57

A Work of Art

A brand new love affair—a literary one!

We met at a literary and musical reception one evening and he told me right away that he thought I was the one. I am the girl he is looking for, the girl of his romantic dreams.

He’s heard of me already. He’s heard that I’m well read and interesting to talk to. He’s wanted to meet me for a long time, but his literary preoccupations have prevented him. His muses tied him to his writing table and demanded that he keep writing.

He wants to carry on a love affair with me out of his love for art. I simply must have an affair with him, to give him inspiration for the new work he’s writing, with me as the heroine.

“The only thing that I can give you is this smile,” I said.

“That’s not enough. There’s no need for you to be that way. Be like the heroine of a modern romance: free and uninhibited.”

“If free is what you want, don’t force me.”

“You’re my model now. You’re the material I’m using to create a work of art that will be the talk of the literary world. I will immortalize you; you’ll live forever in my art. With my style, with my words, I’ll create a work that will be the wonder of the twentieth century! Even my enemies, who won’t want to acknowledge my triumph, will have to agree that I am original, modern, great!”

When he saw that I was looking at him skeptically, he asked, “What, you don’t believe me? That’s because you don’t know me yet. If only you knew how everyone tries to imitate my work. I have a style all of my own, absolutely unique. You can only be born with a style like mine, it can’t be learned. You might say that I was born with a pen in my hand.”

“Did you start writing when you were a baby?”

“I was practically a child. Yes, it was in me from the start, before I was even—”

“Before you were even anything at all!”

“Perhaps. My soul was filled with poetry as soon as it arrived in the world. I had a precocious curiosity about writing, and I started writing from the first time I ever saw paper. I wrote in sand, on snow, even in water, I loved writing so much! And whenever I got my hands on a book I tore it to pieces. It was as though my heart was telling me that I could write better than anyone who had ever written before me. Doesn’t that make me distinctive?”

“Quite!”

“If you were to read everything I’ve written,” he continued, encouraged by my “quite,” “you would see that I have never created a single piece of weak writing. Everything I write is strong and full of life. All those other lapatsanes bite their own fingers with envy because they can’t write like I can. And do you know the reason they can’t?”

“The reason they can’t?”

“Yes. The reason is that they can’t. And they can’t because it is not in them to do it. You must have a great soul in order to accomplish great things.”

“Where do you get it all from?” I asked, “Not your soul”—I added this joke so I could allow my face to relax into a smile—“but the material that you write about?”

“Life. Of course, life alone is not enough if you don’t have an imagination. And I have a rich imagination and a very deep psychology.”

“Just last week I completed a story,” continued my new literary acquaintance. “It’s a gem! It’s very good. This is the story—do you want me to tell you how it goes? It’s very interesting.”

“Well—”

He told me the story. “The name of the story is ‘Feelings.’ A talented writer falls head over heels for a young, picture-perfect girl and wants to immortalize her in writing. He sees in her the woman of his dreams and he wants to sing her praises and make her eternal. But she won’t let him. She doesn’t know what she’s doing. Her naïve, inexperienced soul shies away in fear from the artist and she begs him not to bother her. But eventually she realizes that she is too weak to withstand his advances and she lets him immortalize her. She becomes as pliant as wax. She is good, soft, accommodating. He makes her eternal.

“The girl has some money. Just a few hundred dollars. She gives it to him so that he can publish the work that he wrote about her. He finds a publisher and both of them are in seventh heaven because the book is the talk of the town. She sits with him in the literary café and is proud of him. All those other lapatsanes who don’t even know how to hold a pen in their hands see her and are jealous of him. With a muse like her by his side, they say, they’d be able to create something as magnificent as he did. She sees how they are devouring her with their eyes and is embarrassed.

“And so it goes, until we come to the material side of things. Finances are the nail in the coffin. The printer turns out to be a fraud. He decides for personal reasons to stop publishing the author and bring someone else’s work to market instead. The critics, who do not wish our author well, insult and ignore his work. He would rather they tore it to shreds than not notice it at all. But who cares what he thinks? He loses his head over his misfortune, and she falls into a depression because she can’t stand to see him suffering.

“The more she can’t stand to see him suffer, the more he suffers from her sadness. He grows wild with sadness and contemplates suicide, but she won’t let him do it. He watches her descent—she fades, withers, grows old before her time. Inspired by her suffering, he comes up with an idea for a tragedy. ‘Art’s Martyr,’ he’ll call it. He’ll show the world how she was the victim of art. And to make sure it has a happy ending he’ll change her fortunes in the fourth act and make sure she lives happily ever after. But man plans and the devil laughs. She dies before the curtain falls. The funeral director lays her down into the earth. Prose overtakes poetry, death wins over life. The writer lays his hot forehead on her cold breast and looks with pessimism into the future. He looks, but he sees nothing.

“Isn’t it a wonderful story?” he asked me excitedly. Without waiting for my answer, he said himself that it was a rare, remarkable, tremendous accomplishment! From now on, it will be known as one of the greatest works that has ever been written in Yiddish literature, in all the literature in the world, even! It’s true art. It’s how people were meant to write. He hates to praise himself overmuch, but the truth is the truth, and he can’t help saying so.

To give myself a rest from his rich imagination, deep psychology, elevated soul, tremendous insight and colossal talent, I remarked on his unusual appearance. “Why are you so pale?” I asked.

“I’m a poet. A Yiddish poet,” he responded pointedly. “I am an intellectual.”

“You have such deep wrinkles in your brow.”

“It’s from thinking, pondering, cogitating.”

“Why do you have a cut on your cheek?”

“It’s from the barber.”

“Where did you get that scratch on your neck?”

“From the barber!”

“You have such a strange way of pressing your lips together.”

“Really? It’s because I have so many words in me that want to express themselves. There are things that you have to hold inside, to save for later. For instance, I wish I could tell you right now how much I love you, but I feel that it isn’t time to say so yet. You’ll be upset that I spoke too soon. For someone like you, love comes much more gradually, it’s long and drawn out. You torment a man before he can declare himself to you. You’re afraid that I’ll come to such feelings too fast, because it makes you believe that I’ll stop loving you as quickly as I began. But artists like me are people who live in the moment. We give ourselves over to the present. Our creative energy comes from expressing ourselves. ‘Mr. Finkin,’ a girl said to me the other day, ‘you are the greatest psychologist I have ever met in my life. You can see what’s in our very souls. You really understand women.’ And the girl who said that had met many psychologists in her life, both great and humble, profound and superficial.”

“Who was the girl? I’d like to meet her.”

“No, you can’t meet her. She’s not here. What a shame. I’d like to introduce you to her. She could tell you what it’s like to be loved by a writer. It’s not like being loved by another man, a man of ordinary flesh and blood. Of course, there are all kinds of love, just like there are all kinds of writers. One man’s love comes out like a shundroman, another’s is beautiful, poetic, literary.”

The love he feels for me, he claims, is a literary one. But just because it’s literary doesn’t mean that it can’t also happen in real life. In the name of literature, he said, I simply must love him too.

“Tell me, Mr. F.,” I asked, redirecting him from his demand that I love him, “how you write. It must be very interesting.”

“Oh, yes, it’s very interesting. I think it’s the most interesting thing in the world. You create something and everyone is delighted by it. You can see with your own eyes how everyone laps up the literary delicacy that you’ve served them, and it makes you think that there’s a reason for your existence in the world. Often when I’m in an elevator, a streetcar, or the subway, I see someone reading something I wrote and I feel—oh! It’s such a wonderful feeling! I read their faces, and I see how each one of them feels exactly what I wanted to make them feel when I wrote the piece. When I create something, I’m not just a writer—I’m a reader too!”