Zastrozzi

Sunday, August 7, 2022

The only thing I could write in my diary last week was this:

Monday: Me.
Tuesday:  Me
Wednesday: Me.
Thursday: Me
Friday: Me
Saturday: Me
Sunday: Me

I find myself fascinating, but conveying that in words can be difficult. However, now another Monday has appeared, and there seems to be a glimmer of hope that my life can get back on track, and therefore I will see the world in a much better light.   Nevertheless, I’m working on a novel, “Zastrozzi,” which includes my thoughts on irresponsible self-indulgence and violent revenge.   A dear friend read the original draft and wrote that “Zastrozzi” is one of the most savage and improbable demons ever issued from a diseased brain.” The narrative (so far) is about an outlaw named Zastrozzi, for whom his two servants kidnap Verezzi because Verezzi’s father had deserted his mother, Olivia, who died young and in poverty.   So going after his half-brother, he commits revenge on not only his father, who he killed but also the offspring of one of his other romances.   Zastrozzi manipulated Verezzi into committing suicide, which based on his Christian religion against taking one’s own life, guarantees the eternal damnation of Verezzi’s soul.

The trouble I’m having right now is trying to find a satisfying end to the book.  Also, I must be honest that Zastrozzi, the fictional character, is based on… me.   Not that I killed anyone or drove a man to suicide, but for sure, the self-indulgence part, and I have occasional violent revenge fantasies. Still, I do have it under my control.  Being a writer, I can make my world, focus on the blank page and fill it with my thoughts and wordplay.  While I was writing this novel, I listened to Timi Yuro’s “Interlude, ” which is a song that speaks to me on a highly romantic level.  “Loving you is a world that is strange” is the line that goes around my head repeatedly.  I must hear this song at least seven times before picking up my pen.

What may seem odd is that I’m more influenced by books on film theory than books on writing.  Béla Balázs’ “The Spirit of Film” (1930) is something I reflect on when writing.  The images in my mind are a set of montages that I try to fit together.  What seems like to be an interlude now can be the beginning of love.  But with that love is a certain amount of poison that, if one is not careful, can bite, and I often feel that the bite will go on eternally.  “All art constantly aspires towards the condition of  the cinema (i.e., the arts seek to unify subject-matter and form, and the cinema is the only art in which subject and form are seemingly one).”   Time is like a dream, and I will try to hold on to that dream.

Inspired by Walter Pater and Witold Gombrowick