What can remain by subtracting "vanity" from "writing"?

Koichi Isoda

A literary critic, Sei Ito also wrote with a bitter feeling that while turning defiant, poking fun of other people, and sometimes playing the fool, literary people who must have suffered some trauma never stopped writing in the end after the war. As if to follow his reflection, Koichi Isoda, also a literary critic, wrote like the following. If there is nothing left behind other than "vanity," we have to return to the place "to question the meaning of despair." From "On Postwar Critics."

"July 5  2019

from “Oriori no Kotoba” by Kiyokazu Washida, The Asahi Shimbun"