User:Lembit Staan/Language of Lem

Istvan Csicsery-Ronay, Jr.
 * ICR: You are famous for your neologisms—which somehow, miraculously, lend themselves to translations. You have even included a Polish-Polish dictionary at the end of one of your books. Do your neologisms and linguistic play come before your ideas for action, setting up the boundaries of how you develop your stories? Or do the neologisms come to you when you need them?


 * Lem: Neologisms happen to come up only when they become absolutely indispensable to me during the course of writing. I am unable to think up one that would carry meaning if asked to work outside of context, sui generic. I really have no clue as to how this process works. Some neologisms were hell to conjure. For example, in my latest book, Fiasco, I couldn't hit upon a name for the walking machines, and for two years they were nameless. I tried to think up a derivative of Latin, and then English, but to no avail. I finally settled, in Polish, on "wielkochody" (multisteppers, macromobils).


 * ICR: According to Aquinas, the other Summalogist, Amor est magis cognitiva quam cognitio. It is a striking characteristic of your work that you don't depict affectional relationships among your protagonists—at least since Solaris and Return from the Stars. Some theorists have made persuasive arguments that cognition is inextricably tied to certain kinds of affections— and that the Western tradition of purifying the intellect involves a refusal to give value to emotional relationships with the world. Actually, Solaris might be read as depicting exactly this state of affairs, since the Solarists, as soon as they encounter the alien planet, are suddenly brought face to face with the emotional lives they have repressed. You seem to have left this theme behind—so much so that your Golem dispassionately dismisses love. Is this lack of amor in your work a conscious strategy?


 * Lem: Love is a matter of individuals. It is the fulfillment of the human psyche's expectations. An individual is able to feel love towards only a small number of the closest persons, be it erotic love, parental, or other—for example, religiously inspired. In my private life, this emotion plays perhaps the main role. But one cannot really love humanity. It is impossible even to get to know all coexisting persons. So put, "love of humanity" is a pure abstraction, entirely impotent in the face of the world's dramatic problems. This is why making love the subject of a book is tantamount to closing one's eyes to the problems of the world, and because of this alone, it would hinge on being escapist. Of course, these are strictly my private convictions. I do not believe that love can save nations or entire societies. This may be why love has taken the backseat in my writing.