*Steppenwolf
Steppenwolf - Herman Hesse
"When I read Metamorphosis, at seventeen, I realized I could be a writer. When I saw how Gregor Samsa could wake up one morning transformed into a gigantic beetle, I said to myself, "I didn't know you could do this, but if you can, I'm certainly interested in writing." - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
I am really glad I read this book. I know there's something a bit too uncomplicated about the clarity articulated, but the Magic Theater? Come on! That was perfect! The freedom of that idea is almost too much, the openness of it blurs into lack of clarity, but what freedom! For Madmen only! The gall of that. The gall of all of it, Hermine and Pablo, characters crafted in perfect compliment to a protagonist, characters that are otherwise opaque, and all this is excusable in the structure of first person, a first person that reads as unstable and brilliant and lost but so full of such wry, sarcastic hope.
"'Most men will not swim before they are able to.' Is that not witty? Naturally, they won't swim! They are born for the solid earth, not for the water. And naturally they won't think. They are made for life, not for thought. Yes, and he who thinks, what's more, he who makes thought his business, he may go far in it, but he has bartered the solid earth for the water all the same, and one day he will drown."
"After two or three notes of the piano the door was opened of a sudden to the other world. I sped through heaven and saw God at work. I suffered holy pains. I dropped all my defenses and was afraid of nothing in the world. I accepted all things and to all things I gave up my heart. It did not last very long, a quarter of an hour perhaps' but it returned to me in a dream at night, and since, though all the barren days, I caught a glimpse of it now and then. Sometimes for a minute or two I saw it clearly, threading my life like a divine and gold track. But nearly always it was blurred in dirt and dust. Then again it gleamed out in golden sparks as though never to be lost again and yet was soon quite lost once more. Once it happened, as I lay awake at night, that I suddenly spoke in verses, in verses so beautiful and strange that I did not venture to think of writing them down, and then in the morning they vanished; and yet they lay hidden within me like the hard kernel within an old brittle husk."
"Humor alone, that magnificent discovery of those who are cut short of in their calling to highest endeavor, those who falling short of tragedy are yet as rich in gifts as in affliction, humor alone (perhaps the most inborn and brilliant achievement of the spirit) attains to the impossible and brings every aspect of human existence within the rays of its prism."
"When I read Metamorphosis, at seventeen, I realized I could be a writer. When I saw how Gregor Samsa could wake up one morning transformed into a gigantic beetle, I said to myself, "I didn't know you could do this, but if you can, I'm certainly interested in writing." - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
I am really glad I read this book. I know there's something a bit too uncomplicated about the clarity articulated, but the Magic Theater? Come on! That was perfect! The freedom of that idea is almost too much, the openness of it blurs into lack of clarity, but what freedom! For Madmen only! The gall of that. The gall of all of it, Hermine and Pablo, characters crafted in perfect compliment to a protagonist, characters that are otherwise opaque, and all this is excusable in the structure of first person, a first person that reads as unstable and brilliant and lost but so full of such wry, sarcastic hope.
"'Most men will not swim before they are able to.' Is that not witty? Naturally, they won't swim! They are born for the solid earth, not for the water. And naturally they won't think. They are made for life, not for thought. Yes, and he who thinks, what's more, he who makes thought his business, he may go far in it, but he has bartered the solid earth for the water all the same, and one day he will drown."
"After two or three notes of the piano the door was opened of a sudden to the other world. I sped through heaven and saw God at work. I suffered holy pains. I dropped all my defenses and was afraid of nothing in the world. I accepted all things and to all things I gave up my heart. It did not last very long, a quarter of an hour perhaps' but it returned to me in a dream at night, and since, though all the barren days, I caught a glimpse of it now and then. Sometimes for a minute or two I saw it clearly, threading my life like a divine and gold track. But nearly always it was blurred in dirt and dust. Then again it gleamed out in golden sparks as though never to be lost again and yet was soon quite lost once more. Once it happened, as I lay awake at night, that I suddenly spoke in verses, in verses so beautiful and strange that I did not venture to think of writing them down, and then in the morning they vanished; and yet they lay hidden within me like the hard kernel within an old brittle husk."
"Humor alone, that magnificent discovery of those who are cut short of in their calling to highest endeavor, those who falling short of tragedy are yet as rich in gifts as in affliction, humor alone (perhaps the most inborn and brilliant achievement of the spirit) attains to the impossible and brings every aspect of human existence within the rays of its prism."
posted by Bobby Nintendo at 11:10 PM
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