Philosophy’s not enough for you. Literature’s not enough for you. It had to be philosophico-literary. Literary-philosophical. That hyphen! That joining of terms!
Do you think the world’s ready for your literary philosophical musings? Do you think the time is right to unleash them on the world? Are they what the world’s waiting for? What the world never knew it needed, until now?
Do we actually need any new literary-philosophical books? Haven’t we had quite enough of those?
Hasn’t continental Europe been a literary-philosophical book factory for the last however many years? There are entire literary-philosophico oeuvres. People who are much cleverer than you, much more literate, much better educated, have spent decades crafting their philosophico-literary oeuvres.
You’re late to the party. What do you have to contribute? What’s going to be your USP? What are you going to bring to the literary-philosophical table?
Is it literary-philosophical or the other way round? Does it matter?
Are you going to bid for funding to help you write it? They’ll really go for it, the funding bodies. It really is their kind of thing. I want to write a literary-philosophical masterpiece. I want to write belated philosophico-literary work when the age of literature has entirely collapsed. And the age of philosophy is over.
No one’s interested in your literary-philosophical writings. Not even us! And we’re your friends. We’re not going to read a line. We’re actually going to unread it. See whether we can drive the memory of it from us.
None of us will read a line you write. We’re not even curious. We’re not even wondering, What will Shiva’s book be like? No. You might be many things, Shiva, but you’re no literary-philosophical writer.
Reading your work: imagine that. Opening a book with your name on the cover. Impossible! It’ll never happen!
And you’re not bothered by the futility of it? It doesn’t worry you that no one is actually interested? Nor will they be! Nor could they be!
The literary. What does it mean to you, anyway? What could it mean? To the likes of us? The literary! And when it’s conjoined with the philosophical!? When it’s a question of the literary-philosophical? Of the philosophico-literary?
Something so far away from us. Something so exalted.
Which is why we love Hölderlin so. Which is why we’re full of Hölderlin-enthusiasm. Without understanding Hölderlin. Of course! Even as we read all these books and essays about Hölderlin. Doubtless! Even as we read every European philosopher worth their salt on Hölderlin!
The poetic slash the philosophical. All those philosophers who want to become literary authors! All those literary authors who want to become philosophers! Who want to operate in the literary-philosophical zone. In the philosophico-literary zone. The sweet spot between them. Where literature and philosophy become indiscernible!
The literary-philosophical. This coupling. This joining of words. By the hyphen. Everything is about the hyphen. What matters is to think the hyphen. As no one else before had thought it. No one in the history of literature or the history of philosophy.
Do you think you’ll become some literary celebrity? Will you be invited to join the Royal Society of Authors? Do you think you’ll win awards? Or will you become some philosophical celebrity? Will they publish you in Mind? In Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society?
Do you think you’re ahead of the curve. That this is the where our culture’s heading: towards literary philosophy?
Work in Progress 