Excerpt from The Book of Disquiet
Grammar, in defining usage, makes divisions which are sometimes legitimate, sometimes false. For example it divides verbs into transitive and intransitive; however, someone who understands what is involved in speaking, often has to make a transitive verb intransitive, or vice versa, if he is to convey exactly what he feels, and not, like most human animals, merely to glimpse it obscurely. If I wanted to talk about my simple existence, I would say: 'I exist.' If I wanted to talk about my existence as a separate soul, I would say: 'I am me.' But if I wanted to talk about my existence as an entity that both directs and forms itself, that exercises within itself the divine function of self-creation, I would have to invent a transitive form and say, triumphantly and ungrammatically supreme, 'I exist me.' I would have expressed a whole philosophy in three small words. Isn't that preferable to taking forty sentences to say nothing? What more can one ask of philosophy and language?
Only those who are unable to think what they feel obey grammatical rules. Someone who knows how to express himself can use those rules as he pleases. There's a story they tell of Sigismund, King of Rome, who, having made a grammatical mistake in a public speech, said to the person who pointed this out to him: 'I am King of Rome and therefore above grammar.' And history tells that he was known thereafter as Sigismund 'supragrammaticam'. What a marvellous symbol! Anyone who knows how to say what he wants to say is, in his own way, King of Rome. Not a bad title and the only way to achieve it is to 'exist oneself'.
