| Deception and Seduction: Notes on
Some of the Paradoxes of Writing Christopher Bernard |
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Download essay in rtf format Beauty is truth, truth beauty~that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know. -Keats
Art is a lie that makes us realize truth. -Picasso
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen. Of what we cannot speak we must remain silent. -Wittgenstein
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The art of writing is an art of seduction. Or, for those readers who prefer the term craft: the craft of writing is a craft of seduction. Purely as an art, that is all writing is: the inducing of a hypnotic trance by a line of words on paper, on a screen. The art is at its most potent when it not only rivets the reader's attention, but when the writing~from individual phrases to particular scenes, characters, images, ideas, even the tone~haunts the reader's mind long after he has tossed the text aside. The writer has the greatest success when he dominates the mind of the reader, for days, years, a lifetime. We all know writing that has had such an effect on us: the work of a Dostoyevsky, a Kafka, a Doris Lessing, a Faulkner, a Nietzsche. The Bible. Such is the  |
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