Being led by a suprapersonal wisdom
Updated: Sep 2
In "The Art of the Novel" Milan Kundera writes:
"When Tolstoy sketched the first draft of Anna Karenina, Anna was a most unsympathetic woman, and her tragic end was entirely deserved and justified. The final version of the novel is very different, but I do not believe that Tolstoy had revised his moral ideas in the meantime; I would say, rather, that in the course of writing, he was listening to another voice than that of his personal moral conviction. He was listening to what I would like to call the wisdom of the novel. Every true novelist listens for that suprapersonal wisdom, which explains why great novels are always a little more intelligent than their authors. Novelists who are more intelligent than their books should go into another line of work."
I am finding that this is true also with scientific research. In every research I have done so far I ended up in a very different place than where I thought I was going.
As I am starting to prepare for my next researches I already know they are going to take me places currently unknown to me. Which is why I'm so excited about them.
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