April 21, 2004

• If Only...

  
  

       "So you can't love me at all?"  Bigum gasped almost inaudibly.  "Oh, that's terrible, there is nothing in my soul that I wouldn't murder or degrade, if only I might win you by doing so.  No, no, if I were offered madness and in the visions of that madness, I possessed you, possessed you, then I would say: look, here is my mind, dig down into its wondrous construction with a careless hand and tear asunder all the fine fibers with which my soul is bound to the shining triumphal chariot of the human spirit, let me sink down into the temporal mire, beneath the chariot's wheel, and let the others pass by on their paths of glory up to the light.  Do you understand me?  Do you comprehend that even if your love came to me stripped of all its brightness, all the majesty of its purity, yes, even if it came to me debased, sullied, like a travesty of love, like a sickly phantom, I would receive it, on my knees, as if it were a holy host.  But the best in me is in vain, the worst in me is in vain.  I shout to the sun, but it does not shine, to the cloudy pillar, but it does not reply.  Reply!  What is there to reply to?  That I am suffering?  No, this inexpressible torment that is splitting my innermost being down to its deepest roots, this agony just repels you, offends you like a cold little insult, and you laugh scornfully in your heart at the poor tutor's impossible passion."

  
  

  - from Niels Lyhne by J.P. Jacobsen

  
  

   

  
  

  I wish I could write like this.  Or maybe I just need to work on feeling this first...

  • 10:25 pm
  • 4 Comments