Chapter 61 Reading Notes on Quixote by Pierre Maynard

"Pierre Maynard the Author of Quixote"--Reading Borges' Novels The article "Pierre Maynard, Author of Quixote" describes the most fundamental contradiction in creation, that is, how to create something out of nothing, or how to activate the subconscious.Writers with ancient memories stored in their brains are faced with a life-and-death choice at the moment of creation: whether to abandon all worldly burdens and enter the "pure" state with an ethereal body, or to be restrained by the world and write something that they are not satisfied with. , an expedient work inconsistent with the realm in memory (Quixote)?For a writer, the former cannot be achieved, and the latter is spurned by him. He has no choice, because the two are one thing.So the writer began to struggle and began a long journey of wrestling with fate.The goal of the writer is that "pure" state--the great Don Quixote, and what the writer writes is an attempt to rush towards that state.To try is always to fail, to be expedient, because Don Quixote can only exist in the heart of man.So is it pointless to create?No, this is exactly the meaning: the work can only be a compromise with the highest artistic conception; people spurn the mundane life and the mundane meaning of the words in their pens, but they communicate with eternity through the mundane bridge.What did that ghost, who went to the field in the suburbs every night to burn manuscripts, see in the light of the fire?

"Don Quixote" is the kingdom of the mind, an infinitely rich, subtle, and ineffable existence. Its ineffability lies in its changeability. Any attempt to fix it with words is ridiculous. Ridiculous.The comical hero among human beings continues that kind of underground literary creation every moment, constantly breaks through the nothingness that besieges him in desperation.As long as there are artists, writing in this extreme sense will not stop, and everything is going on secretly, but readers can find the information of that special creation from the superficial books and texts, and break into the artist's place at those points. Infinitely deep soul. The arrival of the kingdom of "Don Quixote" depends on chance, both for the writer and for the readers. It is an unpredictable world, and people have no model to rely on, and the only thing they can rely on is their own impulse. .When vague ideals are looming ahead, people can only charge in ignorance like Genghis Khan's cavalry. Of course, the hazy things ahead are created by himself in years of hard pursuit.

This kind of special long-term unremitting spiritual labor started by human ancestors constitutes the history of human beings. This is another invisible history that is far deeper and wider than the history in textbooks. It comes from the creation of the heart. Its experience can only be achieved through the unique creation of the individual, otherwise it does not exist.This mystical history, the inner history to be confirmed by the creation of the individual, is the mother of truth and the source of reality.Man can use its treasures to construct his own "Don Quixote", as long as he does not stop creating and knowing, he is with his mother.However, the artist with this yearning is doomed to suffer a life of hellish pain, which is inherent; the Mother of Truth savagely denies all his creations, forcing him to rush blindly, But his mother never gave him any hope, only deprivation.The moment when he feels his mother is close is also the moment when he feels the farthest away from his mother. In order to return to the memory of his mother, one must be ready to start the next round of creation, and so on, until the limitation of artistic life makes this creation termination.Then another individual starts again, that kind of start is not to continue the career of the predecessors, but to subvert the works of the predecessors with new experiences.This constitutes the unfinished and imperfect character of pure art, since it is only a fragment of the process, or a message of the desire for perfection in which man expresses his desire but does not attain it. The perfection he craves.The immortal masterpiece "Don Quixote" is always in the deepest part of darkness, and it depends on people to reveal it bit by bit with the help of brute force and chance (inspiration).Therefore, a real artist can never get rid of the disgust of his own work and the deep-rooted sense of shame when he creates; he has to have that obscene intercourse between his ideal and the dirty world. The truth, the path to conversion to history.

The Maynard in Borges' article is the artist's extremely proud, extremely fragile, and very strong artistic self, this elusive elf, living in deep suffering.She is passionate about creation, but she is also driven by the illusory sense of creation; she uses the mundane to transcend the mundane, so she can only be in an ambiguous identity forever; struggling in despair.She is the pain and longing that the artist will never get rid of.This situation of the artistic self is caused by the duality of creation itself: creation requires the realization of all the impossible, and at the same time requires the complete negation of all realized realities.Maynard's mental life consisted of nervously creating and furtively burning manuscripts.