“The more I love humanity in general the less I love man in particular. In my dreams, I often make plans for the service of humanity, and perhaps I might actually face crucifixion if it were suddenly necessary. Yet I am incapable of living in the same room with anyone for two days together. I know from experience. As soon as anyone is near me, his personality disturbs me and restricts my freedom. In twenty-four hours I begin to hate the best of men: one because he’s too long over his dinner, another because he has a cold and keeps on blowing his nose. I become hostile to people the moment they come close to me. But it has always happened that the more I hate men individually the more I love humanity.” -- Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
It occurs to me, Mr. Dostoyevsky sir, that maybe this is the reason writers lock themselves away, creating for endless hours a world of their own making, turning imagined universals into expressions of singularity by the creation of characters and specific events, through which readers, in their individuality, will recognize some of these features and thereby, tap into their own pretensions of universality and singing brotherhood. And everyone can feel uniquely, wonderfully solitary and comfortingly connected to some grand scheme of human purpose and insight, all at the same time. Something like that.
Dear Mary, I have to start formally like this because I really have NO IDEA how it happened that I opened my dashboard and found your blog. Until right now, I had not heard of you or your blog. I scrolled up and down and found good things to read here. (Some of it in the very longest of sentences.) Okay...let's be friends. I'll tag along and read more as time goes by. In the meantime, you are welcome aboard Steadfast. Come taste the new batch of red wine we just uncorked.
ReplyDeleteRosemary
Brother Dostoyevsky :) Two days is pretty good.
ReplyDelete@Rosemary...I have a secret way to impose my blog onto your dashboard. I wish :-). Thanks for taking a look. I will try to control my sentences in the future!
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