Flax, if it had a voice, would be screaming while processed. It’s grabbed by the head and pulled out of the ground. Roots and all. It’s sown thickly for self-suppression, so that it grows stunted and does not branch out.
Flax needs oppression. It’s pulled around. It’s spread-eagled on the fields, and elsewhere soaked in pits and rivers.
Rivers used to wash flax are damned rivers – they have no fish anymore. Then, the flax is scotched and broken.
I want freedom.
But if I get it, I’ll go look for bondage – by a woman, by a published. Still the writer does need a gap to take two steps, like a boxer for a strike, he needs the illusion of choice.
For the writer, illusion is a strong enough material.
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There are two ways now. One is to leave, to dig yourself in, to make money with something other than literature and to write privately, at home.
the other way is to dedicate yourself to describing life, conscientiously looking for the new way of life and the right world view.
There is no third way. This is the way to go. The artist should not follow tram lines.
The third way is work in newspapers, magazines, to work daily, to care not for yourself but only for the work, to change, to interbreed with the material, toprocess it again, and then, there shall be literature.
Out of Pushkin’s life, Dantes’ bullet was probably the only think the poet did not need.
But he did need the fear and oppression.
What strange work this is. Poor Flax.
— Viktor Shklovsky (1895-1984), The Third Factory, 1926: ‘On Freedom of Art’, translated by Dr. Alexandra Berlina.
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The oldest documented human use of flax is from the Upped Paleolithic period 30,000 years ago established by a find of spun, dyed and knotted flax fibers were found in the Dzudzuana Cave in present-day Georgia.
In ancient Egypt, temple walls were decorated with paintings of flowering flax, linen made from flax was used for embalming mummies. Flax fibers are two to three times as strong as cotton fibers.
Linen produced from the flax plant remains the material of choice for painters.