The curse of city

What is the city for?

I've known the answer for a long time. A long time ago, once in Paris, I found and formulated it for myself: the city exists because of books. For books to be written, for them to be printed, read, thought, and further thought. And would put it on the shelf to collect dust and wait for its hour, which usually never comes. The city is a big bookshelf; that is, it only makes sense as a bookshelf because what else are these multiple buildings for, and not so that human beings and their accompanying organisms, such as cats, dogs, parrots, bedbugs, cockroaches, cockroaches, coliforms, pigeons, rats? When a city ceases to exist on a bookshelf, it remains empty, meaningless, just a pile of matter, where the above-mentioned and all sorts of other, mostly insignificant, creatures scurry about. Just an energy vampire that drains the earth.

Of course, he is, with or without books. Of course, he is, first of all, historically and etymologically.
The city is built on greed and deceit.

The city's politico-economic principle has been very simple from the beginning: lure a stupid farmer with a jade and a load of food inside its walls, get him drunk there, rob him naked, and then quickly send him out of the gates again, without a load of food, of course, with a few colorful headscarves and a couple of dry sugar pretzels. Get rid of him quickly; before he starts flattening and claiming his own, send him back to the countryside to grow a new load so that the city would flourish and prosper. If there are containers, power cables, and gas pipes instead of the farmer and his jade - it doesn't matter. This is purely a matter of form. The vampirism of the city, its deceit, criminality, abomination, and arrogance remain the same. And, of course, the desire to somehow justify one's immorality, to wash black into white.

That's what books are for. All books are letters of penitence. But since the sins of the city can never be repented of, since, of course, it all starts all over again in the morning, new ones have to be written, printed, distributed, read, recited, and finally put on the shelf to dust because ever new sins and offenses need new repentance, which, of course, remains hypocritical through and through.

That's clear. When I say that the city exists at all because of books, in some sense, it only exists as a book; I do not want to absolve him of guilt.

Literature is, first and foremost, a form of hypocrisy. Novels, these special urban products, tell about a person and his life completely hypocritically, completely falsely, and unfaithfully. However, if somewhere in this monster, that which is becoming more and more monstrous and ghostlike, right before our eyes - if somewhere in this ultimately pleasant abomination, there is a grain of truth, a grain of serious desire to apologize and maybe even change - where else, if not in books?

I'm talking like that because I'm a writer and, therefore, a hypocrite servant par excellence. I'm talking like that because I want to smuggle in through another back door the idea of the great importance, even the inescapable necessity of literature and, therefore, of the writer. I'm also trying to make it clear that some of the money stolen from the farmer could still trickle into my pocket.

No! That's not the case at all. First of all, what kind of writer am I anyway? Secondly, I can see very well the overwhelming insignificance and futility of all that has been written, including what I have written. That is why, by writing, we just entertain the city. The fact that even when we write, we simply put ourselves in the service of the city's factory of lies (which is the last remaining and ever-growing factory in the city, even after deindustrialization), we allow ourselves to be finely ground by it, together with our so-called truth-seeking, truth-telling, our brave accusations and the noise of repentance…

No, of course, if you want to look for the quintessence of its vanity, vulgarity, and greed in the city, you should not go looking for it in nightclubs, taverns, gaming hells, and whorehouses (which only change the name and label, also in the me-too era, as in all highly moral eras before that). No, because, in fact, what still makes a city a city is its only justification for existence. What I'm calling a book here, and by which I mean a book in the first place - is really all that in the slick administrative slang of the modern city is called the creative economy, by which is meant that vague cloud, mycorrhiza, mold or an ecosystem consisting of opera houses and theaters, famous artists, opinion leaders, divas and star writers, consciences of society, bravely silent and otherwise countless trendsetters and wannabe’s, chic clubs where, by the way, everything is ecological and kosher, and also all kinds of other arrogant underground and its metastases. The list, description, and epicrisis could go on endlessly because this cloud or entanglement really has no edge or end. And, of course, like everything in the city, it is,, first of all,, a cloud of interests and an interweaving of mutually beneficial transactions, a system that is hard to catch but easily seen through. Culture, in a word.

Yuck. Totally yuck. And yet, without it, the city would have no meaning at all. He would be thoroughly rude and unapologetically helpless. But is there any glimmer of hope there in those self-indulgent theater houses and book presentations by popular authors? No. Almost not. But still, but still. For some reason, it is the case that from all this profane, excessive, hypocritical, and greedy mold, which for my part can be called the creative economy, some pages are born, sometimes rarely, that is, and not at all everywhere, not at all always in every city, whether in some human or music or in some other more than human language - some page that would buy it all for free. There is a moment of silence. Devotion. The city remains silent and perhaps even ashamed of itself. A person briefly looks up from the abyss of the streets, where there is nothing special to see because the stars do not shine in the city either; the greedy light of the city itself has devoured them. He looks up like Baudelaire's swan, wringing its wretched white neck up the rent-seeker, a reproach to the heaven that is not, a reproach to all that we want to be and should be, but at all and mostly are not.

Sure, books are escapism. Writers (or composers, etc.), if they are anything but pure escapists. Running away from real life, the full-blooded and greedy life of the city, and its challenges (the main call-out: cheat better than others!) into the silence of your white pages. Into the humming cathedrals of your own thoughts and the thoughts of others. What's wrong with being holy and better? But come to the middle of life...! Legitimate complaints. But justified only from one completely rotten, cruel position, which by default forces each other to pull the skin over their ears, climb to the top, build even higher houses in their honor, and build the Babel to the end. Till the final conclusions. The final conclusion is, of course, doom as we know it.

Literature and books that deserve this name (I will not present any taxonomy here, what is worthy and what is not and what deserves a little, etc.) are against Babel. They force, momentarily and locally, in the limited space of a single reading room, in a solitary human brain or soul, as you prefer, to silence Babel. But who says that this piece of space or this brain-soul is not everything at this moment, is not the universe, and also something else whose name we do not know and will never know? Let us write and read as many books as we want.

Yes, books are against Babel, but they can only be born in Babel and from Babel, Babel’s experience, Babel's vanity, and Babel's greatness. The bigger the city, the bigger the book it can give birth to. First of all, of course, the author, but the author is actually just a tool; he is only important in this context in the administrative system of the creative economy, and otherwise, for myself, as an inhabitant of Babylon, drunk on desire, longing for happiness and company, and a human being of secret habit. There is an eternal contradiction. If a book is a book at all, the author is always poorer and more insignificant than him. But without this poor and insignificant book, there is no book. It often happens, of course, that the brilliance of a book, a creation (even this highly abused word makes the heart sick) begins to be reflected back to oneself, and one begins to admire and allow oneself to be admired in its splendor. What are you doing? In the city, in Babel, everything happens, mostly bad, all the time and inevitably.

Just as literature happens there. Living in a small town, you might not understand this unless you are a genius. But haven't geniuses always been drawn, with an irresistible force, to big and even bigger cities? Because the genius knows instinctively that only a big and even bigger city is a worthy opponent for him; only a big and even bigger city has the strength to destroy him. But what else does a genius dream of? Still from the destruction, the destruction in his book, which city finally swallows, digests, and throws out, just as a bird swallows, digests, and throws out everything that and whoever flows into it.

Since I'm not a genius, I needed to see a big city, which, in my case, happened by chance or predestination.

Paris by appointment. Seen to understand how the city really doesn't want to become anything but a book, How the city, with all its subways and dafty tour d'Eiffels and the even dottier tourists admiring them, exists only to become a book. And it always becomes a book. Always unsuccessful, but still without hope. Newer and newer Rover Boys, bitter introverts, quiet dreamers, wander as if in a dream into the open streets of the city and, of course, perish there, sometimes writing a few books along the way. The city puts them on its shelf to be forgotten. The city doesn't really want these books; it would be easier without them. The city wants as little as we all want what we really exist for, what we were born for. That's the last thing we want. For this, we run away, as our lungs take and our legs carry. Not knowing that we were running right into its arms. In the end, anyway. And in the end, this “our thing” remains imperfect, unfinished, only an experiment. The matter of the city remains the same. Of course, its hidden vocation is to become a book, and he does everything not to become a book, finally becoming one - albeit imperfectly, half-heartedly, somehow. Everything starts over. To finally become a book, the city can do nothing but grow, become even bigger, attract even more lives, brains, and souls, grind them finely, and throw them out because new ones keep coming. The city has its own means of attracting lives, brains, and souls. City has its ways; tried, tested, and very lame, but they still work.

Paris - of course, oh Paris! For centuries, this name has been blown, completely mistakenly, brainwashed, but the new generations start again (and you can change its name with some other; it doesn't matter). One intelligent person with common, if he lets himself be called that, and half fooled by her siren call when he goes to see what's there, he comes back, sooner than later, because of course, what is there truly?

Dirt, stench, fraud, noise, dog shit, high prices, and nasty people. Tourists too. He is right. There is nothing there. But the others have the same right. Those who let the siren fool them, those who believe in books and see everything this name contains, the invisible and actually visible, the book that this city will always try to become, but what he never becomes and for what he absorbs more and more human lives, human brains, and human souls.

Soon, these wheedled-in brains and souls notice (if they notice at all) one strange thing. You can't get away from the city anymore. Can’t, and that's it. You are stuck. The city air made you free from something, your origins, your predestination, only to replace it with one's own predestination. Anyone who has lived in a big city has probably experienced this. Getting out of them is almost impossible. You can make a trip closer or further; in fact, it is allowed and even easy in the age of airplanes, even to the other side of the globe. But you come back because the city has a plan for you. Make a book out of you, too, words on the sides of the page, silence.

Of course, there are countless others who tear themselves away, who run away. Who wipes the city dust from their soles, who go away to the forest, the countryside, and the islands. But for the rest of their lives, they will remain the losers, the ones who couldn't handle it, the ones who write their letter of complaint to the city from somewhere else, knowing that this letter of complaint has meaning only if there is an addressee and a defendant. All these letters of complaint, no matter how hermitic and remote in the countryside, still pour into the city. They will become a book, if they can, there.

The city is our inevitability, our escape and our curse. Will it ever be different? I do not know. In the end, the book that the city writes, forces to write and always grinds to dust, it is, as said, always against him, in favor of it all being different someday. Attempts have so far failed. Even miserably. But the city won't let go, we won't let go.

Written by Tõnu Õnnepalu
Translation by Seram