…O reader! As these lines are written by the dim light of a wall lamp, don’t wish the wrath of gods to befall the author thereof for her erratic notes, – but take it as a good indication of the author’s undying loyalty and honesty in matters as intellectual, as mundane…
…truly, I am beginning to speak the language of the bygone centuries. In this I remind myself of a character in my own story: a history student in Paris, who one day met and invited to live with him none other but Giovanni Giacomo Casanova. The student began to use the 18th c. style of speech because of the benign influence of his distinguished guest. I am beginning to behave similarly because of my research into the representation of poverty in art, conducted for this year’s Blog Action Day…
…several times per night a cleaning machine visits my street. When I do sleep at night, I don’t hear it, but, frankly, this aggregate’s noise can be very disturbing. I have no idea how to interpret this. On the one hand, my street should be squeaky clean. On the other, this is doubtful – why would they sweep it so often? The final question remains: how do they know if it was polluted?..
…paintings are coming. Paintings are coming out of my ears. I think I can copy an image, but I certainly cannot draw. With the current research, however, it’s beginning to feel like next I am going to take a pencil and paper and start drawing some Crucifixion or cupids and Venuses…
…my grandma has got a BA in Law. Throughout my final year at high school I was planning to follow in her steps – but ended up becoming the first historian in the family. Apparently, poverty in art was often synonymous with beggary, and beggary was synonymous with vagabondage. Beggars were someone who didn’t do any work (apart from begging, that is) – this is what people sometimes think of historians, as well as men-of-letters and men-of-arts (or women, for that matter). We don’t do any work – this is because we cannot let anyone into our brain. I must be honest and admit that being me is possibly even worse than being John Malkovitch. But let this remain between us…
…and yes, I escaped the legal path, but I didn’t escape the researcher’s path, and being a sleuth in the field of history is a sort of actualisation of my inclination to investigate. The only problem with this historical investigation, is that I’m constantly working on a serial case. The case never stops. You may think that you’ve linked together all culprits and victims, but then another “body” appears out of the blue, and you realise that it will actually lead you to another “criminal”…
…here is the trick: the true question of this investigation will not be “whoddunit?”, but – “when shall I stop?” I recall an old professor of Philosophy in Moscow, how he told, with the utmost sincerity, about his late colleague, who went to write his Ph.D. dissertation and spent days and nights in the library: “I was asking him, ‘When will you begin to write your thesis?’ and he’d say, ‘Oh no, I still need to read this book’. And then he died, without ever writing his thesis”. There is a lesson in this, however strange it may be to draw a lesson from here. In every situation there is a point, after which the situation begins to develop into an absurdity…
