People seem to believe that despair is the same as anguish, but it is not. It’s true that despair is surrounded by anguish, but at its core, despair is a silent, blank page.
Obey and hate yourself, survive. Disobey, redeem yourself, perish. I thought later how simply and quickly they had introduced that concept to me, as easily as breaking a little finger. For some reason they had decided not to beat me.
For all his attention to my historical education, my father had neglected to tell me this: history’s terrible moments were real. I understand now, decades later, that he could never have told me. Only history itself can convince you of such a truth. And once you’ve seen that truth – really seen it – you can’t look away.
I lay awake for hours in my twin bed next to the other, empty bed, feeling and hearing the spruces, the hemlocks, the rhododendron scraping at the partly open window, the verdant mountain out there in the night, the burgeoning of nature that did not seem to include me. And when, my restless body asked my teeming brain, had I agreed to be excluded?
It is a fact that we historians are interested in what is partly a reflection of ourselves, perhaps a part of ourselves we would rather not examine except through the medium of scholarship; it is also true that as we steep ourselves in our interests, they become more and more a part of us.
I like a puzzle, as you know. So does every scholar worth his salt. It’s the reward of the business, to look history in the eye and say, ‘I know who you are. You can’t fool me’.
In your country you don’t care about history, and in my country we cannot recover from it.
I remembered some of what I’d read in the past: the small group of the original Impressionists, including one woman-Berthe Morisot- who’d first banded together in 1874 to exhibit works in a style that the Paris Salon found too experimental for inclusion. We postmoderns take them for granted, or disdain them, or love them too easily.
That is the beauty of the solid Marxist education you did not have the privilege of receiving. Believe me, you can find labor issues in any topic if you look hard enough.
In this spot, he is housed in evil. Reader, unbury him with a word.
This time I felt my own face redden. Talking with this woman was like sitting still for a series of slaps, delivered arhythmically so you couldn’t know when the next one was coming.
Looking down on their glossy heads, I realized that they were indeed threatened; they were simply unaware of it. We are all vulnerable.
He reminded her of the way male lions look sad, as if their nobility is a terrible weight.
And once you’ve seen that truth – really seen it – you can’t look away.
I wondered again if I might not actually be dead-if this was some terrible version of death, which I had momentarily mistaken for a continuation of life.
I knew people who dreamed all the time about going somewhere else, and they let that ruin their lives. When you are not allowed to do something, it often becomes very important.
I would not allow anyone into the center of myself; I would make myself a place to go, deep inside, no matter what happened.
But when you accept an intruder for too long, you invite him back later as a guest.
If my conscience had been a person at that moment, I might have strangled him.
It was as if she could hear music, where there was no music.