Redoubled Failure

We had to embrace our failure. We had to become our failure. Be nothing other than our failure – that’s what Cicero thought.

We had to move from lamentation to affirmation. Defiant affirmation! Like stupidity pride.

 

That’s what I had to write about she said: my philosophical failure. That’s how my philosophical failure would become a literary success. A miracle!

But really, it would only become yet another kind of failure: a literary failure. For how could it be anything other than a failure? How could I suddenly exhibit literary talent, I who had shown no talent for anything whatsoever?

And that aside, the age of literature had passed. Just as the age of philosophy had passed!

 

So really, the move to literature would mean only redoubled failure! Failure once again! Which was impressive in its own way.

To fail – and so enormously – not once but twice! To run aground once – and then again. To come up against my limitations for a first time and then a second time.

It could only be a disaster. It could only end poorly. It could only ever be on a hiding to nothing, my literary project. My literaro-philosophical project!

 

There’s a quality of failure that she treasured, Cicero said. There’s a complexity of failure. That can really only come from failing once, in one area, and then failing again, in another – precisely at the moment when you thought you’d found success. Precisely at the moment when you thought you’d eluded failure. Tricked your way out of it.

In the end, failure was waiting for you. Failure was a step ahead of you. You’d be permitted no escape from failure, only a greater failure. Only a deeper failure.