There are certain works, especially in the arts, which, once read, leaves one dumbstruck. Not merely in the sense of a momentary emotional awe. The work gradually seeps into the very fabric of one's experience, and permeates everything, that is to say, everything appears as a moment already inscribed in these works. In this sense, these works haunt.
Perhaps I should feel grateful for coming into contact with works of such influential power. This contact really was (and still is, every time it is repeated) a kind of "second birth," a secular baptism. I am faced with a choice: either to accept the impact and cope with it, or forget, dilute, and ignore, as if it never happened, or it happened somewhere else but not here.
I still alternate between these two stances. For how could I otherwise defend what little territory I have left for my self?
But what exactly is this haunting? It is a kind of vacuum wherein all "mineness" disappears. For instance, I eat lunch today. I think, "I ate a really good lunch today!" The experience seems unique to me, happening only this once, no matter how much it may resemble others. So I try to tell this to others by saying, "I had an amazing lunch today." But then, others have no access to the uniqueness of my lunch. Instead, they see the words, and perhaps some of them might try to recall their amazing lunches. One thing is clear: such a conversation leads quickly into solipsism, where each person only speaks with reference to his or her own experience. In order to break out of this mutual exclusion, we both need to renounce our attachment to the "uniqueness" of our own private experience, and instead converse at a different level, at the level of language proper, one might say. Now at this level, however, there is nothing "unique" left in declaring that "I had an amazing lunch today." It has turned into the most mundane proposition. The uniqueness must be brought out by supplementing it with more utterances which describe the circumstances in which this lunch has taken place.
This is the point where the struggle begins for personal territory in language. There are two elements in this struggle: direction and elaboration. One takes a direction which has not yet been taken by others, and thereby marks a new terrain as one's own. Or, one elaborates an already traversed path to an exceptional degree, so that the degree allows one to stand out from others. In either case, it is clear that some effort is needed before one is really able to communicate the uniqueness of one's experience in a way that is actually communicable.
A haunting work is one which gives the reader the sense that no direction is left open, no further elaboration is possible.
For me, James Joyce and G. W. F. Hegel are two haunting writers. Ulysses and Science of Logic are the two works which continue to haunt me up to this day.
I am being haunted by them. This is already an ambiguous state of mind. I am being haunted, giving myself up voluntarily, acknowledging the magnitude of these works, their depth and breadth, their liveliness. I continue to interpret them in the most generous way possible, and treat all possible variations on these works as footnotes to them. On the other hand, I am being haunted, that is, it is the work's authority which I passively submit to. It is as if, regardless of my attitude, the work will continue to subsume anything I might say under their own headings, chapter titles, key-words or contexts.
This might appear as an agonizing situation for those for whom "mineness" or personal originality is a key element in whatever they do. From this standpoint, the realization that nothing unique may ever come out of one's pen is a truly shattering moment. But one need not despair in this way.
The other possibility is total submission, constantly marveling at the achievements of legendary writers. This perspective sees that "what needs to be said has already been said." It falls back into a kind of blissful idleness, enjoying the fruits of their labour - the works - with a glass of whiskey in hand.
These are two extremes. There is nothing wrong with either standpoint. It's only that I have occupied both, and find both to be unsatisfactory. But a third way, one of simply ignoring these two writers as if they have never existed, is equally unsatisfying. Their presence has already been impressed upon me, and I cannot shake it off simply by pretending to forget. I am not 'emo' enough to try and assert my individuality in the mode of desperation - a move which, in essence, seems to be what Kierkegaard had to make - and neither am I hedonistic enough to simply go with the flow.
The ambiguous forth position is to continue to read these works and work on them, through them, around them. To say these things is so easy that it is almost ridiculous to even record them in this personal archive of mine. Yet nonetheless this is my resolution, what I am to do, to paraphrase another one of Kierkegaard's dilemmas from his notebook.
