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The strange mistake was that of a man not yet aware that pride has no intrinsic substance, being no more than the name given to the soul devouring itself. When that loathsome perversion of love has borne its fruit, it has another, more meaningful and weightier name. We call it hatred.
XXXX~ Georges Bernanos, The Impostor
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Showing posts with label The Impostor. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Impostor. Show all posts
Monday, August 24, 2009
Sunday, August 23, 2009
Readings: Danger!
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From The Impostor by Georges Bernanos (this book has been kicking my lame ass all over the lot. I recommend it highly to any person who wants to believe that he knows himself pretty damned well):
Just as the wretched human race pitches its pathetic tents between hills thrown up in some terrible ancient cataclysm and scratches around in the cooling outer crust of a world that still has a raging abyss at its center, so he too had found a resting place at the very center of all his inner contradictions. He was living there in solitude, cut off from civilized life, all human contact, and his own terrible past.
[…]
At such a juncture, few men escape the double snare of either an ambiguous and nostalgic tenderness for what they have renounced for a sterile hatred, which is merely another form of remorse and completes their moral and psychological breakdown. No one is deceived by their violent behavior, and everyone sees them with spittle on their lips, begging the bread they have just thrown away and eternally hunger for. The fact that in their pride they now claim to be emancipated, unique, and alone hardly matters, for in reality they have an immense need of other people. They are merely dispossessed.
Ay-yi-yi!
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From The Impostor by Georges Bernanos (this book has been kicking my lame ass all over the lot. I recommend it highly to any person who wants to believe that he knows himself pretty damned well):
Just as the wretched human race pitches its pathetic tents between hills thrown up in some terrible ancient cataclysm and scratches around in the cooling outer crust of a world that still has a raging abyss at its center, so he too had found a resting place at the very center of all his inner contradictions. He was living there in solitude, cut off from civilized life, all human contact, and his own terrible past.
[…]
At such a juncture, few men escape the double snare of either an ambiguous and nostalgic tenderness for what they have renounced for a sterile hatred, which is merely another form of remorse and completes their moral and psychological breakdown. No one is deceived by their violent behavior, and everyone sees them with spittle on their lips, begging the bread they have just thrown away and eternally hunger for. The fact that in their pride they now claim to be emancipated, unique, and alone hardly matters, for in reality they have an immense need of other people. They are merely dispossessed.
Ay-yi-yi!
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Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Readings: Urbanity and Its Discontents
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The following excerpt is from the novel The Impostor by French writer, Georges Bernanos, translated into English by J.C. Whitehouse:
Through the darkness, gasping and groaning in their pleasure, cities call to us profoundly. The noise and glare of every street we cross follows us into the darkness, frightful, plaintive, becoming gradually more and more muted until we reach the edge of a new tumult which adds it own heartrending voice. Yet "voice" is not the right word, for only forests, hills, fire, and water have voices and speak their own language. We no longer really understand it, though even the coarsest of us cannot quite forget an old and hallowed harmony, a strange and wonderful affinity between things and our minds. The voice we no longer understand is still that of a tranquil friend or brother, bringing peace. The lowest of men, those devoted to carnal hedonism and the cult of the self whom our modern world has honored as gods, have foolishly believed that they have recreated that voice when all they have done is strip nature of the antiquated forest gods, dryads, and nymphs and replace them with their own barnyard sensuality.
Bernanos is describing Paris, but it might as well be Detroit. What more can I say?
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The following excerpt is from the novel The Impostor by French writer, Georges Bernanos, translated into English by J.C. Whitehouse:
Through the darkness, gasping and groaning in their pleasure, cities call to us profoundly. The noise and glare of every street we cross follows us into the darkness, frightful, plaintive, becoming gradually more and more muted until we reach the edge of a new tumult which adds it own heartrending voice. Yet "voice" is not the right word, for only forests, hills, fire, and water have voices and speak their own language. We no longer really understand it, though even the coarsest of us cannot quite forget an old and hallowed harmony, a strange and wonderful affinity between things and our minds. The voice we no longer understand is still that of a tranquil friend or brother, bringing peace. The lowest of men, those devoted to carnal hedonism and the cult of the self whom our modern world has honored as gods, have foolishly believed that they have recreated that voice when all they have done is strip nature of the antiquated forest gods, dryads, and nymphs and replace them with their own barnyard sensuality.
Bernanos is describing Paris, but it might as well be Detroit. What more can I say?
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