The Hunger Artist's Cosmos

Art is about subjectivity. It's not about how Kafka and Chekhov actually were, but how they made me feel. Then there comes the subject of common experience and comes the fact that all of the people who read and experienced Kafka or Chekhov or any other writer for that matter felt something that is common to all those readers. I read O. Henry, I read Conan Doyle I read many others, and I read Lovecraft. A lot of Lovecraft stories deal about limitations of senses. That there exist things that are beyond the perception of our senses and even our understanding. He gave it a horror twist, but the truth is that these things can be benign, malignant or even neutral. For Lovecraft, he imagined entities for whom humanity was so puny that it didn't matter to them. I like the idea of cosmic horror but my idea of cosmic horror is not only related to my not being a narcissist and thinking humanity as the centre point of all existence, just like they are in a lot of religious books and mythologies, but also, in part, even if minute, to an idea of cosmic retribution. I fully know that there is no retribution possible in this world, and I realise that probably that was the reason I liked Kafka. A lot of Kafka's literature is about political persecution. I became a Kafka fan ever since I became an adult, and I still love the fact that Kafka's works portray anonymous incomprehensible forces that are totalitarian and oppressive in nature. Well, for me they are not anonymous and incomprehensible anymore. But I realised why was I drawn to Kafka so much in my younger days. This "anonymous incomprehensible" entity commits unprovoked violence on the people. It is a baffling thought, but as a person grows up, the nature of the world and reality displays itself to him more clearly and he, if he is intelligent, understands the true meaning of Kafka's works. Conan Doyle's work mainly displays deduction, but his life has as much to offer than his works. He wrote popular and entertaining stuff, but he did seek truth, in his stories and in his personal life, and when you seek truth there comes a time when you have to make sense of what you "see", not literally really, by yourself. I have never liked Dostoevsky works, so I maybe feel dumb in front of people who actually like Dostoevsky, not really but let's assume that. Kafka's characters suffered persecution while being guiltless while Dostoevsky's characters actually commited the deed for which they were persecuted, still, when you know enough you realise that committing the deed is not proof enough of being guilty, but stating this brings a lot of practicality into the subject from which we will refrain. I like Guy De Maupassant and O. Henry, and also especially Chekhov, but I realise that I have overgrown that sort of sentimentality, though it was an important part of my development. Kafka and Lovecraft are the only truths. Only that Lovecraft is more fictional as it offers a false hope of retribution.