Josep Pla - Life Embitters

I became a solitary soul. At boarding school I learned a few things that gave the final touches to my character. I learned to be self-reliant, to make my bed and not trust other people. Whenever I became involved in other people’s business or offered to help strangers, I came off badly. Everybody plowed his own furrow and did so with lucid single-mindedness.

When I was ill, I made every effort to stop them from telling anyone. I thought they’d pay me a dutiful visit, and their polite smiles would hardly hide the annoyance the journey and visit had caused. If my mother had come — and she most certainly would have — she’d have been deplorably upset when I started to argue the moment my temperature went down. My liking for loutish behavior is beyond words. Nonetheless, at the age of sixteen, my solitude led me to believe wholeheartedly that it was a grave error to fall ill and that physical pain is an outrage.

In the meantime, things led me naturally to find pleasure in a detached life of contemplation and the spectacle of the countryside. That coincided with the crisis of adolescence that was dramatic, if short-lived. I remember how when I was at boarding school, during a trip to the mountains, three friends and I escaped and ran for three hours in order to beat the others to the scary scenario of the sleazy walls of a filthy brothel. The inevitable upshot soon came, and I was expelled at the age of fifteen for various reasons, for being irreligious and other less acceptable attitudes. At any rate I have to say that three-hour chase was the pinnacle of my sporting life.

I started university in Barcelona, amid frightful chaos and uproar. I chose one degree rather than another, because I thought it would give me more time to do whatever I felt like doing. You need to idle a lot to acquire a proper level of sensitivity. I must say that I guessed right. I turned into a Lord Nelson of lethargy. The enormous freedom I enjoyed at the time so went to my head it prevented me from making the most of it. I met no obstacles and nobody crossed my path able to interest me in anything in particular with convincingly clear arguments. I let myself go and spread myself around — without provoking dramatic crises — as if I’d been living through a shipwreck. I hardened into a young man who couldn’t think what to do with himself. I became a kind of orchestrated fool.

At the time I read somewhere — perhaps it was Stendhal — that vanity was a powerful fillip, a kind of universally valued corset for people with a bad stoop. I tried it but the ridiculous figure I cut made me a laughing-stock, and I doubt anyone could have laughed so much at himself as I did. Meanwhile, I saw so many women, heard so much money chinking about, and watched so much mediocrity pass by, that I came to feel that social life wasn’t at all important. I’d sometimes hear someone talk, their pockets brimful of books and papers, about taking over society and I’d laugh in their faces. Others told me — guffawing or in tears — of their spectacular entrances or shameful retreats in society at large. What nonsense! They all seemed the same, all wore the same expressions. I gave them a wide berth and kept my lips sealed. Vice couldn’t budge me, nor could much-praised virtue. My state of mind might have led me to try out firsthand the life of a Franciscan, concretely, by dispatching me to a seminary. I lacked various qualities: imagination, faith in culture and systems, and perhaps my health wouldn’t have survived such an orderly life. I lived like a saint, and if I occasionally kicked at the traces, it was because I was afraid of being too Spartan: I was too fond of all that. My spirit craved the rigorous exercise of returning home exhausted, indignant, and ashamed, after a night’s debauchery. But for that, it was as if I lived outside society and couldn’t have cared less what other men got up to.

I could and I couldn’t, I should add. I say this because there was this driving force within me — my egotism — a hidden, invisible chain that bound me to reality. If I could speak to you at all clearly about my egotism, you’d soon see what an unpleasant person I am. My over-righteous attitude towards the outside world constantly edged me in the direction of pessimism, and made me quite unable to collaborate or interact socially. One might say that everything was wonderful, but keeping well away was what turned me on. My singular ability to do nothing, to spend hour after hour smoking cigars and sitting around like a man on the verge of suicide — this turn of phrase was a success in its day and even today is apposite — was in response to my instincts. Men work because they find pleasures there that inactivity and sloth cannot bring. I’ve never felt those pleasures and it has made an unlucky man of me. You see: I never joined in, or allowed others into my life. The very thought that someone was approaching me with that in mind made my blood pressure shoot up. The countless advantages that social contact brings are nothing, to my mind, compared to the discomforts and conflicts that social intercourse brings. My basic education and superficial hold on culture probably enabled me to channel all my mental potential in a single direction. The doctor whose hearing is twice as sensitive as other doctors tends to reduce all pain to diseases of the heart. I have enjoyed a real talent when it comes to highlighting the tiniest stupid detail and picking up on strange habits, absurd situations, natural conflicts, and offensive attitudes to the point that I can say that this all mighty, almost unconscious receptivity of mine has manufactured the grotesque, unpleasant situations I have often encountered.

Not to mention, of course, my awkwardness in social life. I have the thickest skin for certain things but then can’t stand the slightest friction. I’ve almost always existed amid the most awful moral and intellectual chaos, but contrived to be annoyed by a late-running train. I was so naïve! And I only just managed to survive clashes of my own making. What I couldn’t tolerate were rifts caused by others — particularly when sparked by sheer thoughtlessness. After all this, I think I probably don’t need to tell you that I’ve never experienced what people call ambition, pride, the pleasure of giving out orders, or what poor, overweight, preposterous poets call the desire to fly. I would be lying if I said that I’ve ever wanted anything enough to want to possess and control it. Nothing has ever appealed sufficiently to dazzle me or make me overlook its less attractive sides.

Please forgive the extremely confessional tone this letter is assuming. However, as we have taken this route, you might as well know that I’ve carried these ideas of mine to an extreme, particularly in matters of love. One might say that I’ve always made myself available for the ladies, but I’ve never demanded anything they couldn’t give. Perhaps you will say I’ve been generous. I couldn’t say. However, it is undeniable that I’ve been most hurt by my right not to suffer friction of any kind. I’ve been generous in the hope that I would be left in peace. I can say, then, that if my combative individualism has been de facto nonexistent, my spirit of self-preservation has been elemental, rough-edged, and brutish. I’ve asked for nothing and dominated nobody, but I have defended myself with every noble and ignoble weapon there is when people have tried to dominate me or force me to take a step in their direction. I grant you this is all very paltry: I only ever wanted to get on with my life. The laws of state increasingly encroach on us and the day may come when we have to fill in a form in order to grow a mustache. I’ve always preferred to have maximum freedom within the constraints of the law, and if I could stretch them, with or without sleight of hand, I’ve never given it a second thought. I’ve always thought unwritten laws were vague, and if I’ve never worked to discredit them, I can’t say they’ve ever excited me. If you want to grasp the ferocious nature of my instinct for self-preservation, you only need remember the expressions on the faces of our millionaires when you ask for five pesetas. They turn green as lizards and secrete the best salamander veneer you’ve ever seen. Transfer this to a broader, more philosophical field — to a stance respecting life — and you have some idea of where I stand. It would probably be interesting to find out the source of my savage intensity on behalf of the right to be passive. I’ve attempted to and have found so many blemishes in individuals and nations that their abundance has prevented me from ever reaching a conclusion.