Tag: literature

It is much more productive to jump from a Sartre to a Swedenborg, to close the Bible and open the Upanishads, to move from history to metaphysics, than to gorge oneself on the same food, restricting the horizon of the intellect and depriving it of immersion in different subjects, values, and styles. Oscillating between extremes, searching for the valuable in everything, and absorbing as much of it as possible: with this technique, even the most renitent brain is forced to evolve.

If a shoemaker gave birth to hundreds of pages of metaphysical interpretations… I keep thinking: the writer who would dare to create a character like Jakob Boehme would fall into ridicule. It is inevitable. The reasoning does not admit of such a contrast; one would inevitably refuse to credit the narrative. Nevertheless, there it is… The mind’s first objection would be: “Such a thinker would never lower himself to manual labor.” Then it would go on, unbearable as usual: “Such reflections only spring from a nature one hundred percent devoted to the spiritual.” The conclusion: “Stupid and false history.” In the same way, it would judge if faced a living and talking Boehme. From this one can measure the vastness of the misery of objective thinking.

My rebellious fingers are itching after contact with Thomas Carlyle’s lectures. They want to answer him, they want to because they want to—but they will not. I regret to tell the slaves to control and content themselves with the brief irony they have already been allowed. Thomas Carlyle, indeed, is a remarkable and instructive intelligence; the interpretation of his “heroes” has much to add. I do not know why, analyzing him brings me Chesterton to mind: perhaps because both deserve, despite their patent incompatibility with me, my sincere handshake.