comprehend the difference between literature and fiction with anything akin to clarity. Still, I rely on the same old hunch that fiction is for some reason shameful. Although the distinction between a parable and a story, for instance, exercises me to this day, I cannot tell them apart often enough. But it is fair to say that I have never fallen for fiction as such. Which makes me happy in my dotage, for I fear that I would have recoiled in shame if I had ever succumbed to confabulating. And this is the only reason for yet another addendum to this pile of addenda. Which is to say, I have been tempted on occasion, but I have quelled each and every temptation on account of my hunch. The hunch, as it were.