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2002-07-26
4:17 p.m.
In keeping with the recent trend in my life towards research of great figures in major fields of art, I have recently begun studying Arthur Schopenhauer as my philosopher of choice. What I have read in the last day or two hasn't amounted to much quantitatively, but I have gained so much from reading his works that I feel nothing but absolute reassurance that the study of Schopenhauer will enhance my novel and allow it to achieve its highest potentialities. To mention all the thoughts that have cropped up in my mind while reading him would be ridiculous and useless, so I shall mention only the following quote that appeared in his essay On Madness:
"The madness that has sprung from merely psychic causes can possibly bring about, through the violent inversion of the course of thought that produces it even a kind of paralysis or other depravation of some parts of the brain; and if this is not soon removed, it becomes permanent. Therefore madness is curable only at its beginning, not after a long time."
If you've read much of my journal lately, the concept of craziness being permanent may strike a familiar bell in your mind. Hopefully, if you've read my previous entries, you ARE struck with this feeling of familiarity because Schopenhauer would attest to the fact that your NOT recalling that particular theme at ALL would make you partially mad.
In any case, the funny thing about reading Schopenhauer (and, in fact, the funny thing about reading all sorts of words from the minds of great geniuses) is that I'm continually struck with a feeling of familiarity and the sense that only someone STUPID wouldn't already know it all. Philosophy and those philosophical parts of novels that I love so much invariably come into my mind willingly and happily because philosophy, as an art form that attempts to explicate the inexplicable, is the same as common sense to me.
Phrase after phrase after phrase I read, and all I can think is, "You'd have to be stupid not to know that the trademark sign of a genius is an irritability and aversion to dealings with other people. You'd have to be stupid not to know that madness comes from the brain's inability to put together linear thoughts. You'd have to be stupid not to know that there is an inherent duality to all things in nature. You'd have to be stupid not to know that an event that causes suicide in a specific person can be as great or as minor as the inversion of their previously apparent discomfort in the agonies of life." It's common sense.
Or is it?
The aforementioned quote about madness plucked a particular chord with strange vibrancy because it is that characteristic of paralysis in madness that I have been trying so desperately to elucidate. Whenever I am emotionally moved by something, or whenever I have to struggle to think relatively deeply about something, I am consumed by a devastating paralysis. The pathways in my brain have crisscrossed themselves so effectively that they frequently cause a deadening paralysis of all my senses, and the experience -- the physical experience -- is so difficult to explain that I feel I may require the aid of a secondary diabolical muse.
The paralysis is that specific moment in time at which I lose my vision, the feeling in my hands, and the ability to breathe. It's the moment at which I feel like, in place of breathing, I've developed the sudden ability to be enveloped by and overrun with an overwhelming sense of the oneness of the universe. It's like all the energy of the world comes to a point at the center of my skull, and my brain pulses with the visionary comprehension of sages and prophets until the ordinary energy of my average human body is thoroughly sapped for the good of a better cause.
And I am left paralyzed.
Schopenhauer has further convinced me that I am a genius. I have always thought highly of my ability to comprehend the totality of existence, but no one has so effectively pointed out to me how very rare that is. Sometimes it becomes easy for me to associate myself with the great writers whose works I read and dissociate myself from the swarms of ordinary peons around me to a point where I lose track of the reality of the situation. When constantly faced with mediocrity, it becomes easy for me to remove myself to another dimension of reality where I am free to roam with the great minds of history.
It's too bad Schopenhauer didn't believe that women could be geniuses. I hate to prove him wrong.
