Prologue in Heaven

Here I Am. Capital I. Capital Am. My name is unpronounceable and legion.

I am he that is, and the void. Everlasting light and eternal darkness. Creator and Destroyer. An Artist, in other words. If other words are required. I have all the words there are, and all the silences.

Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven, I said on the Fourth Day, to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years. Yes that is what I said – but not in this language, nor in any other language of the world, for there were as yet no languages and there was as yet no world.

And I saw that it was good – but not by virtue of the light, for there was as yet no light, despite the fact that as of the First Day I had already divided the light from the darkness – but using what? – since I had not as yet invented the sun, the moon, the stars.

I had to start over many times, to divide the light from the darkness. Long before I had created the sun, moon and stars, the evening and the morning were three days in a row.

Mystery, impenetrable mystery of my art.

I spoke, yet not in time, for I spoke before the eons, years and days had been marked out. I spoke alone, in no language and to no one – and even as I spoke, I went on performing the same tasks, writing the same pages over and over again.

A tormented, obstinate Artist is what I am. Obsessed, impassioned with my work. Driven mad by it. Day by day, century by century, it titillates and tortures me. I’m never satisfied. I answer to no one. I do as I please yet am not often well pleased. I adore my job. Hate it. Cannot live without it.

I sit down at my desk, pick up my pen, dip it into black ink and think and think; sometimes I sit there for eons staring into the void. I feel terrible, despondent, nothing comes to me, not even a wish for anything; sometimes I write half a sentence and scratch it out and give up in despair; sometimes, enthralled with my own incomparable genius, I start scribbling furiously and can scarcely keep up with my pen – fifteen pages in one fell swoop!

But when I reread what I have written I grow nervous, irritable, overexcited, it is all so dreadfully complex, where exactly should I situate myself with respect to my universe? How far away? Should the sun appear to me enormous or minute? And what about the stars – the ones that are a thousand times larger than the sun – are they mere scintillating specks from my point of view? It is all a matter of perspective, I know that. So I am always hesitating, doubting, rereading what I have written and reflecting upon it. I can see that it is good, but I want it to be even better.