Controversy
Since the first quill was picked up by the first writer, simultaneously and more or less juxtaposed, the first critical controversy was born. The art of writing and debating go hand in hand and coexist off of each other for better or worse.
Mythology, as well as history, reveals areas of controversy. Adonis was born out of incest. Ajax mounted Cassandra in the temple of the goddess of wisdom, Agamemnon was murdered by an adulterous wife, Helene ran back in Menelaus arms after having caused the disaster of Troy, Artemis, insensitive and frigid, punished those who tried approaching her.
Back in the Roman days, while Ovid initially refined Rome's elite in the "art of love" the controversy he created taught him in exile, the bitter taste of hate and perfidy, cajoling the emperor through hypocritical letters sent to friends, desperately hoping that his words will reach the ears of Augustus and draw forgiveness. It is not hard to imagine how Ovid, looked with distaste at the waters of the Black Sea. Especially in the winter. While blizzards swept over the land, accompanied by the howling wolves, Ovid, most likely was dreaming, with a poisoned heart and crippling sadness, of the parties Rome spoiled him some time ago.
Twenty-five years spent among weird, bearded locals was certainly a long wait, interrupted from time to time, by despair and disappointment as none of the ships sailing in the harbor brought the news he wanted.
And he suffered, I think, more than cold as life continued flawless without him.
As time went by, literary cultures uniquely concentrated messages in time and space: Alexander Pushkin, Nikolai Gogol, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Ivan Turgenev, Nikolai Nekrasov, and many others, all within the first rank of human treasures and all, initially at least, focused on the misery of “the people” and the travesties of the social institutions which in return established the controversy, the war of words between writer and the reader.
Everything else starts from here: work, hope, investigations, testing, chances, circumstances, luck, confidence and disappointment...
Every writer or creator of any kind has the ability to exchange views and to see things from multiple angles.I look at it as we can choose from history only what we like, like in a library in which we keep only books that interest us. Our inner thoughts are not required to support any neighborhood we dislike. Perhaps they look like murky marshes formed after rain.
Comments