Reading 15

“Fame is not fastidious about the lips which spread it. So long as there are mouths to reiterate the one name, it does not matter whose they are. […] Names collect their own crowds. They are greedy and live their own separate lives, scarcely connected with the real natures of the men who bear them.

“The crowd which the seeker after fame envisages consists of shadows, that is, of creatures who do not even have to be alive so long as they are capable of one thing, which is to repeat his name. He wants them to repeat it often, and to repeat it in front of others, so that as many as possible may hear it and learn how to say it themselves. But what these shadows are apart from this—their height, their appearance, how they live and work—is a matter of total indifference to the man whose fame they spread. As long as anyone continues to concern himself with the individuals to whom these mouths belong, as long as he woos, bribes, entices or whips them on, he is not really famous. All he is doing is to train the cadres of his future army of shadows. Only when he can afford to omit all this has he achieved fame.”

- Elias Canetti, Crowds and Power (1960)