Róbert Gál – Signs and Symptoms

At the end of Róbert Gál's Signs and Symptoms (trans. Madelaine Hron), the Author's Comments section provides a key – not the only one – to this complex, stimulating and harrowing work. In it, Gál admits that these fragments of philosophy were composed during the darkest moments of his life when, though he himself changed dramatically, his writing was an attempt to achieve a continual balancing between the performative ('an utterance whereby something is performed') and the constative ('a “statement” in the classical usage, a description'). Signs and Symptoms, then, is part philosophy, part poetry, part anguished scream, part self-examination, part self-flagellation, and part critique of – time, death, life, humanity, creativity, expectation, obsession, observation, honesty, deceit.

Of the composition of Signs and Symptoms, Gál says he would

characterize it as an intellectual account about the bottom I had reached, an account (conforming to an unconcealed need for self-preservation) that constantly “leapt up” from this bottom in the form of a neurotic-poetic vision.

He goes on to note:

This vision gradually began to create its own world, and in doing so became permanently “controlled” by rational calculation, by thought, that is, my thought.

But on to the text itself. It is split into three sections: I Epigraffiti – II Signs and Symptoms – III Postludia.

“Epigraffiti” is comprised of a number of aphorisms cum fragmentary thought cum philosophical statement. They represent, on the whole, a pessimistic viewpoint of life as it is currently, but cling on, irrationally, to an idealistic hope that life could one day deserve the constant charnel-house grinding of death and misery it inflicts on its billions of daily participants. To wit, a taste:

Life is an act of chance; death, on of inevitability.

Through death nothing ends, nor does anything begin.

Time – bleeding tumor of eternity.

Time – an explorer with pointed finger.

Part II Signs and Symptoms, and Part III Postludia, explore these ideas in a more lengthy fashion, extending to a full or multiple paragraphs. Here, Gál is able to delve deeper into the thoughts that bubbled to the surface in Epigraffiti.

Panic is the emotional tremor of a short circuit, a protracted slide into permanent irritation. Not daring to say YES is symptomatic of fearing an expected NO. The moment before is firmly decided on taking a risky leap beyond. Signs speak through expression. Expression, concentrated in the glint of eyes, directly depends on the possibility of light falling on the megalomaniac surface of a screen.

And

A book signed by the author is consequently clear proof of the author's exhibitionism, connected with his unshakeable faith in a certain exceptionalism and, above all, in the need of the work presented, which – in its hypothetical reception – far exceeds its own content, having been determined by the direct or hidden relationship between the one who writes and that which is written.

Literature and the quest for truth become touchstones. Both are impossible quests and both, tellingly, involve communication. Gál believes that it is impossible to properly communicate with others, and just as impossible to communicate with one's self. The great truths are too large, too unfathomable, and though we attempt to grasp them and spend our entire lives doing so, we are in fact like the blind man holding the elephant's trunk and thinking he has in his hands a snake. We can never perceive all of it at once, and we are bound to make incorrect decisions based on the small amount of information we have. Hubris and arrogance will be our downfall.

Signs and Symptoms is the stunning account of an intellectual coming to terms with the fact that his intellect will serve him only so much and no more. The intelligent person has “faith” in their intellect as much as the reverent person has “faith” in their God. How shattering to find that both faiths are tenuous and may collapse at the slightest breath. But what a revelation to chronicle such a collapse.

Scattered throughout Signs and Symptoms are photographs, usually nudes, taken by Lucia Nimcová of herself. They were commissioned by Twisted Spoon Press for the English edition and, according to Gál,

...[represent] two poles of one and the same thing, which is, I will not deny it, the relationship between a man and a woman, in this case not exactly harmonious.

These photographs cut through the sometimes difficult text and attempt, by a kind of metaphorical shorthand, supply the reader with an enhanced idea of the concepts contained within Gál's writing. The photographs are close to nude or entirely or so; they are black and white with a single light illuminating Nimcová's often (photographically) decapitated or amputated body, and they are, quite simply, beautiful and strange in equal measure. She has shot these with a soft focus, blurring features while retaining a clear impression of the whole which, again, functions as a handy metaphor for the surrounding text.

Signs and Symptoms is short – a mere 82 pages – and its spacing and margins are quite generous. It is a text to be taken slowly, sipped, rolled around on the tongue and contemplated before swallowing. The reader would do the work – and themselves – a disservice to speed rapidly through Gál's text. At its heart, this is a deeply pessimistic, deeply hopeful collection which dares to explore the darkest tunnels in search of the pinprick of light ahead. Gál obliquely references Emil Cioran throughout the text, and explicitly toward the end, taking to heart Cioran's statement that he has “simply been the secretary of my sensations”. Gál anguishes for humanity and for himself; he recognises the implicit capability of the living to court failure at every turn, and the challenge of succeeding in even the smallest of ways. If one were somehow outside life looking in, would we choose to live a normal span, knowing the ravages of boredom, the corruption of time, the failure to be remembered, the inability to rise above the dust and muck of it all? Gál suggests the answer is no but, for whatever reason, we are here, we are living life, and thus compromises

Author	Róbert Gál
Title	Signs and Symptoms
Translator	Madelaine Hron
Nationality	Slovak
Publisher	Twisted Spoon Press
Published	2003 (English) 2001 (Slovak/Czech)
Pages	82
Availability: ---Amazon (US) ---Signs and Symptoms (UK) ---Fishpond (AU)

Reviews

The Absinthe Literary Review
The Perpetual Bird

See Also

List of titles published by Twisted Spoon Press under review

An excerpt from "Waxing" (forthcoming). From fwriction:review