What he can­not accept is the rad­ical gap that forever sep­ar­ates his “real” qual­it­ies from his sym­bolic status (in the eyes of the oth­ers): all of a sud­den, he is no longer a nobody avoided by respect­able pub­lic but a fam­ous author invited by the pil­lars of soci­ety, with even the beloved woman now throw­ing her­self at his feet – but he is fully aware that noth­ing changed in him in real­ity, he is now the same per­son as he was, and even all his works were already writ­ten when he was ignored and des­pised. What Mar­tin can­not accept is this rad­ical de-cen­ter­ing of the very core of his per­son­al­ity which “resides in the minds of oth­ers”: he is noth­ing in him­self, just a con­cen­trated pro­jec­tion of oth­ers’ dreams. This per­cep­tion that his agalma, what now makes him desired by oth­ers, is some­thing that is out­side of him, not only ruins his nar­ciss­ism, but also kills his desire: “Some­thing has gone out of me. I have always been unafraid of life, but I never dreamed of being sated with life. Life has so filled me that I am empty of any desire for any­thing.” It is this “con­clu­sion that he was nobody, noth­ing,” which drove him to sui­cide.

ZIZEK on Jack London’s novel Martin Eden (via alterities) http://ift.tt/2cw31qf