As many other writers, Chirbes always felt that the art he created hadn’t really been authored by him:
I have the impression that someone other than myself has written things that are beyond my reach—things I would be incapable of writing. It is the work of someone smarter than I am, someone who writes the way I can only ever hope to; these texts seem to hang there in the literary chain, appearing distant and elusive to me: they are not mine, and that is precisely why they interest me.
I also believe that humans are conduits for beauty. The source doesn’t lie within us. It can go through us. It can reflect itself in us, but it doesn’t originate in us.
Why some people get chosen to be conduits is not for us to understand. It doesn’t mean it’s easy for them, though. It’s an enormous responsibility to receive the message correctly and transmit it well. The 2,200 pages of Chirbes’s diaries make it very clear that this work is anything but easy.
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