I just realized that I have quietly learned to find exciting what for many years I found frightening: that writing is like walking along a cliff in the dark. Once you realize this, it is more or less easy to understand all the many pathetic and hilarious postures writers resort to in order to prop themselves up. Reading Gombrowicz' diatribe against poets has just this pathetic and hilarious quality. Like a formerly religious person losing themselves exuberantly in a satanic ritual.

The hardest thing in an age of disbelief is to find a reason to have faith. It is harder even then to actually have faith than to find a reason to have it. You cannot share your faith with others, but you can share your reasons. Perhaps blind faith is based on a kind of ignorance. But lack of faith- which is, after all, lack of trust, is the doorway to hopelessness. And hopelessness is the doorway to death-in-life. I don't mean faith in God by the way, far from it. I'm talking about faith in life.

After reading Gombrowicz' diaries for about an hour I can only say: nothing more pathetic then someone whose raison d'etre is to find someone *to blame*. He's much closer to Cioran then he realizes. But I share his love for diaries.
(8/27/93)