INSPIRATION AND ITS DOMINO EFFECTS

A character in Roberto Bolaño’s book, 2666 (Book Three, “The Part About Fate”), says the following:

“Reading is like thinking, like praying, like talking to a friend, like expressing your ideas, like listening to other people’s ideas, like listening to music (oh yes), like looking at the view, like taking a walk on the beach.  And you, who are so kind, now you must be asking:  what did you read, Barry?  I read everything.  But I especially remember a certain book I read at one of the most desperate moments of my life and it brought me peace again.  What book do I mean?  What book do I mean?  Well, it was a book called An Abridged Digest of the Complete Works of Voltaire, and I promise you that is one useful book, or at least it was of great use to me.”

My first reaction on reading this was:  What a quirky choice as an inspirational work!  From this aging Black Panther named Barry Seaman, who spent most of his life in jail and who is speaking to a gathering in a church, you might have expected . . . The New Testament, perhaps?  The Koran?  Milton? Shakespeare?  Something by W.E. B. Dubois?  Richard Wright?  And my second reaction was:  Which work of Voltaire was so compelling for him?  Not the whole thing, surely?  Was it CandideDiccionnaire Philosophique?  Something historical, perhaps?  On Louis XIV?  Charlemagne?  Peter the Great?  Was it one of the man’s fifty or sixty plays?  And, finally my thought was:  Good for him!  And good for Voltaire!  And, sitting at the table where I was reading, I leaned back in my chair and began to ponder what a wonderful thing writing was!  For, there it was, wasn’t it?  Here, in 2009, in Bolaño’s book, is a reference to a Frenchman who wrote almost 300 years ago and whose work is still influencing someone.  It doesn’t really matter which work of Voltaire – which particular passage it was – that so marked the life of Bolaño’s character.  It doesn’t matter that Bolaño’s character is fictional.  It doesn’t matter whether that character actually read Voltaire.  It doesn’t even matter whether Bolaño ever read Voltaire (though one may be sure he did; he was apparently as voracious a reader as you’ll find).  It’s there!  He lives!  And – whatever passage it was that struck Bolaño’s character’s mind as important, crucial – life-affirming even – here am I, 300 years later, reading a passage in Bolaño’s book and thinking about it, dwelling on it, musing on it, trying to absorb it into my being.

Could anyone have predicted this, some three hundred years ago?  Could Voltaire?  Of course not!  One never knows what will come of one’s writing.  Maybe nothing; maybe something very nice indeed.  What I felt at that moment was a sense of the profound continuity of thought and ideas and the way they become available to us because someone had the good sense to write them down.

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