AGAINST THE WALLS

 

AGAINST THE WALLS

Literature does not belong to niches. It belongs to the human being.

They call it a niche.
As if placing signs at the entrance of infinity.
As if believing the ocean could be divided by fences.

There, they say,
is poetry.
There, philosophy.
There, romance.
There, spirituality.
There, serious literature.
There, popular literature.

And they keep drawing borders over a continent that has never belonged to them.

The word watches.
And laughs.

Because the word was born before labels.
Before departments.
Before shelves.
Before the small republics built by critics who confuse classification with understanding.

There is a strange arrogance in those who demand a passport to cross a page.
As if imagination had to present documents.
As if beauty needed to justify its citizenship.

But literature was never obedient.

Rivers do not respect drawn lines on maps.
Clouds do not consult borders.
Stars do not belong to any nation of thought.
And true writing does not either.

It crosses.
It mixes.
It invades.
It contaminates.

A single sentence can carry the fever of poetry, the depth of philosophy, the vertigo of spirituality, and the brutality of reality.
Life does this every day.
Why should literature do less?

Perhaps because many do not wish to understand.
They wish only to catalogue.

Cataloguing is easier.
It requires less diving.
Less silence.
Less transformation.

Those who catalogue remain intact.
Those who truly read never return whole.

Here lies the problem.

Literature was not created to confirm shelves.
It was created to dismantle certainties.
To open cracks.
To place questions where walls once stood.

But we live in a curious time.

There are people who discuss genres without ever having visited the abyss.
They debate categories without ever having bled on a page.
They defend borders without ever having crossed a soul.

They confuse the map with the journey.
The label with the wine.
The frame with the artwork.

And while they argue about compartments, literature keeps escaping.

It passes under doors.
It climbs walls.
It enters through windows.

Because the word is older than any system created to contain it.

Writing is an act of freedom.
Reading is an act of crossing.

And literature, in its purest form,
does not belong to niches.

It belongs to the human being.
Whole.
Contradictory.
Unruly.
Universal.

J. Kasra — All rights reserved.