Bartleby

The thing that fascinates me about Bartleby as deconstructed in Deleuze's "The Formula" is that in his impotence, his silence, his passivity, and his reticence he sparks the world to want to destroy or change him.  It is not that he is unknowing - he knows what the attorney asks of - but all the more it is his knowing that spark a confounded rage.  It is as if evil exists in the world, and what it seeks is characters like Bartleby, who feign weakness, because their strength is virtual, abstract.  They may own nothing, but it is their possession of the knowledge (which is neither an affirmation nor a negation) of the futility of their counterparts that makes them despised.  They could take action supposedly, but they "prefer not to".  And why is that?  "Do I dare to eat a peach?" says Prufrock.  Do they lack the organizational skills to mount an effort, or do they feel doomed to failure, or are they addicted to feeding the ego depressed nihilistic thoughts, or are they simply catatonic due to a head trauma?  Perhaps they feel to disturb the universe is immoral. Evil seeks out Bartleby, just as it seeks out Gregor Samsa, just as it seeks out Prufrock.  Like a sugar ant drawn by the minutest vibrational scent of a cookie crumb from across the room, evil senses an amplitude that lies within Bartleby.  It is not that the attorney is evil per se, but desire is his formula, where Bartleby's is a cloak of indiscernability, a poorly evolved protective mechanism that must be the result of some recessive gene.  It is no wonder that he hides under his desk, wouldn't you if you knew what he did?