Do you really love me?

"Any woman who says to me – Do you really love me? – Earns my undying detestation." [1]

[1] D.H. Lawrence 'Can't be Borne' Complete Poems (Harmondsworth 1993) p. 507

What grand everlasting festival

“One bright sunny day he went for a walk in the mountains and walked for a long time, tormented by a thought that, try as he might, seemed to be eluding him. Before him was the brilliant sky, below – the lake, and around the bright horizon, stretching away into infinity. He looked a long time in agony…What tormented him was that he was a complete stranger to all of this. What banquet was it, what grand everlasting festival, to which he had long felt drawn, always – ever since he was a child, which he could never join? Every morning the same bright sun rises; every morning there is a rainbow on the waterfall; every evening the highest snowcapped mountain, far, far away, on the very edge of the sky, shows with a purple flame; every 'tiny gnat' buzzing in that chorus: it knows its place, it loves it and is happy; every blade of grass grows and is happy! Everything has its path, and everything knows its path; it departs with a song and it comes back with a song; only he knows nothing, understands nothing, neither men nor sounds, a stranger to everything and an outcast^[1].

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[1] Dostoyevsky, The Idiot, translated by David Magarshack (Harmondsworth, 1955), p. 462.

The living dead

"My friends, do you remember that old Scythian custom, when the head of a house died? How he was dressed in his finest dress, and set in his chariot, and carried about to his friends' houses; and each of them placed him at his table's head, and all feasted in his presence? Suppose it were offered to you in plain words, as it is offered to you in dire facts, that you should gain this Scythian honour, gradually, while you yet thought yourself alive. Suppose the offer were this: You shall die slowly; your blood shall daily grow cold, your flesh petrify, your heart beat at last only as a rusted group of iron valves. Your life shall fade from you, and sink through the earth into the ice of Caina; but, day by day, your body shall be dressed more gaily, and set in higher chariots, and have more orders on its breast – crowns on its head, if you will. Men shall bow before it, stare and shout round it, crowd after it up and down the streets; build palaces for it, feast with it at their tables' heads all the night long; your soul shall stay enough within it to know what they do, and feel the weight of the golden dress on its shoulders, and the furrow of the crown-edge on the skull; – no more. Would you take the offer, verbally made by the death-angel? Would the meanest among us take it, think you? Yet practically and verily we grasp at it, every one of us, in a measure; many of us grasp at it in its fullness of horror. Every man accepts it who desired to advance in life without knowing what life is; who means only that he is to get more horses. and more footmen, and more fortune, and more public honour, and – not more personal soul. He is only advancing in life whose heart is getting softer, whose blood warmer, whose brain quicker, whose spirit is entering into living peace."

John Ruskin Sesame and Lilies 1865. Lecture i

The purpose of a man's life

“It was one of the most clear-sighted and courageous moments of Oblomov’s life. Oh, how dreadful he felt when there arose in his mind a clear and vivid idea of human destiny and the purpose of a man’s life, and when he compared this purpose with his own life, and when various vital problems awakened one after another in his mind and began whirling about confusedly, like frightened birds awakened suddenly by a ray of sunlight in some dark ruin. He felt sad and sorry at the thought of his own lack of education, at the arrested development of his spiritual powers, and the feeling of heaviness which interfered with everything he planned to do; and was overcome by envy of those whose lives were rich and full, while a huge rock seemed to have been thrown across the narrow and pitiful path of his own existence. Slowly there arose in his mind the painful realization that many sides of his nature had never been awakened, that others were barely touched, that none had developed fully. And yet he was painfully aware that something good and fine lay buried in him as in a grave, that it was perhaps already dead or lay hidden like gold in the heart of a mountain, and that it was high time that gold was put into circulation. But the treasure was deeply buried under a heap of rubbish and silt. It was as though he himself had stolen and buried in his own soul the treasures bestowed on him as a gift by the world and life. Something prevented him from launching out into the ocean of life and devoting all the powers of his mind and will to flying across it under full sail. Some secret enemy seemed to have laid a heavy hand upon him at the start of his journey and cast him a long way off from the direct purpose of human existence. And it seemed he would never find his way to the straight path from the wild and impenetrable jungle.”[1]


[1] Goncharov, Oblomov, translated by David Magarshak, (Harmondsworth, 1967), p. 101-102.

What a pity

"What a pity, when a man looks at himself in a glass he doesn't bark at himself, like a dog does, or fluff up in indignant fury, like a cat! What a pity he sees himself so wonderful, a little lower than the angels! and so  interesting!"[1]

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[1] DH Lawrence ‘Man’s Image’ Collected Poems (Harmondsworth, 1993) p 528.

Real life

"After all, to tell a long story about how I missed life through decaying morally in a corner, not having sufficient means, losing the habit of living, and carefully cultivating my anger underground – really is not interesting: a novel needs a hero, but here all the features of an anti-hero have purposely been collected, and most of all, the whole thing produces a bad impression, because we have all got out of the habit of living, we are in a greater or lesser degree crippled. We are so unused to living that we often feel something like loathing for ‘real life’ and so cannot bear to be reminded of it. We have really gone so far as to think of ‘real life’ as toil, almost as servitude, and we are all agreed, for our part, that it is better in books. And what is it we sometimes scratch about for? We don’t know ourselves. And it would be worse for us if our stupid whims were indulged. Just try giving us, for example, as much independence as possible, untie the hands of any one of us, loosen our bonds, and we… I assure you we should all immediately beg to go back under discipline. I know that you may be angry with me for saying this, you will cry out against me and stamp your foot: ‘You are talking only about yourself and your underground miseries, don’t dare speak of “all of us!” Excuse me, gentlemen, I am not trying to excuse myself with that allness. As for what concerns me personally, after all I have only carried to a logical conclusion in my life what you yourselves didn’t dare take more than half way; and you supposed your cowardice was common sense, and comforted yourselves with the self-deception. So perhaps I turn out to be more alive than you. Look harder! After all, we don’t even know where ‘real life’ is lived nowadays, or what it is, what name it goes by. Leave us to ourselves, without our books, and at once we get into a muddle and lose our way – we don’t know whose side to be on or where to give our allegiance, what to love and what to hate, what to respect and what to despise. We even find it difficult to be human beings, men with real flesh and blood of our own; we are ashamed of it, we think it a disgrace, and are always striving to be some unprecedented kind of generalized human being. We are born dead, and moreover we have ceased to be the sons of living fathers; and we become more and more contented with our condition. We are acquiring the taste for it. Soon we shall invent a method of being born from an idea. But that’s enough; I shall write no more from the underground…”[1]

[1] Dostoevsky Notes from Underground translated by Jessie Coulson (Harmondsworth 1972) pp 122-123