Face and Mask

Literature is an ironic mask. It knows that’s what it is. A nonironic mask is a lie. The mask is a metaphor for the face; it is at once sharp featured and enigmatic. The faces of others are a few simplified lines; when recalling them, I see my friends’ masks with my mind’s eye. Ancestors, gods, demons have only masks—masks that, with their aggressive sharpness, rise above our redundant faces. My face was shaped by nature and time; my masks by me alone. That’s why they are so abstract, simplistic—truly human creations. We need masks as much as we need words; we couldn’t communicate without them. We introduce ourselves and wave our masks before one another the way we wave our hats. The writer is a makeup artist; he manufactures myths, creates masks, looks behind them and discovers other masks.

The row of masks forms an endless, mystical continuum; behind each mask there is always another. If I like a man, his face is an emblem of the universe; if I don’t, it’s a death mask. We paint one another’s masks; then we become suspicious of them and tear them off. There are as many masks as there are relationships, which makes thinking about the subject d...