WELCOME—And, My Mission
HIGHLIGHTS
Introduction, why am I writing this blogpost? (Spoiler: I’m an author)
LITERATURE AS CURE: Literature as a means of curing the soul by way of persuasion (and, perhaps, a little too much Plato)
THE POWER OF MYTH & WRITING: Myths provide a new way of looking at the world from variegated-perspectives
RELIGION: Why I believe religion is an essential component of Epic Fantasy
MY PHILOSOPHY AS A WRITER: Why I write the way I do, and what I hope to achieve as a writer
A Quiet Sublimity
Dear Reader,
Welcome to my website! This is my first post, ideally the first of many, in which I’ll be discussing topics near & dear to my heart (anything history, politics, philosophy, literature, movies/tv, current events, or even a general rant, if you’re lucky). This is my first go at website creation and blogging as an author, so if pieces are missing (and certainly, many are), please accept my earliest possible apologies.
My intended purpose, I should state clearly, is to build an audience. I’ve already written four novels, one of which, A Struggle for Nobility, is currently out on submission to an agent. Whether I get published in the near future or not, ultimately, my fate is my own to create, and I thought I might as well build a following so that when push comes to shove, publishers have no choice but to accept me! Or, really, I’d just like to share new pieces of writing, connect with fantasy fans and literary enthusiasts, philosophy-heads and history-buffs, political junkies and culture critics, to see if we can’t build ourselves a little community of like-minded thinkers. Whether it’ll be this, that, or another thing, only time will tell. For now (and please excuse me if I tend to be a bit of an excessive writer), I’m going to keep this as short and sweet as possible.
To introduce my website, I’ll leave you with a little bit of who I am, some of my influences, and what I aspire to create as a writer in our modern age. I hope you enjoy! And if you don’t, then don’t fear, I’m sure something I make will tickle your fancy at some point in the future, so remember to stay engaged, shoot me a message on my socials, or email with what you’d like to see. Anyways, onwards we go:
WHO AM I?
I am Emmanuel Zilber. I am interested in history and politics and most certainly philosophy—metaphysics, political theory, & theology (and some mysticism). I love the power of imaginative language, as offered by Ralph Waldo Emerson or Vladimir Nabokov, and consider my literary prose to be powerful, not too complicated (well, I try…), and elegant. I believe in the power of literature as myth, as creating an image of the Good, of the Bad, and of the complexities of humanity and the world at large. I believe myths are the most effective means of persuasion. This is an argument straight from Plato, and if you’d like to learn more, I couldn’t encourage more enthusiastically you delve into Plato’s Laws. I’ll warn you, it’s a bit of a dry read at times, but I’m one of those who subscribe to the view that Plato’s insanity is his genius, and his idealism is as practical, and far more beautiful, as any effort by any philosopher at practical metaphysics or ethics.
LITERATURE AS CURE
What do myths have to do with persuasion, and of what am I persuading you? We see in images, and think in images. We’re emotionally triggered by images, be they words, pictures, sounds (music), or otherwise. We often get this unexplainable feeling when we’re reading a passage, and are so moved by its language or imagery, that we feel a glut of emotion rising through us. Or, we see this in movies, or in songs, when the perfect combination of inputs culminates in a work of sublime majesty, and our emotion is taken away in a pleasurable sense. But what is the point of this emotional binding if the image created is something which doesn’t make you a better person? Maybe this introduces a question—is literature’s job to make you a better person? Is philosophy’s? Some might say yes, others no. For now, I’m going to table the topic, because questions of what it means to be a good person are far beyond the scope of this post, and I’m afraid I’ll dive into a rabbit hole that leaves me in a state of aporia (complete confusion). So, for now, let’s just say that literature’s job is, in some way, meant to make you connect with your humanity, your soul, and meant to make you feel as though you are part of a grander whole, while simultaneously enjoying the more bodily pleasures of fictional elements like action, plot, intrigue, falling in love with characters, and all those emotional triggers which excite us.
Nobody wants to be lectured to, nor do they want to feel compelled to involuntarily adopt a worldview. People want to be persuaded (sometimes), and persuasion is a two-pronged approach: 1) the argument must be laid out clearly, musically, beautifully and 2) one must learn why it is that the argument is a cure to what ails them. Cure? Yes, that’s straight Plato, for the Good is often difficult to know, and a philosopher’s duty is curing, like a doctor to the sick. This cure, though, is a cure for the soul—and more importantly, it’s a cure which one must administer to oneself.
Let’s take an example. I’m afraid I’m copying straight from the Laws, but I hope it’ll be worth your while, because it’s an example which really moved me and helped me understand the argument:
Let’s take a doctor who prescribes medicine to a sick man. The sick man doesn’t know what the doctor’s doing, or why, he’s just obeying the doctor because, of course, the doctor knows while he does not. In Plato’s analogy, this doctor is a slave doctor, tending to a slave. Let’s ignore for the moment the existence of slavery in Ancient Greece, and interpret here the condition of slavery as meaning ignorance and forced obedience.
Plato then offers another analogy, a free doctor tending to a free man. The free doctor doesn’t just command the patient take his medicine; he explains the symptoms, what the medicine does, and why he’s prescribing this cure. The free patient can of course deny the cure (though, that would be pretty foolish), but that is not what makes him free. What makes this patient free is that he was just persuaded to take the cure; armed with knowledge, he’s able to make a choice for himself. Therefore, the free man CHOOSES obedience to the doctor. Thus, I do believe that proper persuasion is a form of freedom; it is the knowing which equips us with the ability to choose.
THE POWER OF MYTH & WRITING
All that is to say, your eyes must see anew, so that you can move yourself to see the world from a different perspective. Myths work in this way because they provide images in beautiful ways, stirring pleasure in the emotions and guiding the soul by way of seeing, while simultaneously offering some moral or some vision of what it means to be a balanced, just, harmonious person. Thus, myths help people persuade themselves.
My goal as a writer is not only to stir pleasure, but also to convey a philosophic worldview of what it means to be a complete, mastered individual; simultaneously, I must always show the converse, the inevitable pitfalls of man and the ways in which we are always failing because it is in our nature. This is where the intersection of the divine and the mystic enter, and fantasy (broadly, myths), permit the inclusion of the divine without suspending disbelief because of the genre’s inherent supernatural permissiveness.
RELIGION
I’ll delay a conversation about religion for another post (though, if you’re assuming anything about me based off that last section, I urge you to keep an open mind), but I think religion is an absolute must in literature, especially fantasy. Whether you believe in a God or not, whether you are a member of an institutional church or not, it doesn’t matter. Religion is a built-in philosophic system, backed by the legitimacy of a divine or multiple divine entities (or, their complete absence). In Epic Fantasy, which often takes inspiration from our distant past, religion must serve as the organizing principle for society’s customs and beliefs. Ancient Rome’s paganism was a very different world, culturally and idealistically, than even Christianized Rome, and the Middle Ages, and even, of course, the Enlightenment and the rise of secularism (which, I’ll argue in another post, is its own type of religion).
"The Triumph of Christianity Over Paganism," by Gustave Dore, 1899
MY PHILOSOPHY AS A WRITER
As a writer, I try not to take a stance. I have opinions (and yes, that makes me an ass just as much as you), but I’m allergic to dogma, and love Plato just as much as I love the Antichrist, Nietzsche. So as a writer, I believe my job is to offer multiple visions of the world, multiple perspectives. In my novels, you’ll find believers and non-believers, skeptics and optimists, cunning Machiavellians and power-hungry despots ultimately seeking a better world, selfishness and selflessness and characters in-between. Humanity is complex, and I understand but the tiniest sliver of it, but that doesn’t mean I can’t flex my imaginative muscles, and try to paint a picture of a world always at odds with itself, and always somehow in union with itself. Paradoxes are beautiful, if not incredibly frustrating. Perhaps I seek to create a myth of paradoxes, rife with moments of epic highs, including grand armies and clashes of empires, civil wars, backstabbers, political maneuvering, and a tasteful use of magic and dragons.
If any of this sounds interesting to you, then let’s be friends. If not, then don’t worry, because I think even if you’re allergic to this post, my hope is that you’ll find something quite riveting and exciting about my characters, my world, and my writing. And if not…well, it’s a wide world out there, and I won’t fault myself for not being your cup of tea. Maybe you’ll like my next book(s). Who am I to say?
Until next time.
Signed,
Eman
