Devotion

by Patti Smith

Inspiration is the unforeseen quantity, the muse that assails at the hidden hour. The arrows fly and one is unaware of being struck, and that a host of unrelated catalysts have joined clandestinely to form a system of its own, rendering one with the vibrations of an incurable disease—a burning imagination—at once unholy and divine.

Alain joins me and we head over to 5, Rue Gaston-Gallimard, the publishers’ headquarters since 1929. My editor Aurélien opens the door to Albert Camus’s former office.

Paris is a city one can read without a map. Walking down the narrow Rue du Dragon, old Sépulcre Street, which once boasted an imposing stone dragon. No. 30 a plaque in memory of Victor Hugo. Rue de l’Abbaye. Rue Christine. No. 7, Rue des Grands Augustins, where Picasso painted Guernica. These streets are a poem waiting to be hatched—suddenly it’s Easter; eggs everywhere.

Aurélien is sleeping. It occurs to me that the young look beautiful as they sleep and the old, such as myself, look dead.

Most often the alchemy that produces a poem or a work of fiction is hidden within the work itself, if not embedded in the coiling ridges of the mind.

I wrote with reckless abandon on any subject without a shred of moral concern. I let Devotion stand as written. You wrote it, I told myself, you can’t wash your hands of it like Pilate.

Martin taught me to play chess. I was a worthy opponent but I didn’t care about winning. I was mostly interested in the moves and how I could incorporate them in a routine. I never spoke of this, for I was afraid he might insist I spend less time thinking of skating. Martin said I was gifted in science, but this gift gave me no tools to express the inexpressible. We spoke many languages together, even dead ones. Yet of all the languages I have known, skating is the one I know best. A language without words, where the mind must bow to instinct.

He had traveled extensively though not in leisurely fashion. His trunks contained a wealth of objects that when sold would add considerably to his fortune. He had done well, but the thrill of attainment had become hollow; he found himself uncharacteristically restless and short-tempered.

Languages are like chess. —And words are like moves?

She reached for the books yet unread, earmarked for studying English. The Scarlet Letter and The Professor, and the book he himself had been reading—the Myth of Sisyphus, with bits of commentary in Russian, in his elegant hand.

I seldom visit people’s homes, for despite the hospitality offered I often suffer a feeling of confinement or imagined pressure. Almost always I prefer the comfortable anonymity of a hotel.

What is the task? To compose a work that communicates on several levels, as in a parable, devoid of the stain of cleverness.

What is the dream? To write something fine, that would be better than I am, and that would justify my trials and indiscretions.