Svetislav Basara - The Cyclist Conspiracy

On demonstrations

One of the things that drives me to withdraw ever deeper into solitude, one of the things that will destroy democracy, is indeed the phenomena of demonstrations. I am slightly afraid of those threatening, crowding bodies, those hands holding up banners full of words like “DOWN,” “WE WANT,” “WE,” “MORE,” “BETTER,” etc. There you go, just now as I am writing these lines, there is a group of young men and women under my windows, riled up by the Council of Great Lovers, Time, Space and Heaven , and they are shouting: “Down with Kowalsky! Down with the renegade of the working class, servant of counts and kings!” Pure envy. I, too, used to be one of them, and now they are rebelling because I am a count, because I will not die, because I do not desecrate the sacred things of tradition and religion; because I am decadent and disgusting. Cross my heart, I was always decadent; progress does not bring anything good. Indeed, now without prejudice, why would the word “progress,” which implies movement ahead but not the quality of what is ahead, why should such a word be so deserving of the respect it is given? When I think about it more clearly, as early as seventeen years ago, at that congress in Moscow, when I saw all those scoundrels lying about in the imperial bed, it became clear to me that a new society was not their goal; that all they really wanted was to take the palaces for themselves.

About the gift of a fountain pen

Recently, in order to be as decadent as possible, I began writing with a quill and ink. I gave my fountain pen to the building superintendent, who was unusually happy, thinking about how he would sign my death sentence with that same pen. He did not guess how close he was to the truth. The angels showed me this in a dream. Not even a full ten years later, my former fountain pen, in the right hand of my former superintendent, would sign a multitude of death sentences, but I will, thank God, get away and instead of me another gentleman will go to the gallows, even though he never gave anyone a fountain pen. That is why you should be selfless, that is why the Gospels advise us: if you have two coats, give one to your neighbor. ********As far as the pen goes, I intended to begin writing with an even more decadent device — a goose quill — but there are no geese in this damned town and it will not, like Rome, be saved when the hordes reach the tile walls of the city. And it shouldn’t be. A city that doesn’t have goose quills doesn’t deserve to walk the face of this earth.

Alchemia microcosmica

I realized not long ago that I am a fecal type. In no way a philanthropist, a bicyclist, or a mystic, as some of the hacks have suggested. There are no generals, clerks, presidents — those are people-symbols of the Worldly Kingdom and they are only symbolic people — there are only oral, anal, phallic, visual and tactile types. First I will speak of the fecal type, which I am myself, and then I will describe the others. Friedrick the Great, Socrates, Spinoza, Paracelsus, and many others belonged to the fecal type. Their basic characteristic is that they immediately eject everything from themselves. In the physical realm, this is manifested in their fast metabolism. To force everything out, to superficially digest, to free yourself of poisons — that is, briefly, the bodily manifesto of fecal types. They are not to be credited with this personally, it is an inborn alchemical feature. In it, ascetics go the farthest, those who give up food altogether. That is why they smell like suckling babes in the end.

Napoleon is a typical example of the phallic type, which also includes Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini. The characteristic of this type is that they begin from zero and penetrate to the very top. Once they finally take their place, they begin to take on the symbolic appearance of an erect phallus, which can be confirmed by a quick look at the photographs of the abovementioned statesmen. While they maintain their erect appearance, such types have enormous power, but once they go flaccid — they end up in tortuous circumstances. The saying is no accident: Omne animal triste post coitem . As far as I have been able to interpret it, the matter lies in the control of tension and their rule that seems like wild, extended coitus. History will show that Mussolini — who is somehow too highly erectus — will disappear first from the historical stage; he will be followed by Hitler, and in terms of Stalin, who rules with the eastern art of delayed ejaculation, the end of his rule cannot be determined with certainty, but it is clear that it will be long and fertile; I want to say that it will result in the birth of numerous hydrocephalic descendants.

No matter what we think about the individual personalities of this or that phallic type, it is certain that they are the driving forces of history. The relationships in the macrocosm are the same as those in the microcosm. In order for something new to be born, coitus is necessary; the internal mass must be exposed to sadistic intercourse in order to get pregnant. Here we come to the role of the other two types — anal and oral. They act together. The anal type sees the world and all phenomena in it as an inextricable web of attractive anuses; and now, in order to free themselves of the nauseating feeling that they are the world’s manure, as quickly as possible they attempt — using all possible anuses — through the digestive tract, to return to the mouth, to the light. On their journey, they clear the way for the oral types who follow them like pilot-fish follow sharks. Oral types feel the irresistible need to logically portray that miserable odyssey through the gastrointestinal tract of history. The remaining two types — visual and tactile — do not deserve further attention. They are here so that all of that is visible and tangible.

On the cult of personality

I have to admit that the personality cult attracts me profoundly with its mysticism. When I think better, the personality cult is the only authentic mysticism. Everything else is plagiarism. The troubles come about in the choice of the personality. One of the most widespread prejudices of today is the belief that every person is a personality. That is pure nonsense. A personality is an extremely rare phenomenon. To follow a true personality cult means to turn into Christ and be crucified under the worst possible circumstances. To the masses, and by God to most of the “educated,” this idea is most highly insane. To withstand pain and endure shame, those are the two most edifying things. The trouble comes about because completely unimportant things — food, housing, comfort — are things of exceptional importance to limited souls. Those things perhaps are indeed necessary, but they are completely insignificant.

On Marxism and poetry

In my early youth, I was a Marxist. To this very day, I think that Marxism is an irreproachable doctrine. If I had to return to the doctrinal level, I would be a Marxist again. Things really should stand the way that Marxism proposes, but things fortunately or unfortunately (depending on your point of view) never stand the way doctrines propose, but exactly opposite to them. That is my Law on the Entropy of Doctrines, just as stupid as every other law, like every other law it is full of holes; there is always some doctrine around that evades it, thanks to the unceasing efforts of the phallic types. Still, I never was an extrovert Marxist, it was more like a Platonic attraction, because every vision of heaven is necessarily welcome to a soul surrounded by hell. Later I became a poet. In addition to all the other filth, I was also a poet. That means that I was treacherous, full of nothingness, fantasies and deceit while at the same time I wrote compositions in which I clandestinely attempted to claim that I was something different. What does it mean to be sensitive? Everything living is sensitive. If you touch a worm with the burning end of a cigarette, it quickly reacts and with its fast movements it contributes to the poetic treasury of Weltschmerz . Now, aside from Doctor Freud, who is occupying an ever higher place on the ranking list of my hatred, I despise most poets as incurable hypocrites — as bloated monsters who protest against and pass judgment on the things they do themselves.