Of all the pleasures that literature offers, none is so stimulating, so unique, and so dear to me as the marvellous. I know a book is worthwhile when it has filled me with wonder; that is, when several times throughout its reading, I’ve lifted my gaze and found myself staring at some undefined point, lost in thought from contact with something unknown, impossible, immeasurable—something that transcends the limits of my understanding. Sometimes this sense of wonder can come from a grand idea that shakes my previous beliefs or allows me to reconsider truths that seemed immovable, like Nietzsche’s provocative insinuation that «there are no facts, only interpretations». Other times, it simply springs from a phrase, a well-composed verse, or an aptly chosen adjective, such as with Victor Hugo’s evocation of nightmares —“le cheval noir de la nuit” (night’s black horse)— which transforms the more or less abstract concept of the nightmare into a palpable, galloping force of darkness, leaving me momentarily suspended between the familiar and the realm of pure imagination.

The marvellous is the closest that literature has brought me to an ecstatic experience. I feel that marvelling, much more than the perception of beauty, is the aesthetic emotion par excellence; it is the opportunity to look at the world anew, to forget for a moment all that we know and feel the presence of the impossible. The marvellous is the sentiment that John Keats describes in his poem «On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer», in which he recounts what he felt upon reading an old translation of the Greek bard: «(…) I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold: / Then felt I like some watcher of the skies / When a new planet swims into his ken». In literature, the marvellous is magic cubed: it is what a magical being (a reader), contemplating something magical (a literary work), feels upon observing an even more magical event (a great passage). It’s not just magic – but magic discovering itself in a mirror, then stepping through the looking glass. The marvellous is what Kafka refers to when he says that books must «be the axe for the frozen sea within us». It’s that which leaves us speechless, that which we are unable to understand, that which transcends our comprehension. It’s what liberates us from the ice prisons we have built for ourselves.

Compared to the marvellous, the other offerings of reading have always seemed modest to me – human, all too human. To read for knowledge? But what is knowledge compared to being amazed* by the infinity of our ignorance? To read to understand ourselves better? But what is understanding compared to the unfathomable depths of the ocean that dwells within us? To read to enjoy the beauty of a work or an author’s style? But what is beauty compared to the (re)discovery that ‘beauty’ and ‘ugliness’ are but quaint, limited notions of our perception? To read to delve into the dilemmas of morality? But what is morality compared to being awestruck by the cosmic irrelevance of our ethical struggles?

And yet, doesn’t it seem as if we’ve never paid enough attention to it? As if we’ve tried to kill astonishment? As if there’s actually a war against the marvellous? Aristotle wrote that all philosophising begins in wonder, but in my understanding, philosophy has more often been an attempt to explain or resolve it rather than a true practice of astonishment. Literature, in its essence, feels better suited to evoke reverie, estrangement, and the fantastic, but frequently we find ourselves more occupied with describing its beauty, how it humanises us, or this or that historical or political dimension of a work. We neglect to explore how it unsettles us, how it opens us to unfathomable questions, how it throws us to the margins of our humanity. All too often we praise literature as the realm of questioning, nuance and ambiguity, as if it were the ultimate crucible for grappling with life’s complexities. But we don’t go far enough. As writers and readers we congratulate ourselves on our timidity, we pride ourselves on something far too modest: embracing ambiguity and complexity. All the while, we shy away from literature’s truly radical potential– the absolute astonishment of encountering the unknown. We have reduced literature to a mere tool, a means to better understand our world, our emotions, our societies, our spirituality. In doing so, we have squandered its most profound gift: the power to undo our understanding, to dismantle our emotions, to mock our spirit, to plunge us into the dizzying realm of ‘knowing less’. In its most potent form, literature doesn’t clarify, doesn’t explain, doesn’t shed light—it bewilders. It doesn’t answer, doesn’t reformulate questions, but rather annihilates the very questions we thought to ask. This is the true gift of the marvellous —and do we not, in our insatiable quest for meaning and understanding, lack the courage to accept it?

I have the impression that these dynamics (which have probably existed forever) are accentuated in the present. Our aesthetic temperament becomes increasingly thirsty for knowledge; historical fiction, autobiography, essayistic fiction prosper—everything that makes literature useful and an enemy of magic. Today, the attitude of creators is predominantly documentarian. And this isn’t about pursuing realism over fiction—that’s an outdated debate. It’s about every work of fiction being a commentary, a footnote to some perceived ‘important’ issue. Literature—indeed, all art—has been reduced to an exegesis of the already known: climate crisis, mental health, political polarization, multiverse theory, non-traditional relationships. Books now seem to be written not for their own sake, but as springboards for critics to pontificate on ‘relevant’ topics—by that I mean everything, of course, except literature itself. It seems that the art of writing is increasingly being reduced to the creation of glorified think pieces on current affairs. It’s as if literature is no longer allowed to simply be; it must always be about something else, something ‘important’, something that justifies its existence in a world that has long stopped caring about the purely imaginative. And I get the impression that creators have accepted their role as documentarians quite submissively and even with some enthusiasm. Writers have turned away from amazement. No longer intrepid explorers of the sublime, today’s authors serve as sophisticated pundits, offering their services as nuanced analysands of the familiar. They cloak their observations in complexity and ambiguity—that supposed hallmark of literary virtue—as if to distinguish their work from journalism, propaganda, or academic writing. At best their sophistication is undeniable, their narratives intricate, their complexity admirable. Yet I can’t stop feeling like they’ve lost sight of a greater power: the ability to truly astonish. Their works may engage, but rarely do they leave us in awe of the impossible made tangible.

Audiences, far from rebelling against this erosion of creativity, revel in it. Today’s readers have abandoned the pursuit of the marvellous—that nearly impersonal sentiment that catapults us beyond ourselves—in favor of empathy, which is a provincial and self-absorbed sentiment, always drawing us back to the familiar, the known and the comfortable. Empathy is often taken to be an “altruistic” emotion, but it rarely challenges our self-centredness. Instead, it coddles it, reinforcing our unshakeable conviction that we are the universe’s focal point; by chasing empathy, we aren’t really reaching out to the other—we’re merely seeking more elaborate mirrors for ourselves. Empathy is the reverse side of documentarianism; creators explore already-known themes so that audiences can feel familiar with and represented by the work, ensuring they perceive it as being about themselves. I feel like audiences have lost so much interest in literature (and in art in general) that books are no longer respected as sources of profound transformation and marvellous experiences. People are only really interested in literature insofar as it can tell them something about their own selves —the modern reader doesn’t turn to books to discover new worlds, but to find validation for the one they already inhabit. This is another of the reasons why hardly anything more than twenty years old is ever read: why read an old glory, why deal with a ruin that seemingly has nothing to say to us, if ultimately literature is just about empathising? This also renders the claims of humanists—that classics are timeless and their themes universal— and their defence of tradition both inoffensive and irrelevant. The true value of high culture has never really been in fostering empathy or connecting us with kindred spirits across time and space—it has always been about their invitation to amazement, their call to encounter the extraordinary and the unknown. It’s not that we have stopped caring about ‘culture’, the ‘humanities’ or the ‘classics’, it’s that we have lost a taste for the alien. We have forgotten that great artists are not those that appeal to our shared experience but those with whom we cannot empathise, that if they can amaze us it’s not because they’re human but because they come from another galaxy.

For these reasons, it seems to me that today more than ever we must reclaim the marvellous. Confronted with the dictatorship of the real and the empirical, we must create the conditions for the rebirth of the fantastic. Against the provincialism of empathy, we must return to the cosmopolitanism of the strange. To the discourses of importance and urgency, we must oppose the perspective of laughter, of irrelevance in eternity. Faced with the severity of ideology, we must reclaim frivolity, the infinite openness of humour. In response to the arrogance of the feasible, we must return to the humility of the impossible. Only thus can we marvel again… But, what am I doing! What am I saying! To reclaim! To oppose! To return! These vulgarities call for an apology. Nothing is further from my intentions, dear friends, nothing more alien to my temperament, nothing more useless than to commit myself to the fire of engaged discourses from this insignificant blog —nothing less courteous on my part. I already know where my friends stand, I already know of their elegance and their taste and of the sophistication of their temperament. Let us go then! Let us abandon our bitterness, our futile will to change the world! Let us allow people to read what they want, and let us continue to be marvelled by the extraordinary phenomenon of those not interested in marvelling!

*The reader might be intrigued to learn that ‘amaze’ and ‘maze’ are etymologically related — both stem from words meaning confusion or bewilderment.