When I Was Mortal

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Of the twelve stories that make up this volume, I think eleven were commissioned. That means that I did not have absolute freedom when writing those eleven, especially as regards length. Three pages here, ten pages there, forty or so there, the requests are very varied and one tries to fulfil these requirements as best one can. I know that in two of the stories, I found the limitations constraining, which is why they appear here in expanded form, with the space and rhythm which — once begun — they should have had. As for the rest, including those that fulfilled some other external requirement, I don’t think that the commission compromised them in any way, at least not after a time and now that I’ve grown accustomed to them as they are. You can write an article or a story on commission (though not, in my case, a whole book); sometimes even the subject matter may be given and I see nothing wrong in that as long you manage to make the final product yours and you enjoy writing it. Indeed, I can only write something if I’m enjoying myself and I can only enjoy myself if I find the project interesting. It goes without saying that none of these stories would have been written if I had felt no interest in them. It is perhaps worth reminding those sentimental purists who believe that, in order to sit down in front of the typewriter, you have to experience grandiose feelings such as a creative “need” or “impulse”, which are always “spontaneous” or terribly intense, that the majority of the sublime works of art produced over the centuries — especially in painting and music — were the result of commissions or of even more prosaic or servile stimuli.

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