It is really impressive to contrast the harmless appearance of letters with their marvelous power of evocation. In fact, their ability to describe precisely and in detail is unparalleled, allowing the mind to produce vivid images that can always be recalled. It is enough to think back to Dostoevsky’s Petersburg, dark and snow-covered, with open taverns and coachmen passing to and fro; the Brazilian hinterland, the suburbs of London, Lisbon and the Alto Minho… all of this appears with impressive vividness, accompanied by the emotional charge coming from the setting evoked. The numerous characters, their choices and their mishaps, the ever particular atmosphere that emanates from each work… It is, in fact, thanks to letters, a life created, mentally lived and assimilated, whose impressions are remembered forever. And all of this is unsuspected by anyone who does not read.
Every Preface Is More or Less Useless
Every preface is more or less useless, and because that is the norm, it is natural that, from the very first line, it tends to bore the reader. In other words: if something really important is to be said about the work, let it be said there. However, the practice legitimizes prefaces, even if they rarely prove useful. But there are prefaces, God!, there are prefaces which, not satisfied with their own uselessness, want to jeopardize the work that has not even begun! There is nothing more annoying than this idle display of erudition, which fills the lines with foreign terms and pretends to express a depth that the work itself is incapable of. We read them and we feel imbued with an immediate and one hundred percent unnecessary antipathy towards the author. The question is: why, God, why?
Often What Motivates Misanthropy…
Often what motivates misanthropy is not a total repulsion for what is evil in man, but simply a divergence of interests. To put it this way, it sounds like a small thing, but there are differences that are so complete that contact is always a hindrance, always a waste of time, if not an annoyance. And so the search for a point of contact that is known not to exist becomes painful. Without it, there is no possible human relationship, and if there cannot be one, searching for it comes down, as the popular expression goes, to punching a knife.
What Is Valuable About Theosophists…
What is valuable about Theosophists, at least at first, is not the syncretism of the doctrine they profess, but the initial impulse to study and understand different doctrines, seeking in them what is true and good. In short, it is that old humility in the face of the unknown, that genuine interest in the different, which begins with the granting of credit, manifested in a willingness to listen. So obvious and so basic. If theosophy were to teach people this one virtue, it would already have proved invaluable. All the rest is moaning.