the shattered mirror
The last time I read Goce Smilevski’s Conversation with Spinoza, I had not read Spinoza. I was not particularly interested in Spinoza. I was interested in Balkan fiction. I suppose I still am interested in Balkan fiction(s), but I am also, now, more interested in Spinoza. It was thus something of surprise to find, when returning to Smilevski’s novel, that most of the parts I liked best were essentially quotations from or paraphrases of Spinoza’s works (mostly his Ethics, but also the letters). What I had thought was art, was in fact life.
I also found that my understanding of Spinoza had been shaped by the novel. The sense of the potential for a queer reading, the hazy mental image of Spinoza’s sketchbook, the power of cross-communication (the weight of meaning that cannot be shared, but that must be shared – I can’t go on. I’ll go on. Now I can go on.): I cannot tell how far these were my own reactions to reading the Ethics and the Theological-Political Treatise and how far they were recollections of the novel. What I had thought was life, was perhaps art.
At the end of Conversation with Spinoza, Spinoza visits his childhood home, which is occupied by a stranger, and is asked to look into the mirror that had reflected so many of the preoccupations of his youth. For some reason this recalls the image, which I’m certain I’ve read recently but cannot quite place, of a broken mirror, each fragment of which reflects not a part but the whole of the image.1
- I think this is from an essay by Dubravka Ugrešić, but I haven’t been able to find it. [↩]