“Literature does not die because nobody writes, but when everybody writes” — Nicolás Gómez Dávila

This is too much fun to pass up.  Ever hear of Nicolás Gómez Dávila (a.k.a. “Don Colacho“)?  I hadn’t, either. So thanks be to Anecdotal Evidence and Patrick Kurp for bringing him to my attention.  (There’s a super-duper website on Gómez Dávila here.)

The Columbian writer (1913-1994) led a life of leisure:

“Gómez Dávila generally only visited the office once a week at midday for about ten minutes, in order to tell the business manager to increase profits, before going out to lunch with friends at the Bogotá Jockey Club, where he was an active member, playing polo and even serving as an officer for a while. (He had to give up polo, though, after injuring himself on his horse—he was thrown off while trying to light a cigar.)”

He is known mostly for his aphorisms:

“Literature does not die because nobody writes, but when everybody writes.”

“Why do people write when they have nothing worthwhile to say and are unable to say it? The same reason we sing in the shower, when at least we have the courtesy to keep the door closed.”

“Clarity is courtesy. Muddle is ill-mannered.”

“The soul grows inwards.”

“Modern man deafens himself with music in order not to hear himself.”

“Journalism is writing exclusively for others.”

“Among the inventions of human pride, one will finally slip in which will destroy them all.”

“A genuine vocation leads the writer to write only for himself: first out of pride, then out of humility.”

“Whoever says that he ‘belongs to his time’ is only saying that he agrees with the largest number of fools at that moment.”

“The criterion of ‘progress’ between two cultures or two eras consists of a greater capacity to kill.”

“The word ‘modern’ no longer has an automatic prestige except among fools.”

“Individualism is the cradle of vulgarity.”

“Our last hope lies in the injustice of God.”

Patrick ends with a quote from Yvor Winters,  from his introduction to The Quest for Reality: An Anthology of Short Poems in English (1969), which he edited with Kenneth Fields:

“Our best writers live fully in the knowledge that language is at once personal and public; they know that only by precisely controlling the public medium of language can they realize private experience. For each of us language is the essential intermediary between the isolated self and the world of others; rather than trammeling the mind and affections, it sets them free, giving them proper objects.”

Let me end with a final aphorism that intrigued me:

The artist does not compete with his fellow artists; he does battle with his angel.

You know, to write a book of poems is to wrestle with an angel, and the first part of the task is to figure out what angel you are wrestling.

Author: Cynthia Haven

Cynthia Haven has written for The Times Literary Supplement, The Nation, The Virginia Quarterly Review, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, World Literature Today, and other publications. Her work has also appeared in Le Monde, La Repubblica, The Kenyon Review, Quarterly Conversation, The Georgia Review, Civilization, and others. She has been a Milena Jesenská Journalism Fellow with the Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen in Vienna. Peter Dale in Conversation with Cynthia Haven was published in London, 2005. Her Czestaw Mitosz: Conversations was published in 2006; Joseph Brodsky: Conversations in 2003; An Invisible Rope: Portraits of Czestaw Mitosz was published in 2011 with Ohio University Press / Swallow Press. She is currently a visiting scholar at Stanford. Her biography René Girard, A Life will be published next year. Join me at twitter: @chaven View all posts by Cynthia Haven