The virtuosity of our self-hatred: Cicero liked that.
Everything began with that with us: self-hatred. Hatred of our own idiocy.
She thought it was magnificent. Not only idiocy, but hatred of our own idiocy! Not just stupidity, but being appalled at our stupidity!
The way we attacked ourselves. The way we were appalled by ourselves. And, extension, everything. We were appalled by everything because we were appalled at ourselves.
Torment: that’s what we knew. A torment that we could express because of European philosophy. That European philosophy allowed us to express.
What irony! Because the main cause of that torment was trying to do European philosophy. Was trying to read European philosophy!
What a quandary. But that’s what made our attempt at European philosophy interesting, Cicero thought. That’s what gave it life.
We were appalled that we’d been even allowed to do European philosophy. That we’d been given jobs teaching European philosophy.
Cicero had raised us too high – and she knew it. Cicero had asked us to do the impossible – of course, of course.
But that, for Cicero, was the condition of our finding something interesting to say. We must express our idiocy, she said. Live it. Philosophise with it. Philosophise as idiots! As European philosophy idiots!
That was our truest vocation, according to Cicero. That was the great gift she’d given us.
That we had to look in the mirror as European philosophers. That we had to stand at the lecture podium as European philosophers. As would-be European philosophers! Anglophone European philosophers!
That was the step we had to take.
To embrace our idiocy. To write from our idiocy. To write out of the infinite tension of our idiocy. Through the infinite passion of our idiocy: isn’t that what Cicero intended?
We were natural Gnostics, Cicero said. But we had to allow ourselves to become Gnostics. At present, we were simply denying our Gnosticism. We were trying not to be idiots – too hard!
In our off-duty lives, in our drinking lives, we weren’t pretending – that’s the thing. We were giving our idiocy its head.
This was how the ruin of Europe was coming to know itself: in us. This is how the destruction of European philosophy was becoming self-aware: in us – in our idiocy.
And on the island that wasn’t part of the mainland. In the kingdom off the shore of Europe proper. There. And wasn’t that where Eastern European doom might be reborn, too?
We were each what she could not be – an idiot. We weren’t prodigies, like her. We weren’t savants. We would never finish our PhDs at twenty-one, as she did.
Nothing was expected of us. No one had ever called us geniuses. And yet we had a reverence for Genius. And yet we looked up to genius. Al our culture heroes had genius.
And we even wanted to become geniuses – we shouldn’t deny it. We even wanted to be brilliant. We even thought we could become brilliant. With a certain amount of time. With some job security. With open summers for work before us, mightn’t it be possible?
We even thought we might be late developers. Late-life geniuses …
Work in Progress 