An indescribable oppression, which seemed to generated in some unfamiliar part of her consciousness, filled her whole being with a vague anguish. It was like a shadow, like a mist passing across her soul's summer day. (skip) She was just having a good cry all to herself.
Mrs. Pontellier was always generous with the contents of such a box; she was quite used to receiving them when away from home. The pates and fruit were brought to the dining room; the bonbons were passed around. And the ladies selecting with dainty and discriminating fingers and a little greedily, all declared that Mr. Pontellier was the best husband in the world. Mrs. Pontellier was forced to admit that she knew of none better.
In short, Mrs. Pontellier was not a mother-woman. The mother-women seemed to prevail that summer at Grand Isle.
In short, Mrs. Pontellier was beginning to realize her position in the universe as a human being, and to recognize her relations as an individual to the world within and about her. (skip)
But the beginning of things, of a world especially, is necessarily vague, tangled, chaotic, and exceedingly disturbing. How few of us ever emerge from such beginning! How many souls perish in its tumult!
Their absence was a sort of relief, though she did not admit this, even to herself. It seemed to free her of a responsibility which she had blindly assumed and for which Fate had not fitted her.
Robert's going had some way taken the brightness, the color, the meaning out of everything. The conditions of her life were in no way changed, but her whole existence was dulled, like a faded garment which seems to be no longer worth wearing.
or ever expected to feel.
It was not a condition of life which fitted her, she could see in it but an appalling and hopeless ennui. (skip) a pity for that colorless existence which never uplifted its possessor beyond the region of blind contentment, in which no moment of anguish ever visited her soul, in which she would never have the taste of life's delirium.
She began to do as she lived and to feel as she liked.
He could see plainly that she was not herself. That is, he could not see that she was becoming herself and daily casting aside that fictitious self which we assume like a garment with which to appear before the world.
There were days when she was very happy without knowing why. She was happy to be alive and breathing, when her whole being seemed to be one with the sunlight, the color, the odors, the luxuriant warmth of some perfect Southern day. She liked then to wander alone into strange and unfamiliar places. She discovered many a sunny, sleepy corner, fashioned to dream in. And she found it good to dream and to be alone and unmolested.
There were days when she was unhappy, she did not know why - when it did not seem worth while to be glad or sorry, to be alive or dead, when life worms struggling blindly toward inevitable annihilation. She could not work on such a day, nor weave fancies to stir her pulses and warm her blood.
And, moreover, to succeed, the artist must possess the courageous soul.
(skip)
The brave soul. The soul that dares and defies.
The Colonel was perhaps unaware that he had coerced his own wife into her grave.
now that her time was completely her own to do with as she liked.
but it seemed to her as if life were passing by, leaving its promise broken and unfulfilled.
She wanted something to happen - something, anything; she did not know what.
The house, the money that provides for it, are not mine. Isn't that enough reason?
like the feeling of freedom and independence.
Conditions would some way adjust themselves, she felt, but whatever came, she had resolved never again to belong to another than herself.
The bird that would soar above the level plain of tradition and prejudice must have strong wings. It is a sad spectacle to see the weaklings bruised, exhausted, fluttering back to earth.
There was her husband's reproach looking at her from the external things around her which he had provided for her external existence. (skip) because it was not love which had held this cup of life to her lips.
but I have got into a habit of expressing myself.
I am no longer one of Mr. Pontellier's possessions to dispose of or not.
oh! well! perhaps it is better to wake up after all, even to suffer, rather than to remain a dupe to illusions to all one's life.
the children. They were a part of her life. But they need not have thought that they could possess her, body and soul.
- It was a pure chance that I was drawn to this book. I found that the author had the same birthday with me. And she had many common thoughts and feelings with me also.
The Awakening felt like the writings of my inner conversation articulated by Kate Chopin. I couldn't appreciate more for her courage and talent in writing this brave novel at the time she lived. I was very sad for the protagonist's implied death by taking plunge for freedom and independence. As she wrote in the lines in her book, "it is a sad spectacle to see the weaklings bruised, exhausted, fluttering back to earth."
2016년 5월 28일 토요일
Sandra Cisneros "The House on Mango Street"
I did it by doing the things I was afraid of doing so that I would no longer be afraid.
In English my name means hope. In Spanish it means too many letters. It means sadness, it means waiting.
You can never have too much sky. You can fall asleep and wake up drunk on sky, and sky can keep you safe when you are sad. Here there is too much sadness and not enough sky.
diseases have no eyes. They pick with a dizzy finger anyone, just anyone.
I want to be
like the waves on the sea,
like the clouds in the wind,
but I'm me.
One day I'll jump
out of my skin
I'll shake the sky
like a hundred violins.
You must keep writing. It will keep you free,
When there is nothing left look at on this street. Four who grew despite concrete. Four who reach and do not forget to reach. Four whose only reason is to be and be.
One day I'll own my own house, but I won't forget who I am or where I came from.
- I was looking for the different book by other South American writer I had read so many times when I was a kid. Also Zeze was the main character. And when I saw this book, I wasn't sure if I read it or not when I was young. But it seemed interesting to me to read through with a light heart.
I loved some lines the writer put in poetic ways. But the bitterness of life imbued in them. The color of her writing seemed pastel but subdued with light gray. Lines about the sad layers of net of underprivileged people's lives with truth and sincerity, still put in a beautifully touching way.
In English my name means hope. In Spanish it means too many letters. It means sadness, it means waiting.
You can never have too much sky. You can fall asleep and wake up drunk on sky, and sky can keep you safe when you are sad. Here there is too much sadness and not enough sky.
diseases have no eyes. They pick with a dizzy finger anyone, just anyone.
I want to be
like the waves on the sea,
like the clouds in the wind,
but I'm me.
One day I'll jump
out of my skin
I'll shake the sky
like a hundred violins.
You must keep writing. It will keep you free,
When there is nothing left look at on this street. Four who grew despite concrete. Four who reach and do not forget to reach. Four whose only reason is to be and be.
One day I'll own my own house, but I won't forget who I am or where I came from.
- I was looking for the different book by other South American writer I had read so many times when I was a kid. Also Zeze was the main character. And when I saw this book, I wasn't sure if I read it or not when I was young. But it seemed interesting to me to read through with a light heart.
I loved some lines the writer put in poetic ways. But the bitterness of life imbued in them. The color of her writing seemed pastel but subdued with light gray. Lines about the sad layers of net of underprivileged people's lives with truth and sincerity, still put in a beautifully touching way.
2015년 8월 21일 금요일
2015년 8월 6일 목요일
Phil Klay의 'Redepolyment' 중
We shot dogs. Not by accident. We did it on purpose, and we called it Operation Scooby. I'm a dog person, so I thought about that a lot.
First time was instinct. I hear O'Leary go, "Jesus," and there's a skinny brown dog lapping up blood the same way he'd lap up water from a bowl. It wasn't American blood, but still, there's that dog, lapping it up. And that's the last straw, I guess, and then it's open season on dogs.
I had at least thought there would be nobility in war. I know it exists. There are so many stories, and some of them have to be true. But I see normal men, trying to do good, beaten down by horror, by their inability to quell their own rages, by their masculine posturing and their so-called hardness, their desire to be tougher, and therefore crueler, than their circumstance.
And yet, I have this sense that this place holier then back home. Gluttonous, fat, oversexed, overconsuming, materialist home, where we're too lazy to see our own faults. At least here, Rodriguez has the decency to worry about hell.
As a young priest, I'd had a father scream at me once. I was working in a hospital. He'd lost his son. (skip)
Doctors repeatedly asked the father to authorize last-ditch attempts to keep his child breathing. Naturally, he did. So they proceeded to stab his son with needles, perform emergency surgery. Torture his child in front of him and at his request in a hopeless effort to continue a tiny, doomed life for a few minutes more. At the end, they were left with a very small and terribly battered corpse.
And then I came along, after the chemotherapy, after the bankrupting bills and the deterioration of his and his wife's careers, after the months of hoping and despair, after every possible medical violation had denied his child grace even in death. And I dared suggest some good had come of it? It was unbearable. It was disgusting. It was lie.
There was a human warmth to the paper.
it's because he thinks his suffering justifies making you suffer. If his story about his beating is true, it means the Marines who beat him think their suffering justifies making him suffer.
"It's not whether it happened or not. You don't talk about some of the shit that happened. We lived in a place that was totally different from anything those hippies in that audience could possibly understand. All those jerks who think they're so good 'cause they've never had to go out on a street in Ramadi and weigh your life against the lives of the people in the building you're taking fire from. You can't describe it to someone who wasn't there, you can hardly remember how it was yourself because it makes so little sense. And to act like somebody could live and fight for months in that shit and not go insane, well, that's what's really crazy. And then Alex is gonna go and act like a big hero, telling everybody how bad we were. We weren't bad. I wanted to shoot every Iraqi I saw, every day. And I never did.
- 전쟁에 관한 소설, 그것도 얼마되지 않은, 혹은 현재도 진행중인 전쟁에 관한 소설. National Book Award를 받은 이 소설을 차에 가지고 다니며 질기게도 오랫동안 읽었다. 얼마나 이해할 수 있을까? 직접 경험하지 않았지만 뉴스와 소셜미디어에서 지겹도록 들은 그 전쟁에 대해서 알 만큼 안다고 섣불리 생각하지는 않았을까 막연한 죄책감이 든다.
이 책은 여러가지 이유로 전쟁에 참여하게 된 사람들의 다각적 시각으로 쓰여졌다. 그러나 누구의 시각이든 좋은 의도에서의 전쟁의 참여이건, 막연한 동경이건, 실질적 이유이건 간에 민간인으로서 이해하기 힘든 그 곳에서의 경험은 모든 참전군인들을 또 다른 현실인 군대 밖에서의 삶으로부터 alienate 시킨다. 그리고 또한 참전한 사람들의 관점과 경험의 폭에 따라 모두 다른 전쟁을 경험하게 되는 것이다. 그러나 그것은 중요한가? 전쟁에서 군인들의 생각이 중요한가? 체스판의 말에 불과한 참전 군인들의 생각이 과연 중요한가? 그들이 느끼는 분노, 절망, 죄책감은 중요한가? 각각의 화자의 감정에 가 닿기에는 나는 너무도 멀리 떨어져 있다. 적지에서 식어가는 아이의 몸을 적외선 카메라로 바라보는 것은 피흘리는 죽음을 눈 앞에서 보는 것과는 다를 것이다. 그러나 나는 그러한 것도 본 적이 없지 않은가? 그리고 본국으로 돌아와 전장으로 떠나기 전과 하나도 변한 것 없는 편안하고도 흥청거리는 사회 안으로 들어갈 때, 오직 변한 것은 자기 자신 뿐이고, 자신과 자신의 동료들의 희생에 바뀐 것이나 기억되는 것이 하나도 없음을 느낄 때, 아마도 그들의 박탈감은 너무도 클 것이다.
어떤 명분으로라도 누군가를 죽이도록 내몰린 사람들, 그들을 그 무엇으로도 함부로 평가하거나 판단하거나 심지어 이해한다고 말할 수는 없을 것이다. 다만 진심으로 그들의 경험을 폄하하지 않고 존중할 수 있어야 한다는 생각이 들게 만든 책.
First time was instinct. I hear O'Leary go, "Jesus," and there's a skinny brown dog lapping up blood the same way he'd lap up water from a bowl. It wasn't American blood, but still, there's that dog, lapping it up. And that's the last straw, I guess, and then it's open season on dogs.
I had at least thought there would be nobility in war. I know it exists. There are so many stories, and some of them have to be true. But I see normal men, trying to do good, beaten down by horror, by their inability to quell their own rages, by their masculine posturing and their so-called hardness, their desire to be tougher, and therefore crueler, than their circumstance.
And yet, I have this sense that this place holier then back home. Gluttonous, fat, oversexed, overconsuming, materialist home, where we're too lazy to see our own faults. At least here, Rodriguez has the decency to worry about hell.
As a young priest, I'd had a father scream at me once. I was working in a hospital. He'd lost his son. (skip)
Doctors repeatedly asked the father to authorize last-ditch attempts to keep his child breathing. Naturally, he did. So they proceeded to stab his son with needles, perform emergency surgery. Torture his child in front of him and at his request in a hopeless effort to continue a tiny, doomed life for a few minutes more. At the end, they were left with a very small and terribly battered corpse.
And then I came along, after the chemotherapy, after the bankrupting bills and the deterioration of his and his wife's careers, after the months of hoping and despair, after every possible medical violation had denied his child grace even in death. And I dared suggest some good had come of it? It was unbearable. It was disgusting. It was lie.
There was a human warmth to the paper.
it's because he thinks his suffering justifies making you suffer. If his story about his beating is true, it means the Marines who beat him think their suffering justifies making him suffer.
"It's not whether it happened or not. You don't talk about some of the shit that happened. We lived in a place that was totally different from anything those hippies in that audience could possibly understand. All those jerks who think they're so good 'cause they've never had to go out on a street in Ramadi and weigh your life against the lives of the people in the building you're taking fire from. You can't describe it to someone who wasn't there, you can hardly remember how it was yourself because it makes so little sense. And to act like somebody could live and fight for months in that shit and not go insane, well, that's what's really crazy. And then Alex is gonna go and act like a big hero, telling everybody how bad we were. We weren't bad. I wanted to shoot every Iraqi I saw, every day. And I never did.
- 전쟁에 관한 소설, 그것도 얼마되지 않은, 혹은 현재도 진행중인 전쟁에 관한 소설. National Book Award를 받은 이 소설을 차에 가지고 다니며 질기게도 오랫동안 읽었다. 얼마나 이해할 수 있을까? 직접 경험하지 않았지만 뉴스와 소셜미디어에서 지겹도록 들은 그 전쟁에 대해서 알 만큼 안다고 섣불리 생각하지는 않았을까 막연한 죄책감이 든다.
이 책은 여러가지 이유로 전쟁에 참여하게 된 사람들의 다각적 시각으로 쓰여졌다. 그러나 누구의 시각이든 좋은 의도에서의 전쟁의 참여이건, 막연한 동경이건, 실질적 이유이건 간에 민간인으로서 이해하기 힘든 그 곳에서의 경험은 모든 참전군인들을 또 다른 현실인 군대 밖에서의 삶으로부터 alienate 시킨다. 그리고 또한 참전한 사람들의 관점과 경험의 폭에 따라 모두 다른 전쟁을 경험하게 되는 것이다. 그러나 그것은 중요한가? 전쟁에서 군인들의 생각이 중요한가? 체스판의 말에 불과한 참전 군인들의 생각이 과연 중요한가? 그들이 느끼는 분노, 절망, 죄책감은 중요한가? 각각의 화자의 감정에 가 닿기에는 나는 너무도 멀리 떨어져 있다. 적지에서 식어가는 아이의 몸을 적외선 카메라로 바라보는 것은 피흘리는 죽음을 눈 앞에서 보는 것과는 다를 것이다. 그러나 나는 그러한 것도 본 적이 없지 않은가? 그리고 본국으로 돌아와 전장으로 떠나기 전과 하나도 변한 것 없는 편안하고도 흥청거리는 사회 안으로 들어갈 때, 오직 변한 것은 자기 자신 뿐이고, 자신과 자신의 동료들의 희생에 바뀐 것이나 기억되는 것이 하나도 없음을 느낄 때, 아마도 그들의 박탈감은 너무도 클 것이다.
어떤 명분으로라도 누군가를 죽이도록 내몰린 사람들, 그들을 그 무엇으로도 함부로 평가하거나 판단하거나 심지어 이해한다고 말할 수는 없을 것이다. 다만 진심으로 그들의 경험을 폄하하지 않고 존중할 수 있어야 한다는 생각이 들게 만든 책.
2015년 7월 22일 수요일
Nikolai Gogol의 "Dead Souls" 중
in short, the same as everywhere;
No one equals him in power - he is God! But such is not the lot, and other is the destiny of the writer who has dared to call forth all that is before our eyes every moment and which our indifferent eyes do not see - all the terrible, stupendous mire of trivia in which our life is entangles, the whole depth of cold, fragmented, everyday characters that swarm over our often bitter and boring earthly path, and with the firm strength of his implacable chisel dares to present them roundly and vividly before the eyes of all people! (skip) This contemporary judgement does not recognized writer; with no sharing, no response, no sympathy, like a familyless wayfarer, he will be left alone in the middle of the road. Grim is his path, and bitterly will he feel his solitude.
Strange people these gentlemen officials, and other degrees along with them: They knew very well that Nozdryov was a liar, that not a single word of his could be trusted, not he least trifle, and nevertheless they resorted precisely to him.
What the deceased was asking - why he had died, or why he had lived - God alone knows.
What a strange, and alluring, and transporting, and wonderful feeling is in the word: road! and how wondrous is this road itself:
and think not about not doing wrong, but only about having no one say they are doing wrong. (skip) You fear the deeply penetrating gaze, you are afraid to penetrate anything deeply with your own gaze, you like to skim over everything with unthinking eyes.
But Kostanzhoglo was angry now, his bile was seething, and the words came pouring out.
And often, unexpectedly, in some remote, forsaken backwater, some deserted desert, one meets a man whose warming conversation makes you forget the pathlessness of your paths, the homelessness of your nights, and the contemporary world full of people's stupidity, of deceptions for deceiving man. Forever and always an evening spent in this way will vividly remain with you, and all that was that took place then will be retained by the faithful memory: who was there, and who stood where, and what he was holding - the walls, the corners, and every trifle.
He still did not know that in Russia, in Moscow and other cities, there are such wizards to be found, whose life is an inexplicable riddle. He seems to have spent everything, is up to his ears in debt, has no resources anywhere, and the dinner that is being given promises to be the last; and the diners think that by the next day the host will be dragged off to prison. Then years pass after that - that wizard is still holding out in the world, is up to his ears in debt more than ever, and still gives a dinner in the same way, and everybody thinks it will be the last, and everybody is sure that the next day the host will be dragged off to prison. Khlobuev was such a wizard. Only in Russia can one exist in such a way. Having nothing, he welcomed visitors, gave parties, and even patronized and encouraged all sorts of actors passing through town, boarded them and lodged them in his house.
Believe me, as soon as circumstances get critical, the first thing to do is confuse. One can get it so confused, so entangled, that on one can understand anything. (skip) The crayfish thrives in trouble waters.
<from Translator's Introduction>
because the road is also writing itself,
Gogol wrote in a letter of 1843;
I have been much talked about by people who have analyzed some of my aspects but failed to define my essence. Pushkin alone sensed it. He always told me that no other writer before has had this gift of presenting the banality of life so vividly, of being able to describe the banality of the banal man with such force that all the little details that escape notice flash large in everyone's eyes. That is my main quality, which belongs to me alone, and which indeed no other writer possesses.
Gogol's characters; they are all external, like landscapes.
The unresolved mystery of banality is the lining of the extraordinary behind it. It is Chichikov's chest with its double bottom, in which he stores all sorts of meaningless trash, but from which his "dead souls" also emerge in procession and move across all Russia. It is the renewal and futurity inherent in the road.
- 처음 접하는 N. Gogol의 책에서 러시아에 이런 작가가 있었다니 하는 감탄을 금치 못했다. 책을 읽고 나서 처음 "가벼움의 무게"라는 생각이 들었다. 인간의 허영과 실체를 쪽집게처럼 뽑아내어 풍자적으로 묘사하는 문장들을 읽으면서 실소를 터뜨리면서도, 씁쓸한 뒷맛을, 개운치 않은 뒤통수를 느끼게 하는... 진부한 삶의 의미없음을 세세한 문장으로서 다루고 있으면서도 그 의미없음이 곧 삶이고 우리가 개탄해 마지 않는 인물들이 이 시대를 또 이루고 살아가고 있음을 부인치 못한다는 것이 200년이 넘은 소설이 오늘날까지 가슴 뜨끔하게 다가오는 이유인 것 같다.
Tolstoy의 소설에서의 moral과 Dostoevsky의 인간의 본성의 고뇌의 진중한 무거움에만 길들여졌던 러시아 소설에서 가벼운 실소를 터뜨리며 가슴과 생각은 채워 줄 좋은 책을 만난 듯하다.
No one equals him in power - he is God! But such is not the lot, and other is the destiny of the writer who has dared to call forth all that is before our eyes every moment and which our indifferent eyes do not see - all the terrible, stupendous mire of trivia in which our life is entangles, the whole depth of cold, fragmented, everyday characters that swarm over our often bitter and boring earthly path, and with the firm strength of his implacable chisel dares to present them roundly and vividly before the eyes of all people! (skip) This contemporary judgement does not recognized writer; with no sharing, no response, no sympathy, like a familyless wayfarer, he will be left alone in the middle of the road. Grim is his path, and bitterly will he feel his solitude.
Strange people these gentlemen officials, and other degrees along with them: They knew very well that Nozdryov was a liar, that not a single word of his could be trusted, not he least trifle, and nevertheless they resorted precisely to him.
What the deceased was asking - why he had died, or why he had lived - God alone knows.
What a strange, and alluring, and transporting, and wonderful feeling is in the word: road! and how wondrous is this road itself:
and think not about not doing wrong, but only about having no one say they are doing wrong. (skip) You fear the deeply penetrating gaze, you are afraid to penetrate anything deeply with your own gaze, you like to skim over everything with unthinking eyes.
But Kostanzhoglo was angry now, his bile was seething, and the words came pouring out.
And often, unexpectedly, in some remote, forsaken backwater, some deserted desert, one meets a man whose warming conversation makes you forget the pathlessness of your paths, the homelessness of your nights, and the contemporary world full of people's stupidity, of deceptions for deceiving man. Forever and always an evening spent in this way will vividly remain with you, and all that was that took place then will be retained by the faithful memory: who was there, and who stood where, and what he was holding - the walls, the corners, and every trifle.
He still did not know that in Russia, in Moscow and other cities, there are such wizards to be found, whose life is an inexplicable riddle. He seems to have spent everything, is up to his ears in debt, has no resources anywhere, and the dinner that is being given promises to be the last; and the diners think that by the next day the host will be dragged off to prison. Then years pass after that - that wizard is still holding out in the world, is up to his ears in debt more than ever, and still gives a dinner in the same way, and everybody thinks it will be the last, and everybody is sure that the next day the host will be dragged off to prison. Khlobuev was such a wizard. Only in Russia can one exist in such a way. Having nothing, he welcomed visitors, gave parties, and even patronized and encouraged all sorts of actors passing through town, boarded them and lodged them in his house.
Believe me, as soon as circumstances get critical, the first thing to do is confuse. One can get it so confused, so entangled, that on one can understand anything. (skip) The crayfish thrives in trouble waters.
<from Translator's Introduction>
because the road is also writing itself,
Gogol wrote in a letter of 1843;
I have been much talked about by people who have analyzed some of my aspects but failed to define my essence. Pushkin alone sensed it. He always told me that no other writer before has had this gift of presenting the banality of life so vividly, of being able to describe the banality of the banal man with such force that all the little details that escape notice flash large in everyone's eyes. That is my main quality, which belongs to me alone, and which indeed no other writer possesses.
Gogol's characters; they are all external, like landscapes.
The unresolved mystery of banality is the lining of the extraordinary behind it. It is Chichikov's chest with its double bottom, in which he stores all sorts of meaningless trash, but from which his "dead souls" also emerge in procession and move across all Russia. It is the renewal and futurity inherent in the road.
- 처음 접하는 N. Gogol의 책에서 러시아에 이런 작가가 있었다니 하는 감탄을 금치 못했다. 책을 읽고 나서 처음 "가벼움의 무게"라는 생각이 들었다. 인간의 허영과 실체를 쪽집게처럼 뽑아내어 풍자적으로 묘사하는 문장들을 읽으면서 실소를 터뜨리면서도, 씁쓸한 뒷맛을, 개운치 않은 뒤통수를 느끼게 하는... 진부한 삶의 의미없음을 세세한 문장으로서 다루고 있으면서도 그 의미없음이 곧 삶이고 우리가 개탄해 마지 않는 인물들이 이 시대를 또 이루고 살아가고 있음을 부인치 못한다는 것이 200년이 넘은 소설이 오늘날까지 가슴 뜨끔하게 다가오는 이유인 것 같다.
Tolstoy의 소설에서의 moral과 Dostoevsky의 인간의 본성의 고뇌의 진중한 무거움에만 길들여졌던 러시아 소설에서 가벼운 실소를 터뜨리며 가슴과 생각은 채워 줄 좋은 책을 만난 듯하다.
2015년 1월 2일 금요일
Viktor E. Frankl의 "The Unheard Cry for Meaning" 중
For too long we have been dreaming a dream from which we are now waking up: the dream that if we just improve the socioeconomic situation of people, everything will be okay, people will become happy. The truth is that as the struggle for survival has subsided, the question has emerged: survival for what? Even more people today have the means to live, but no meaning to live for.
Albert Camus once contented "There is but one truly serious problem, and that is . . . judging whether life is or is not worth living . . ."
Man does not live by welfare alone.
in finding meaning, however, we are perceiving possibility embedded in reality. (skip) It has a "kairos" quality, which means that unless we use the opportunity to fulfill the meaning inherent and dormant in a situation, it will pass and be gone forever.
to transform a tragedy into a personal triumph, to turn one's predicament into a human achievement. When we are no longer able to change a situation (skip) we are challenged to change ourselves.
(skip) the meaning of suffering. It can have a meaning if it changes oneself for the better."
as Martin Heidegger said, being human is "being in the world." What I have called the self-transcendence of existence denotes the fundamental fact that being human means relating to something, or someone, other than oneself, be it a meaning to fulfill, or human beings to encounter.
A human being is not one thing among other things. Things determine each other. Man, however, determines himself. Rather, he decides whether or not he lets himself be determined, be it by the drives and instincts that push him, or the reasons and meanings that pull him.
Blaise Pascal once said, "Le coeur a ses raisons, que la raison ne connait point" (the heart has reasons that reason does not know). There is, indeed, what is called the wisdom of the heart. (skip) there is more to being human than being the battleground of the clashing ego, id and superego, as Fulton J. Sheen once mockingly put it, (skip) From the man in the street we may learn that being human means being confronted continuously with situations which are each at once chance and challenge, giving us a chance to fulfill ourselves by meeting the challenge to fulfill its meaning. Each situation is a call, first to listen, and then to respond.
the loneliness of "the lonely crowd."
(skip) existential privacy. What is greatly needed is to make the best of being lonely, to have "the courage to be" alone.
the absence of a sense of personal distance, (skip) - he cannot stop informing you about his private life or inquiring about your private life.
Language is more than mere self-expression. Language is always pointing to something beyond itself.
Writers who themselves have gone through the hell of despair over the apparent meaninglessness of life can offer their suffering as a sacrifice on the altar of humankind. Their self-disclosure can help the reader who is plagued by the same condition, help him in overcoming it.
healing through reading.
It is true, the author should be granted the freedom of opinion and its expression; but freedom is not the last word, it is not the whole story. Freedom threatens to degenerate into arbitrariness unless it is balanced by responsibleness.
"tragic heroism" is the possibility of saying yes to life in spite of its transitoriness.
is this memory not also transitory? (skip) It exits and it continues to exist regardless of whether we look at it or think about it. It continues to exist even irrespective of our own existence.
(skip) that wholeness of our life, which we complete in the very moment of our death, lies outside the grave and outside the grave it remains - and it does so, not although, but because it has slipped into the past. Even what we have forgotten, what has escaped from our consciousness, is not erased from the world; it has become part of the past, and it remains part of the world.
for day by day life is asking questions, we are interrogated by life, and we have to answer. Life, I would say, is a life-long question-and-answer period. As to the answers, I do not weary of saying that we can only answer to life by answering for our lives. Responding to life means being responsible for our lives.
This leads to the paradox that man's own past is his true future. The living man has both a future and a past; the dying man has no future in the usual sense, but only a past; the dead, however, "is" his past. He has no life, he "is" his life. (skip) The past is precisely that which cannot be taken away.
-Frankl 박사의 책을 다시 읽어나가면서, 그의 글은 암울한 일상에 지쳐갈 때 등불을 밝혀주는 듯 하다는 생각이 든다.
매일의 생활 속에서 건조해지고 약해지고 무디어지면서 생의 진정한 가치를 의심하게 될 때, 매 순간 삶에 응답함으로써 자신을 완성해가는 인간, 한 세대의 삶이 아닌 시대적인 가치로서의 인간, 과거로서 정형화되지만 그것으로서 영원해지는 인간을 그 본인의 삶을 통해 그의 글을 통해 역설하고 있다.
너무도 단순하지만 그의 주장은 삶에서의 가장 본질적인 가치를 인간에게 부여하고 또 부여된 가치를 인지하고 실행할 것을 삶으로서 세계에 응답할 것을 그의 전력을 다해 종용함으로서, 의미가 있다면 어떠한 상황도 버티어 나갈 수 있다는 것을 그러나 변하는 시간 속에서 가능성을 끄집어 내어 그것을 실재로 만드는 것은 오직 자기 자신만임을, 그것을 기억하고 실행할 것을 거칠고 굵은 목소리도 계속해서 진심을 다해 옆에서 말하고 있는 듯 느껴진다.
Albert Camus once contented "There is but one truly serious problem, and that is . . . judging whether life is or is not worth living . . ."
Man does not live by welfare alone.
in finding meaning, however, we are perceiving possibility embedded in reality. (skip) It has a "kairos" quality, which means that unless we use the opportunity to fulfill the meaning inherent and dormant in a situation, it will pass and be gone forever.
to transform a tragedy into a personal triumph, to turn one's predicament into a human achievement. When we are no longer able to change a situation (skip) we are challenged to change ourselves.
(skip) the meaning of suffering. It can have a meaning if it changes oneself for the better."
as Martin Heidegger said, being human is "being in the world." What I have called the self-transcendence of existence denotes the fundamental fact that being human means relating to something, or someone, other than oneself, be it a meaning to fulfill, or human beings to encounter.
A human being is not one thing among other things. Things determine each other. Man, however, determines himself. Rather, he decides whether or not he lets himself be determined, be it by the drives and instincts that push him, or the reasons and meanings that pull him.
Blaise Pascal once said, "Le coeur a ses raisons, que la raison ne connait point" (the heart has reasons that reason does not know). There is, indeed, what is called the wisdom of the heart. (skip) there is more to being human than being the battleground of the clashing ego, id and superego, as Fulton J. Sheen once mockingly put it, (skip) From the man in the street we may learn that being human means being confronted continuously with situations which are each at once chance and challenge, giving us a chance to fulfill ourselves by meeting the challenge to fulfill its meaning. Each situation is a call, first to listen, and then to respond.
the loneliness of "the lonely crowd."
(skip) existential privacy. What is greatly needed is to make the best of being lonely, to have "the courage to be" alone.
the absence of a sense of personal distance, (skip) - he cannot stop informing you about his private life or inquiring about your private life.
Language is more than mere self-expression. Language is always pointing to something beyond itself.
Writers who themselves have gone through the hell of despair over the apparent meaninglessness of life can offer their suffering as a sacrifice on the altar of humankind. Their self-disclosure can help the reader who is plagued by the same condition, help him in overcoming it.
healing through reading.
It is true, the author should be granted the freedom of opinion and its expression; but freedom is not the last word, it is not the whole story. Freedom threatens to degenerate into arbitrariness unless it is balanced by responsibleness.
"tragic heroism" is the possibility of saying yes to life in spite of its transitoriness.
is this memory not also transitory? (skip) It exits and it continues to exist regardless of whether we look at it or think about it. It continues to exist even irrespective of our own existence.
(skip) that wholeness of our life, which we complete in the very moment of our death, lies outside the grave and outside the grave it remains - and it does so, not although, but because it has slipped into the past. Even what we have forgotten, what has escaped from our consciousness, is not erased from the world; it has become part of the past, and it remains part of the world.
for day by day life is asking questions, we are interrogated by life, and we have to answer. Life, I would say, is a life-long question-and-answer period. As to the answers, I do not weary of saying that we can only answer to life by answering for our lives. Responding to life means being responsible for our lives.
This leads to the paradox that man's own past is his true future. The living man has both a future and a past; the dying man has no future in the usual sense, but only a past; the dead, however, "is" his past. He has no life, he "is" his life. (skip) The past is precisely that which cannot be taken away.
-Frankl 박사의 책을 다시 읽어나가면서, 그의 글은 암울한 일상에 지쳐갈 때 등불을 밝혀주는 듯 하다는 생각이 든다.
매일의 생활 속에서 건조해지고 약해지고 무디어지면서 생의 진정한 가치를 의심하게 될 때, 매 순간 삶에 응답함으로써 자신을 완성해가는 인간, 한 세대의 삶이 아닌 시대적인 가치로서의 인간, 과거로서 정형화되지만 그것으로서 영원해지는 인간을 그 본인의 삶을 통해 그의 글을 통해 역설하고 있다.
너무도 단순하지만 그의 주장은 삶에서의 가장 본질적인 가치를 인간에게 부여하고 또 부여된 가치를 인지하고 실행할 것을 삶으로서 세계에 응답할 것을 그의 전력을 다해 종용함으로서, 의미가 있다면 어떠한 상황도 버티어 나갈 수 있다는 것을 그러나 변하는 시간 속에서 가능성을 끄집어 내어 그것을 실재로 만드는 것은 오직 자기 자신만임을, 그것을 기억하고 실행할 것을 거칠고 굵은 목소리도 계속해서 진심을 다해 옆에서 말하고 있는 듯 느껴진다.
2014년 12월 19일 금요일
Rilke의 'The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge' 중
This, then, is where people come to live; I'd have thought it more of a place to die.
The child was asleep, its mouth hung open, it was breathing in iodoform, pommes frites, fear. That was simply the way it was. The main thing was to be living. That was the main thing.
A dog barks. What relief: a dog.
Why should I inform anyone of the changes within me? If I am changing, I no longer remain the person I was, and if I become someone else, it follows that I have no friends or acquaintances. And to write strangers, to people who do not know me, is quite out of the question.
Have I mentioned already that I am learning to see? Yes, I am making a start. I have not made much progress yet, but I mean to the most of my time.
To think, for example, that I have never consciously registered how many faces there are. There are a great number of people, but there are a great many more faces, for every person has several. There are several people who wear the same face for years on end; naturally it shows signs of wear, it gets dirty, it cracks at the creases, it splays out like gloves worn on a journey. These are simple people, practicising economies, and they do not change their face or even have it cleaned. It'll do fine, they insist, and who is to prove then wrong? The question, of course, since they have several faces, is what they do with the others. They keep them for best: their children can wear them some day. But it has been known for their dogs to go out wearing them, too. And why not? A face is a face.
Other people are disconcertingly quick to change their faces, one after another, and they wear them out. At first suppose they have enough to last for ever, but hardly have they reached forty when they come to the last of them. There is of course a tragic side to this. They are not used to looking after their faces; the last is worn out in a week, holed and paper-thing in numerous places, and little by little the underlay shows through, the non-face, and they go about wearing that.
But the woman, that woman: she was wholly immersed withing herself, bowed forward, head in hands. It was at the corner of the rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs. The moment I saw her, I began to tread softly. The poor should not be disturbed when they are lost in thought. The thing they are trying to think of may yet come to them.
The street was too deserted, its emptiness was wearied with itself and pulled out the footfall from under my feet and banged it about as if it were knocking a wooden clog. The woman was startled and started out of herself too rapidly and roughly, so that her face was left in her hands. I could see it lying in them, the hollow mould of it. It cost me an indescribable effort to keep my gaze on those hands and not look at what had been torn from out of them. I was appalled to see the inside of the facial mask, but I was far more terrified still of seeing a head bare and stripped of its face.
Who cares about a well-made death these days? No one. Even the rich, who could afford to die in well-appointed style, are lowering their standards and growing indifferent; the wish for a death of one's own is becoming ever more infrequent. (skip) along we come and find a life ready to wear on the rail, and all we have to do is put it on. (skip) You die as you happen to die; you die the death that comes with your illness
Is it possible, it thinks, that we have neither seen nor perceived nor said anything real or of any importance yet? Is it possible that we have had thousand of years to look, ponder and record, and that we have let those thousands of years pass like a break at school, when one eats a sandwich and an apple?
Yes, it is possible.
Is it possible that despite our inventions and progresses, despite our culture, religion and knowledge of the world, we have remained on the surface of life? Is it possible that even that surface, which might still have been something, has been covered with an unbelievably boring material, leaving it looking like drawing-room furniture in the summer holidays.
Yes, it is possible.
(skip)
Is it possible that all realities are nothing to them; that their life is winding down, connected to nothing at all, like a clock in an empty room - ?
Yes, it is possible.
(skip)
Anyone - anyone who has had this disquieting thoughts - (skip) This young foreigner of no consequence, Brigge, will have to sit himself, five flights up, and write, day and night: yes, that is what it will come to - he will have to write.
Ah, how good it is to be among people who are reading. (skip) They give me one look and they know. They know that really I am one of them, and am only play-acting a little. (skip) For it is clear to me that untouchables is what they are, not mere beggars; no, they really are not beggars, one must make distinctions. They are human refuse, the husks of men, spat out by fate. Moist with the spittle of fate, they cling to a wall, a lamp-post, a Morris column, or they dribble slowly down the street, leaving a dark, dirty trail behind them. What on earth did that old woman want of me, who had crept out of some hole carrying a bedside-table drawer with a few buttons and needles rolling about in it? Why did she keep walking at my side, watching me?
(skip) and then I am among these books, beyond your reach as though I were dead, and sit here reading a poet.
There I would have lived with my old things, my family portraits, my books. And I would have had an armchair and flowers and dogs and a stout stick for the stony paths. And nothing else. Nothing but a book bound in yellowish, ivory-covered leather with old-style floral endpapers: in this I would have written. I would have written a great deal, for I would have had a great many thoughts and memories of a great many people.
But things turned out differently, (skip) as for myself, dear God, I don't have a roof over my head and it is raining into my eyes.
a viscous tide of humanity flowed towards me. (skip) the laughter oozed from their mouth like pus from open wounds. (skip) I felt I ought to laugh as well but I couldn't. (skip) the truth of it was that they were moving and I never budged an inch.
They don't allow the dying in. (skip) It was his immobility I sensed, and all of sudden I knew what it meant. A link had been forged between us, and I realized that he was rigid with terror. (skip) his withdrawal from everything: not only from humankind. One moment more and all of it would have lost its meaning,
I was one of the untouchables; (skip) a hand that was no longer a hand now lay; (skip) It was some immense, immovable mass, with a face and a large, heavy, inert hand.
Now it was there. Now it was growing from within me like a tumour, like a second head, and it was part of me, though it surely could not be mine, since it was too big.
And with whatever it is that comes back, there rises a whole tangle of muddled memories, clinging to it like wet seaweed on some sunken thing.
the fear that I might betray myself and speak of everything I am afraid of; and the fear that I might not be able to say anything, because it is all beyond saying - and the other fears . . . the fears.
I shared the fear with which he sensed them growing and growing, and I saw how he clutched the stick when the spasms began inside him. At those times, the expression of his hands was so severe and relentless that I placed all my hope in his will, which must be a mighty one. But what could the mere will do? The moment must inevitably come when his strength would be exhausted; it could not be a long now. And I, following him with my heart pounding, I gathered what little strength I had, like cash, and, looking at his hands, begged him to take it if he had any need for it.
(skip) Stood. His left hand gently released its grip on the stick and rose, so slowly that I saw it tremble against the air; he pushed his hat back a little and wiped his brow. He turned his head slightly, the water, without taking any of it in, and then he gave in. The stick was gone, he flung wide his arms as if he meant to fly,
(skip) I was drained. Like a blank piece of paper I drifted along, past the houses, back up the boulevard.
if only some of this could be shared. But would it then be, would it be? No, it is only at the price of solitude.
(skip) Your heart is driving you out of yourself, your heart is after you, and you are almost beside yourself and you can't go back. Like a beetle stepped on, you ooze out of yourself, and you little scrap of carapace and adaptability is meaningless.
The trees stood as if they had lost their way in the fog, and there was something presumptuous about driving into it. As we drove, the snow began to fall silently once more, and now it was as if all that remained had been erased and we were driving on to a blank page.
now silence fell. It was as silent as in the aftermath of pain. The silence was strangely palpable and prickling, as if a wound were healing.
That strangely unbounded quality of childhood, the lack of proportions, that refusal of things ever to be quite foreseen, (skip) Essentially this was all still growing apace on me, closing in on every side, and the more I looked out, the more I stirred up what was within me: (skip) It was easy to see that grown-ups were very little troubled by all of this; they went about making their judgements and doing what they did, and, if ever they were in difficulties, it was external circumstances that were to blame.
No matter how often I tried, life gave me to understand that it knew nothing of their existence.
This city is full of people who are slowly slipping down to their level. Most of them resist at first; but then there are those faded, (skip)
Why else do I find it so hard not to follow them when they pass me? Why do I suddenly think up the sweetest words of night, and why does my voice linger, all tenderness between my throat and my heart? Why do I imagine how I would hold them close, right up to my breath, with an inexpressible caution, these dolls whom life has played with, flinging their arms open wide with every spring that comes, for no purpose whatsoever, till their shoulder joints grow loose? (skip) Stray cats are the only ones that come to them in their rooms at evening, and one down a couple of streets. They walk on past the houses, people continually screen them from my view, and they disappear beyond them as if they were merely nothing.
And yet I know that if a man were to try to love them, they would weigh upon him, like people who have been walking too long and simple stop.
But it is night, it is winter, I am freezing, I believe in him. For glory is a mere moment, and we have never seen anything longer lasing than wretchedness.
Ah, ought you to have been dead?
Maybe. Maybe what is new is that we survive it: the year, and love. The blossoms and the fruit are ripe when they fall; animals are aware of their own being, and find each other, and are content with that. But we, who have embarked on the quest for God, we can never accomplish an ending. We keep postponing what our own nature prompts us to, needing even more time. What is one year to us? What are all the years? Even before we have embarked upon God, we are praying to Him: let us get through this night. And then illness. And then love.
At such times, the light burns late in his study. He does not remain bent over the pages always, but often leans back and closes hi eyes to ponder a line he has reread, and its meaning spreads through his blood.
- 아프도록 유려한 문장이 표현해 낸 존재적 슬픔과 공허, 그리고 공감.
되씹어서 읽어도 역시 아름답고 가슴 저릿한, 문장들 사이에 그의 말대로 등을 기대고 의미가 혈관에 퍼지는 것을 저릿 저릿할 정도로 느끼게 되는 그런 책이다.
무슨 말로 표현할 수 있을까? 비가 개이지 않는 회색 하늘 밑 그림자가 길어지는 날, 이 책을 다시 펼쳐 젖은 눈으로 한동안 허공을 한동안 응시하게 되리라는 것 밖에는...
The child was asleep, its mouth hung open, it was breathing in iodoform, pommes frites, fear. That was simply the way it was. The main thing was to be living. That was the main thing.
A dog barks. What relief: a dog.
Why should I inform anyone of the changes within me? If I am changing, I no longer remain the person I was, and if I become someone else, it follows that I have no friends or acquaintances. And to write strangers, to people who do not know me, is quite out of the question.
Have I mentioned already that I am learning to see? Yes, I am making a start. I have not made much progress yet, but I mean to the most of my time.
To think, for example, that I have never consciously registered how many faces there are. There are a great number of people, but there are a great many more faces, for every person has several. There are several people who wear the same face for years on end; naturally it shows signs of wear, it gets dirty, it cracks at the creases, it splays out like gloves worn on a journey. These are simple people, practicising economies, and they do not change their face or even have it cleaned. It'll do fine, they insist, and who is to prove then wrong? The question, of course, since they have several faces, is what they do with the others. They keep them for best: their children can wear them some day. But it has been known for their dogs to go out wearing them, too. And why not? A face is a face.
Other people are disconcertingly quick to change their faces, one after another, and they wear them out. At first suppose they have enough to last for ever, but hardly have they reached forty when they come to the last of them. There is of course a tragic side to this. They are not used to looking after their faces; the last is worn out in a week, holed and paper-thing in numerous places, and little by little the underlay shows through, the non-face, and they go about wearing that.
But the woman, that woman: she was wholly immersed withing herself, bowed forward, head in hands. It was at the corner of the rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs. The moment I saw her, I began to tread softly. The poor should not be disturbed when they are lost in thought. The thing they are trying to think of may yet come to them.
The street was too deserted, its emptiness was wearied with itself and pulled out the footfall from under my feet and banged it about as if it were knocking a wooden clog. The woman was startled and started out of herself too rapidly and roughly, so that her face was left in her hands. I could see it lying in them, the hollow mould of it. It cost me an indescribable effort to keep my gaze on those hands and not look at what had been torn from out of them. I was appalled to see the inside of the facial mask, but I was far more terrified still of seeing a head bare and stripped of its face.
Who cares about a well-made death these days? No one. Even the rich, who could afford to die in well-appointed style, are lowering their standards and growing indifferent; the wish for a death of one's own is becoming ever more infrequent. (skip) along we come and find a life ready to wear on the rail, and all we have to do is put it on. (skip) You die as you happen to die; you die the death that comes with your illness
Is it possible, it thinks, that we have neither seen nor perceived nor said anything real or of any importance yet? Is it possible that we have had thousand of years to look, ponder and record, and that we have let those thousands of years pass like a break at school, when one eats a sandwich and an apple?
Yes, it is possible.
Is it possible that despite our inventions and progresses, despite our culture, religion and knowledge of the world, we have remained on the surface of life? Is it possible that even that surface, which might still have been something, has been covered with an unbelievably boring material, leaving it looking like drawing-room furniture in the summer holidays.
Yes, it is possible.
(skip)
Is it possible that all realities are nothing to them; that their life is winding down, connected to nothing at all, like a clock in an empty room - ?
Yes, it is possible.
(skip)
Anyone - anyone who has had this disquieting thoughts - (skip) This young foreigner of no consequence, Brigge, will have to sit himself, five flights up, and write, day and night: yes, that is what it will come to - he will have to write.
Ah, how good it is to be among people who are reading. (skip) They give me one look and they know. They know that really I am one of them, and am only play-acting a little. (skip) For it is clear to me that untouchables is what they are, not mere beggars; no, they really are not beggars, one must make distinctions. They are human refuse, the husks of men, spat out by fate. Moist with the spittle of fate, they cling to a wall, a lamp-post, a Morris column, or they dribble slowly down the street, leaving a dark, dirty trail behind them. What on earth did that old woman want of me, who had crept out of some hole carrying a bedside-table drawer with a few buttons and needles rolling about in it? Why did she keep walking at my side, watching me?
(skip) and then I am among these books, beyond your reach as though I were dead, and sit here reading a poet.
There I would have lived with my old things, my family portraits, my books. And I would have had an armchair and flowers and dogs and a stout stick for the stony paths. And nothing else. Nothing but a book bound in yellowish, ivory-covered leather with old-style floral endpapers: in this I would have written. I would have written a great deal, for I would have had a great many thoughts and memories of a great many people.
But things turned out differently, (skip) as for myself, dear God, I don't have a roof over my head and it is raining into my eyes.
a viscous tide of humanity flowed towards me. (skip) the laughter oozed from their mouth like pus from open wounds. (skip) I felt I ought to laugh as well but I couldn't. (skip) the truth of it was that they were moving and I never budged an inch.
They don't allow the dying in. (skip) It was his immobility I sensed, and all of sudden I knew what it meant. A link had been forged between us, and I realized that he was rigid with terror. (skip) his withdrawal from everything: not only from humankind. One moment more and all of it would have lost its meaning,
I was one of the untouchables; (skip) a hand that was no longer a hand now lay; (skip) It was some immense, immovable mass, with a face and a large, heavy, inert hand.
Now it was there. Now it was growing from within me like a tumour, like a second head, and it was part of me, though it surely could not be mine, since it was too big.
And with whatever it is that comes back, there rises a whole tangle of muddled memories, clinging to it like wet seaweed on some sunken thing.
the fear that I might betray myself and speak of everything I am afraid of; and the fear that I might not be able to say anything, because it is all beyond saying - and the other fears . . . the fears.
I shared the fear with which he sensed them growing and growing, and I saw how he clutched the stick when the spasms began inside him. At those times, the expression of his hands was so severe and relentless that I placed all my hope in his will, which must be a mighty one. But what could the mere will do? The moment must inevitably come when his strength would be exhausted; it could not be a long now. And I, following him with my heart pounding, I gathered what little strength I had, like cash, and, looking at his hands, begged him to take it if he had any need for it.
(skip) Stood. His left hand gently released its grip on the stick and rose, so slowly that I saw it tremble against the air; he pushed his hat back a little and wiped his brow. He turned his head slightly, the water, without taking any of it in, and then he gave in. The stick was gone, he flung wide his arms as if he meant to fly,
(skip) I was drained. Like a blank piece of paper I drifted along, past the houses, back up the boulevard.
if only some of this could be shared. But would it then be, would it be? No, it is only at the price of solitude.
(skip) Your heart is driving you out of yourself, your heart is after you, and you are almost beside yourself and you can't go back. Like a beetle stepped on, you ooze out of yourself, and you little scrap of carapace and adaptability is meaningless.
The trees stood as if they had lost their way in the fog, and there was something presumptuous about driving into it. As we drove, the snow began to fall silently once more, and now it was as if all that remained had been erased and we were driving on to a blank page.
now silence fell. It was as silent as in the aftermath of pain. The silence was strangely palpable and prickling, as if a wound were healing.
That strangely unbounded quality of childhood, the lack of proportions, that refusal of things ever to be quite foreseen, (skip) Essentially this was all still growing apace on me, closing in on every side, and the more I looked out, the more I stirred up what was within me: (skip) It was easy to see that grown-ups were very little troubled by all of this; they went about making their judgements and doing what they did, and, if ever they were in difficulties, it was external circumstances that were to blame.
No matter how often I tried, life gave me to understand that it knew nothing of their existence.
This city is full of people who are slowly slipping down to their level. Most of them resist at first; but then there are those faded, (skip)
Why else do I find it so hard not to follow them when they pass me? Why do I suddenly think up the sweetest words of night, and why does my voice linger, all tenderness between my throat and my heart? Why do I imagine how I would hold them close, right up to my breath, with an inexpressible caution, these dolls whom life has played with, flinging their arms open wide with every spring that comes, for no purpose whatsoever, till their shoulder joints grow loose? (skip) Stray cats are the only ones that come to them in their rooms at evening, and one down a couple of streets. They walk on past the houses, people continually screen them from my view, and they disappear beyond them as if they were merely nothing.
And yet I know that if a man were to try to love them, they would weigh upon him, like people who have been walking too long and simple stop.
But it is night, it is winter, I am freezing, I believe in him. For glory is a mere moment, and we have never seen anything longer lasing than wretchedness.
Ah, ought you to have been dead?
Maybe. Maybe what is new is that we survive it: the year, and love. The blossoms and the fruit are ripe when they fall; animals are aware of their own being, and find each other, and are content with that. But we, who have embarked on the quest for God, we can never accomplish an ending. We keep postponing what our own nature prompts us to, needing even more time. What is one year to us? What are all the years? Even before we have embarked upon God, we are praying to Him: let us get through this night. And then illness. And then love.
At such times, the light burns late in his study. He does not remain bent over the pages always, but often leans back and closes hi eyes to ponder a line he has reread, and its meaning spreads through his blood.
- 아프도록 유려한 문장이 표현해 낸 존재적 슬픔과 공허, 그리고 공감.
되씹어서 읽어도 역시 아름답고 가슴 저릿한, 문장들 사이에 그의 말대로 등을 기대고 의미가 혈관에 퍼지는 것을 저릿 저릿할 정도로 느끼게 되는 그런 책이다.
무슨 말로 표현할 수 있을까? 비가 개이지 않는 회색 하늘 밑 그림자가 길어지는 날, 이 책을 다시 펼쳐 젖은 눈으로 한동안 허공을 한동안 응시하게 되리라는 것 밖에는...
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