The agreeable eye

an eudæmonistarchives

housekeeping

In his text, the writer sets up house. Just as he trundles papers, books, pencils, documents untidily from room to room, he creates the same disorder in his thoughts. They become pieces of furniture that he sinks into, content or irritable. He strokes them affectionately, wears them out, mixes them up, re-arranges, ruins them. For a man who no longer has a homeland, writing becomes a place to live. In it he inevitably produces, as his family once did, refuse and lumber. But now he lacks a store room, and it is hard in any case to part from left-overs. So he pushes them along in front of him, in danger finally of filling his pages with them. […] In the end, the writer is not even allowed to live in his writing.

—Theodor Adorno (Minima Moralia, p. 87)


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