Writers are continuously seized by a throbbing urge to
write; weather abruptly by a sudden touch of inspiration, or deliberately upon
an important event in their lives, or .. upon an aching unfathomable feeling
that needs to be worded. Perchance it is love or sadness .. or both. Writers
can relate to these fits of the heart.
However, this inward tumult does not always result in
writing as it is expected. The past
cripples their drives and harness their artistic flow. It is a concept called “The
Anxiety of Influence”; the fear that everything we write or experience has been
written and experienced before, and this fear takes over a writer’s soul and
filter his\her ideas.
In my writing experience, insignificant as it is, I
recall many times when I felt stifled in front of my computer at night; was
this idea mentioned before ? Is this image illustration trivial or mainstream ?
Are these lines ridiculously worn out ?
The Anxiety of Influence feeds on these internal
wonderings and the idea that past literary glories are present failures if
repeated.
I came to realize, however, that there is no such
thing as repetition in literature or any form of Art for that matter.
Writing is the fruit of intimate feelings, of personal
ponderings .. And because words can never wholly describe what we experience as
human beings, ideas and images can never be reiterated. Texts may hold some
resemblance to each other, but the feelings that culminated in their production
are so wonderfully and subtly different.
It is what I like to call the Influence of Anxiety.
The soul of any writer creates and annihilates, chases an evanescent idea, struggles
to depict an eerie landscape, a scent, the touch of a hand, the taste of a
kiss, the eyes of a stranger … The head is
a battlefield of words, disordered ideas and piled-up images .. The heart speaks
conflicting emotions and inexplicable perplexities. His entire being agonizes
to produce “The truest sentence” of it all.
What I want to say is that the journey that any writer
goes through to give birth to his text is what makes it eternally unique. The
palpitations of his heart, his uncertainties, his frustration, his constant
un-creation of words are what renders very original and very specific to its
creator.
The text, like Love, is a feeling .. Perhaps the most
sincere feeling ever so nakedly and fearlessly exposed .. And like all
feelings, we try to capture it albeit we know that it’s uncatchable. We think
that we are able to see similarities between texts, but our eyes deceive us so …
a metaphor can recall another, an image
can summon its root in other writings, that is true ..
However the experience
of the pre-word, the struggle of the pre-idea, the musings of the pre-image can
never be repeated, translated or truly detected.
That is the reason why I believe that each text is
enigmatically singular .. Diverse and particular like Human feelings, like
Human loves ..
To partially employ F.Scott Fitzgerald’s words:” There
are all kinds of “texts” in this
world, but never the same “text”
twice ..”
