Golden Pavilion Quotes

What transforms this world is — knowledge. Do you see what I mean? Nothing else can change anything in this world. Knowledge alone is capable of transforming the world, while at the same time leaving it exactly as it is. When you look at the world with knowledge, you realize that things are unchangeable and at the same time are constantly being transformed.

The special quality of hell is to see everything clearly down to the last detail.

Anything can become excusable when seen from the standpoint of the result

If the world changed, I could not exist, and if I changed, the world could not exist

For clearly it is impossible to touch eternity with one hand and life with the other.

When people concentrate on the idea of beauty, they are, without realizing it, confronted with the darkest thoughts that exist in this world. That, I suppose, is how human beings are made.

The past does not only draw us back to the past. There are certain memories of the past that have strong steel springs and, when we who live in the present touch them, they are suddenly stretched taut and then they propel us into the future.

Yet how strange a thing is the beauty of music! The brief beauty that the player brings into being transforms a given period of time into pure continuance; it is certain never to be repeated; like the existence of dayflies and other such short-lived creatures, beauty is a perfect abstraction and creation of life itself. Nothing is so similar to life as music.

Other people must be destroyed. In order that I might truly face the sun, the world itself must be destroyed....

To see human beings in agony, to see them covered in blood and to hear their death groans, makes people humble. It makes their spirits delicate, bright, peaceful. It's never at such times that we become cruel or bloodthirsty. No, it's on a beautiful spring afternoon like this that people suddenly become cruel. It's at a moment like this, don't you think, while one's vaguely watching the sun as it peeps through the leaves of the trees above a well-mown lawn? Every possible nightmare in the world, every possible nightmare in history, has come into being like this.

I was born with gloomy nature. I do not think I have ever known what it is to be cheerful and at ease.

Insensitive people are only upset when they actually see the blood, but actually by the time that the blood has been shed the tragedy has already completed.

Thus in a single phrase I can define the great illusion concerning 'love' in this world. It is the effort to join reality with the apparition.

Let the darkness that is in my heart become equal to the darkness of the night that surrounds those innumerable lights!

Only knowledge can turn life's unbearableness into a weapon.

Amid the moon and the stars, amid the clouds of the night, amid the hills which bordered on the sky with their magnificent silhouette of pointed cedars, amid the speckled patches of the moon, amid the temple buildings that emerged sparkling white out of the surrounding darkness - amid all this, I was intoxicated by the pellucid beauty of Uiko's treachery.

It seemed that hell could appear day or night, at any time, at any place, simply in response to one's thoughts or wishes. It seemed that we could summon it at our pleasure and that instantly it would appear.

As usual, it occurred to me that words were the only thing that could possibly save me from this situation. This was a characteristic misunderstanding on my part. When action was needed, I was absorbed in words; for words proceeded with such difficulty from my mouth that I was intent on them and forgot all about action. It seemed to me that actions, which are dazzling, varied things, must always be accompanied by equally dazzling and equally varied words.

So far as feelings were concerned, there was no discrepancy between the very finest feeling in this world and the very worst; that their effect was the same; that no visible difference existed between murderous intent and feelings of deep compassion.

The others laughed and Burt said, "All you need are girls who paddle like boys, and you're set!

But there is no such thing as individual knowledge, a particular knowledge belonging to one special person or group. Knowledge is the sea of humanity, the field of humanity, the general condition of human existence.

Besides, like a man who knows he is dying, he felt a need to be equally tender to all.

At such times I felt as though I was drenched up to my neck in the existence that was myself.

How shall I put it? Beauty-yes, beauty is like a decayed tooth. It rubs against one's tongue, it hangs there, hurting one, insisting on its own existence, finally it gets so that one cannot stand the pain and one goes to the dentist to have the tooth extracted, Then, as one looks at the small, dirty, brown, blood-stained tooth lying in one's hand, one's thoughts are likely to be as follows: ‘Is this it? Is this all it was? That thing which caused me so much pain, which made me constantly fret about its existence, which was stubbornly rooted within me, is now merely a dead object. But is this thing really the,same as that thing? If this originally belonged to my outer existence, why-through what sort of providence-did it become attached to my inner existence and succeed in causing me so much pain? What was the basis of this creature's existence? Was the basis within me? Or was it within this creature itself? Yet this creature which has been pulled out of my mouth and which now lies in my hand is something utterly different. Surely it cannot be that?

To put it in a rather vulgar way, I had been dreaming about love in the firm belief that I could not be loved, but at the final stage I had substituted desire for love and felt a sort of relief. But in the end I had understood that desire itself demanded for its fulfillment that I should forget about the conditions of my existence, and that I should abandon what for me constituted the only barrier to love, namely the belief that I could not be loved. I had always thought of desire as being something clearer than it really is, and I had not realized that it required people to see themselves in a slightly dreamlike, unreal way.

It was certainly not consolation that Kashiwagi sought in beauty. .. What he loved was that for a short while after his breath had brought beauty into existence in the air, his own clubfeet and gloomy thinking remained there, more clearly and more vividly than before. The uselessness of beauty, the fact that beauty which had passed through his body left no mark there whatsoever, that it changed absolutely nothing- it was this that Kashiwagi loved.

but this girl simply let my hands gather on her own small, plump hands, like flies gathering on someone who is taking a nap.

I was born with a gloomy nature. I do not think I have ever known what it is to be cheerful and at ease.

And the trap into which the deformed person finally falls does not lie in his resolving the state of antagonism between himself and the world, but instead takes the form of his completely approving of this antagonism. That's why a deformed person can never really be cured.

I realized that his death severed the one and only thread that still connected me with the bright world of daylight. It was because of the lost daylight, the lost brightness, the lost summer, that I was crying.

In Kyoto I never experienced an air raid, but once when I was sent to the main factory in Osaka with some orders for spare parts for aircraft, there happened to be an attack and I saw one of the factory workers being carried out on a stretcher with his intestines exposed. What is so ghastly about exposed intestines? Why, when we see the insides of a human being do we have to cover our eyes in terror? Why are people so shocked by the sight of blood pouring out? Why are a man's intestines ugly? Is it not exactly the same in quality as the beauty of youthful, glossy skin? What sort of face would Tsurukawa make if I were to say that it was from him I had learned this manner of speaking - a manner of thinking that transformed my own ugliness into nothingness? Why does there seem to be something inhuman about regarding human beings like roses and refusing to make any distinction between the inside of their bodies and the outside? If only human beings could reverse their spirits and their bodies, could gracefully turn them inside out like rose petals and expose them to the spring breeze and the sun . . .

Soldier gave her a week or two to get over the golden haired Prince with the character of a horned toad and the soul of a slug

Sự phản trắc của nàng cũng giống như sự phản trắc của các vì sao và những chòm tùng bách nhọn hoắt.

Other people are all witnesses. If no other people exists, shame would never be born in the world.

Самотата ми набъбваше като угоявана свиня.

It is no exaggeration to say that the first real problem I faced in my life was that of beauty.

We do not collide with our destiny all of a sudden.

Thus in a single phrase I can define the great illusion concerning ‘love’ in this world. It is the effort to join reality with the apparition. Presently I came to realize that my conviction—the conviction that I could never be loved-was itself the basic state of human existence

Then I noticed the pack of cigarettes in my other pocket. I took one out and started smoking. I felt like a man who settles down for a smoke after finishing a job of work. I wanted to live.

the fact of not being understood by others had been my sole source of pride since my early youth, and I had not the slightest impulse to express myself in such a way that I might be understood. When I did try to clarify my thoughts and actions, I did so with no consideration whatsoever. I do not know whether or not this was because I wanted to understand myself. Such a motive is in accord with a person's real character and comes automatically to form a bridge between himself and others

In general, things that were endowed with life did not, like the Golden Temple, have the rigid quality of existing once and for all. Human beings were merely allotted one part of nature's various attributes and, by an effective method of substitution, they diffused that part and made it multiply.

Because the fact of not being understood by other people had become my only real source of pride, I was never confronted by any impusle to express things and to make others understand something that I knew. I thought that those things which could be seen by others were not ordained for me. My solitude grew more and more obese, just like a pig.

Stutter, stutter!

Anything can become excusable when seen from the standpoint of the result.

Юношеството ми бе оцветено в бледи и мътни тонове. Светът на черните сенки ме ужасяваше, но и ярката дневна светлина не ми принадлежеше.

처마에서 빗소리가 들렸다. 그것은 그곳에만 내리는 듯한 빗소리였다. 비가 사방에 내리지 못하고, 이 거리의 한구석에 숨어 들어와 우뚝 멈춰 선 듯한 느낌이었다. 그 소리는, 내가 있는 장소처럼, 광대한 밤으로부터 분리되어 있었다. 머리맡에 있는 사방등의 희미한 불빛 아래처럼 국한된 세계의 빗소리였다.

남에게 이해되지 않는다는 점이 나의 유일한 긍지였다.

In order that I might truly face the sun, the world itself must be destroyed.

Drab?" Soldier yelled. "I'll give you drab. Beat her, would you? Beat my wife? I'll feed your head to the vultures, you snotty little hamster with your golden pelt and buttery looks!

My stuttering, I need hardly say, placed an obstacle between me and the outside world. It is the first sound that I have trouble in uttering. This first sound is like a key to the door that separates my inner world from the world outside, and I have never known that key to turn smoothly in its lock. Most people, thanks to their easy command of words, can keep this door between the inner world and the outer world wide open, so that the air passes freely between the two; but for me this has been quite impossible. Thick rust has gathered on the key.

[...] Lo cual no excluía que el Pabellón de Oro no tardase, tal vez, a verse reducido a cenizas por las bombas incendiarias. Tal y como iban las cosas, EL PABELLÓN DE ORO MUY PRONTO NO SERÍA MÁS QUE UN MONTÓN DE CENIZAS: ESTO ERA SEGURO. A partir del momento en que esta idea se instaló en mí, todo lo que había de trágico en la belleza del templo se acrecentó todavía más.

패전의 충격, 민족적 비애 따위에 금각은 초연했다. 혹은 초연을 가장하고 있었다. 어제까지의 금각은 이렇지 않았다. 결국 공습으로 불타지 않았다는 사실, 오늘 이후로는 이미 그럴 걱정이 없다는 사실, 이러한 사실들이 금각으로 하여금 다시 '옛날부터 나는 여기에 있었고 미래에도 영원히 여기에 있으리라'하는 표정을 되찾게 했음에 틀림없다.

Единствено съзнанието може да преобрази този свят. Само то и нищо друго. Да го преобрази, без да го променя, схващаш ли? Ако погледнеш на света през очите на съзнанието, ще разбереш, че той е неизменим и в същото време постоянно се преобразява. Ще попиташ каква ни е ползата от това? Човек, драги, е въоръжен със съзнание, тъкмо за да направи живота поносим. Животните нямат нужда от такова оръжие, на тях не им трябва съзнание. Но хората наистина се нуждаят от нещо и с помощта на съзнанието са в състояние да превърнат самата непоносимост на живота в оръжие, макар от това тя изобщо да не намалява.

How cursed a thing it was! Yes, in the cries of the cicadas that echoed from the surrounding hills, I could hear this eternity, which was like a curse on my head, which had shut me up in the golden plaster.

몸 파는 여자들은 손님을 사랑해서 받는 것이 아니야. 노인이건, 거지건, 애꾸눈이건, 미남이건, 모른다면 문둥이라도 손님으로 받겠지. 평범한 사람이라면 이러한 평등성에 안심하고 첫 여자를 사겠지. 하지만 나에게는 이 평등성이 마음에 들지 않았어. 사지가 멀쩡한 사내와 내가 같은 자격으로 받아들여진다는 사실이 참을 수 없었고, 그건 나에게 엄청난 자기 모독으로 느껴졌거든.

영원의, 절대적인 금각이 출현하여 내 눈이 그 금각의 눈으로 변할 때 세계는 이처럼 변모한다는 사실을, 그리고 그 변모한 세계에서는 금각만이 형태를 유지하고 미를 점유하며 그 밖의 것들은 흙먼지로 만들어버린다는 사실을 이 이상 장황하게 설명하지는 않겠다. 이전에 금각의 정원에서 창녀를 밟은 이후로, 또한 쓰루카와가 급사한 이후로 내 마음은 다음과 같은 질문을 되풀이했다. '과연 악은 가능할까?

남의 고통과 피와 단말마의 신음을 보는 게 인간을 겸허하게 만들 뿐만 아니라, 마음을 섬세하고 밝고 부드럽게 만드는데도 말이야. 우리들이 잔인해지거나 살벌해지거나 하는 것은 결코 그러한 때가 아니야. 우리들이 갑자기 잔인해지는 건, 가령 이렇게 화창한 봄날 오후에 잘 다듬어진 잔디밭 위에서, 나뭇가지 사이로 햇살이 스미듯 비치는 모습을 무심코 바라보고 있을 때와 같은, 그러한 순간이라고 생각하지 않니?

Wat een - hoe zal ik het zeggen - verblindend iets was dat hoongelach. Het wrede, bij hun leeftijd passende gelach van mijn klasgenoten leek mij een felle schittering te zijn als van licht, dat van een bundel baderen terugkaatst.

불안이 전혀 없고 발붙일 곳이 전혀 없는, 그러한 상황에서 나의 독창적인 삶이 시작됐지. 나는 무엇을 위해 살고 있는가? 이러한 점에 사람들은 불안을 느끼고 자살하기도 하지. 나에게는 아무것도 아니야. 안짱다리가 내 삶의 조건이고 이유이며 목적이자 이상이고...... 삶 그 자체이니까. 존재하고 있다는 것만으로 나는 충분하니까. 원래 존재의 불안이란 자신이 충분히 존재하지 않는다는 사치스러운 불만에서 생겨나는게 아닐까?

É certo que me influenciaram e são mais ou menos responsáveis pelo acto que cometi em seguida; quero porém continuar a pensar que esse acto é apenas meu, e ficaria especialmente irritado se o imputassem à influência directa de alguma filosofia existente.

he had not carried the slightest mark of being destined for a premature death, he had been constitutionally free of all uneasiness and grief and had born no element that even vaguely resembled death. Perhaps it was precisely because of this that he had died so suddenly. Perhaps it had been impossible to save Tsurukawa from death just because he was composed of only the pure ingredients of life and had the frailty of a pure-blooded animal. In this case it would seem that I, on the contrary, was fated to live to a cursed old age

Every morning a great wall of fog descends upon the city of San Francisco. It begins far out at sea. It forms over the Farallons, covering the sea lions on their rocks, and then it sweeps onto Ocean Beach, filling the long green bowl of Golden Gate Park. The fog obscures the early morning joggers and the lone practitioners of tai chi. It mists up the windows of the Glass Pavilion. It creeps over the entire city, over the monuments and movie theaters, over the Panhandle dope dens and the flophouses in the Tenderloin. The fog covers the pastel Victorian mansions in Pacific Heights and shrouds the rainbow-colored houses in the Haight. It walks up and down the twisting streets of Chinatown; it boards the cable cars, making their clanging bells sound like buoys; it climbs to the top of Coit Tower until you can’t see it anymore; it moves in on the Mission, where the mariachi players are still asleep; and it bothers the tourists. The fog of San Francisco, that cold, identity-cleansing mist that rolls over the city every day, explains better than anything else why that city is what it is.

Mes nesusiduriame su savo lemtimi netikėtai. Vyras, kuriam kažkada bus įvykdyta mirties bausmė, visuomet - pakeliui į darbą pamatęs elektros stulpą, pereidamas traukinio bėgius - mintyse piešia vietos, kurioje jam bus įvykdyta mirties bausmė vaizdinį, artimiau su juo susipažįsta.

Please let the evil that is in my heart increase and multiply indefinitely, so that it may correspond in every particular with that vast light before my eyes! Let the darkness of my heart, in which that evil is enclosed, equal the darkness of the night, which encloses those countless lights!

What I learned from this amazing process was that so far as feelings were concerned, there was no discrepancy between the very finest feeling in the world and the very worst; that their effect was the same; that no visible difference existed between murderous intent and feelings of deep compassion.

Међутим, како је чудна лепота музике! Краткотрајна лепота коју свирач остварује претвара одређено време у чист континуитет; попут постојања мушица које живе један дан и других бића тако кратког века, лепота је савршена апстракција и креација самог живота. Ништа није тако слично животу као музика...

나는 행위의 일보 직전까지 준비했다"라고 중얼거렸다. 행위 그 자체를 완전히 꿈꿨고, 내가 그 꿈을 완전히 살았던 이상, 더 이상의 행위가 필요한 것일까? 이미 그것은 무의미한 일이 아닐까? 가시와기가 말한 것은 아마도 사실인 듯하다. 세계를 바꾸는 것은 행위가 아니라 인식이라고 그는 말했다. 최후의 순간까지 행위를 모방하려는 인식도 있다. 내 인식은 그런 종류의 것이었다. 그리고 행위를 완전히 무효로 만드는 것도 이런 종류의 인식인 것이다. 그러고 보니 나의 오랫동안의 주도면밀한 준비는 오로지 행위를 하지 않아도 좋다는 최후의 인식 때문이 아니었을까?

나는 이러한 얼굴에 직면한다. 중요한 비밀을 고백할 때에도, 미에 대한 격렬한 감동을 호소할 때에도, 자신의 내장을 꺼내어 보여주는 듯한 경우에도, 내가 직면하는 것은 이러한 얼굴이다. 인간은 평소에 인간을 향해 이러한 얼굴을 보이면 안 된다. 그 얼굴은 더할 나위 없이 충실히 나의 우스꽝스러운 초조감을 그대로 흉내 내어, 마치 무시무시한 거울처럼 변해 있었다. 아무리 잘생긴 얼굴이라도, 그럴 때에는 나와 똑같이 추한 얼굴로 변모한다. 그것을 본 순간 내가 표현하려고 생각했던 중요한 것들은 기왓장이나 다를 바 없는 무가치한 존재로 전락하고 만다.......

Giữa những vì sao, giữa những áng mây êm, giữa những núi đồi viền lấy bầu trời với nhiều hình bóng tráng lệ của các chòm cây tùng bách nhọt hoắt, giữa những đốm trăng lọt qua lá cành, giữa những tòa kiến trúc sừng sững long lanh trắng toát - giữa tất cả những cái đó, vẻ đẹp tươi sáng trong sự phản trắc do Uiko làm tôi say mê.

Ала за мен Златният храм не беше просто абстрактно понятие. Планините го скриваха от погледа ми, но при желание винаги можех да отида и да го видя. В този смисъл красотата бе все пак нещо, което можех да пипна в ръка, да видя с очите си. Знаех и вярвах, че храмът е неизменен и вечен независимо от всевъзможните промени на този свят. Понякога си представях, че е изящна миниатюра, която мога да взема в ръка; друг път той ставаше огромен и чудовищен и върхът му се губеше в небесата. Бях твърде млад, за да си давам ясна сметка, че красотата не може да е нито малка, нито голяма, а винаги умерена. Лете, видех ли влажно от утринната роса цвете, излъчващо сякаш бледо сияние, веднага си казвах, че е прекрасно като Златния храм. А когато над отсрещните хълмове се събираха черни, раздирани от светкавици буреносни облаци, опасани със златен кант, мрачното им великолепие също ме навеждаше на мисълта за него. Стигна се дотам, че и при вида на нечие красиво лице в душата си прошепвах: „Очарователно като Златния храм.

A type of cipher seemed to operate in my general experience of life. As in a corridor of mirrors, a single image is reflected again and again to an endless depth. Things that I had seen in the past were clearly reflected on those that I encountered for the first time, and I felt that I was being led by such resemblances into the inner recesses of the corridor, some fathomless inner chamber. We do not collide with our destiny all of a sudden. The man who later in his life is to be executed is constantly, every time that he sees a telegraph pole on his way to work, every time that he passes a railway crossing, drawing an image in his mind of the execution site, and is becoming familiar with that image.

Точно тогава пред мен изникна Златният храм. Изящна, мрачна, изпълнена с огромно достойнство конструкция. Древната ѝ позлата, вече излиняла и поолющена, напомняше за някогашното великолепие. Да, Златният храм – едновременно близък и далечен, роден и чужд, но винаги прозрачен и недосегаем, винаги някъде там, но и тук, на непостижимо за разума разстояние.

He was fully aware that beauty is a thing which must sleep and which, in sleeping, must be protected by knowledge. But there is no such thing as individual knowledge, a particular knowledge belonging to one special person or group. Knowledge is the sea of humanity, the field of humanity, the general condition of human existence. I think that is what he wanted to say.

It was suitable that he, whose life had been so incomparably pure a structure, should suffer the pure death of an accident. In that collision, which had lasted no more than a second, there had been a sudden contact and his life had merged with his death. A swift chemical action. Without doubt it was only by such a drastic method that this strange, shadowless young man could join both his shadow and his death.

What transforms this world is — knowledge. Do you see what I mean? Nothing else can change anything in this world. Knowledge alone is capable of transforming the world, while at the same time leaving it exactly as it is. When you look at the world with knowledge, you realize that things are unchangeable and at the same time are constantly being transformed. You may ask what good it does us. Let's put it this way — human beings possess the weapon of knowledge in order to make life bearable. For animals such things aren't necessary. Animals don't need knowledge or anything of the sort to make life bearable. But human beings do need something, and with knowledge they can make the very intolerableness of life a weapon, though at the same time that intolerableness is not reduced in the slightest. That's all there is to it.

Не преувеличавам, но докато го гледах, коленете ми се разтрепераха, а челото ми се покри с ледени капки пот. Някога, преди години, след първата ни среща отделните му детайли, а и цялостният му облик, се свързваха в душата ми в своеобразна музикална хармония. Но сега чувах дълбока тишина, пълновластно безмълвие. Тук нищо не течеше, нищо не се променяше. Златният храм стоеше, извисяваше се над мен като ужасяваща пауза след пленителна хармония от мощни звуци.

What I dreamed of was something like a huge heavenly compressor that would bring down disasters, cataclysms and superhuman tragedies, that would crush beneath it all human beings and all objects, irrespective of their ugliness or their beauty. Sometimes the unusual brilliance of the early spring sky appeared to me like the light of the cool blade of some huge axe that was large enough to cover the entire earth. Then I just waited for the axe to fall—for it to fall with a speed that would not even give one time to think.

In the distance, I could see Skanda sitting on a pavilion wreathed in lotus blossoms and flanked with serving girls. He was, as I had guessed, fat. And in his golden jacket, he indeed looked like a toad. “Ah, I remember him,” muttered Kamala. “He’s my half-brother.” “Nasty, nasty.” “I know.” “Would you like me to eat him?” “Definitely not,” I said, a little too quickly. I patted Kamala’s neck. “But I appreciate your offer. It was almost nice.” “It is nice to be nice,” said Kamala with a sage nod. “And it is also nice to eat people,” she added as an afterthought.

Стоях на единия бряг на езерото Кьоко, а залязващото слънце огряваше ярко фасадата му на отвъдния. Рибарският павилион Сосей бе полускрит от главния корпус. Храмът хвърляше изумителна по съвършенството си сянка върху покритата с водорасли повърхност на езерото. Сянката превъзхождаше по красота самата сграда. Залязващото слънце караше отражението във водата да се полюлява върху стрехите и на трите етажа. За разлика от светлината наоколо тези отблясъци заслепяваха очите и им пречеха да обхванат размерите на храма. Затова той приличаше на картина с нарушена перспектива.

The adumbration of beauty contained in one detail was linked with the subsequent adumbration of beauty, and so it was that the various adumbrations of a beauty which did not exist had become the underlying motif of the Golden Temple. Such adumbrations were signs of nothingness. Nothingness was the very structure of this beauty. Therefore, from the incompletion of the various details of this beauty there arose automatically an adumbration of nothingness, and this delicate building, wrought of the most slender timber, was trembling in anticipation of nothingness, like a jeweled necklace tremoling in the wind.

Father's face was buried in early summer flowers. There was something gruesome about the utter freshness of those flowers. It was as though they were peering down into the bottom of a well. For a dead man's face falls to an infinite depth beneath the surface which the face possessed when it was alive, leaving nothing for the survivors to see but the frame of a mask; it falls so deep, indeed, that it can never be pulled back to the surface. A dead man's face can tell us better than anything else in this world how far removed we are from the true existence of physical substance, how impossible it is for us to lay hands on the way in which this substance exists.

Nu-i greu de imaginat că un tânăr ca mine ajunge să îmbrățișeze două năzuințe complet opuse. La istorie îmi plăcea prezentarea despoților. Mă închipuiam un tiran bâlbâit, dar taciturn; slujitorii urmăreau cu sufletul la gură orice expresie de pe chipul meu, tremurând zi și noapte ca varga. Cred că nu-i nevoie să-mi mai justific cruzimea în cuvinte alese. Tăcerea poate fi și ea grăitoare. Mă amuza gândul că m-aș putea răzbuna pedepsindu-mi profesorii și colegii care m-au chinuit zi de zi. Pe de altă parte, mă închipuiam mare artist, înzestrat cu cea mai limpede dintre viziuni - un adevărat suveran al lumii interioare. Aspectul meu exterior lăsa de dorit, dar interiorul devenea mai bogat decât al oricui.

Knowledge alone is capable of transforming the world, while at the same time leaving it exactly as it is. When you look at the world with knowledge, you realize that things are unchangeable and at the same time are constantly being transformed. You may ask what good it does us. Let's put it this way —human beings possess the weapon of knowledge in order to make life bearable. For animals such things aren't necessary. Animals don't need knowledge or anything of the sort to make life bearable. But human beings do need something, and with knowledge they can make the very intolerableness of life a weapon, though at the same time that intolerableness is not reduced in the slightest. That's all there is to it.

Неудивительно, что заикание воздвигало стену между мной и окружающим миром. Труднее всего давался мне первый звук слова, он был вроде ключа от той двери, что отделяла меня от остальных людей, и ключ этот вечно застревал в замочной скважине. Все прочие свободно владели своей речью, дверь, соединяющая их внутренний мир с миром внешним, всегда была нараспашку, и вольный ветер гулял туда и обратно, не встречая преград. Мне же это раз и навсегда было заказано, мне достался ключ, изъеденный ржавчиной. Я был совсем один, Золотой Храм, абсолютный и всеобъемлющий, окутывал меня со всех сторон. Кто кому принадлежал – я Храму или он мне? Или же нам удалось достичь редчайшего равновесия и Храм стал мною, а я стал Храмом?

Well, -beauty that you love so much—is an illusion of the remaining part, the excessive part, which has been consigned to knowledge. It is an illusion of the “other way to bear life” which you mentioned. One could say that in fact there is no such thing as beauty. What makes the illusion so strong, what imparts it with such a power of reality, is precisely knowledge. From the point of view of knowledge, beauty is never a consolation. It may be a woman, it may be one's wife, but it's never a consolation. Yet from the marriage between this beautiful thing which is never a consolation, on the one hand, and knowledge, on the other, something is born, It is as evanescent as a bubble and utterly hopeless. Yet something is born. That something is what people call art!

Cum puteam să-mi întind mâinile spre trăirea clipei când eram atât de fermecat de frumusețe? Poate avea și frumusețea dreptul de a-mi cere să abandonez fosta țintă. Pentru că este absolut imposibil să prinzi cu o mână eternitatea și cu cealaltă clipa. Presupunând că sensul acțiunilor care vizează viața este acela de a făgădui devotament unei anumite clipe și efortul de a opri clipa în loc, poate că Templul de aur știa foarte bine lucrul acesta și, de la o vreme, încetase să fie indiferent față de mine. [...] În astfel de momente, eternitatea frumuseții ne poate anihila viața si otrăvi existența. Frumusețea de moment pe care ne-o oferă viața este neputincioasă în fața acestei otrăvi. Otrava o zdrobește și o distruge pe loc, expunând însăși viața pericolului suprem.

The world that Tsurukawa had inhabited was overflowing with bright feelings and good intentions. Yet I can definitely affirm that it was not thanks to his misunderstandings or to his sweet, gentle judgments that he lived there. That bright heart of his, which did not belong to this world, was backed by a strength and by a powerful resiliency, and it was these that had come to regulate his actions. There was something superbly accurate about the way in which he had been able to translate each of my dark feelings into bright feelings. Sometimes I had suspected that Tsurukawa had actually experienced my own feelings, just because bis brightness corresponded so accurately to my darkness, because the contrast between our feelings was so perfect. But no, it was not so! The brightness of his world was both pure and one-sided. It had brought into being its own detailed system, and it possessed a precision which might also have approached the precision of evil. If that young man's bright, transparent world had not constantly been supported by his untiring bodily power, it might instantly have collapsed.

One of the sturdiest precepts of the study of human delusion is that every golden age is either past or in the passing. During 1941, in the wake of that outburst of gaudy hopefulness, the World’s Fair, a sizable portion of the citizens of New York City had the odd experience of feeling for the time in which they were living, at the very moment they were living in it, that strange blend of optimism and nostalgia which is the usual hallmark of the aetataureate delusion. The rest of the world was busy feeding itself, country by country, to the furnace, but while the city’s newspapers and newsreels at the Trans-Lux were filled with ill portents, defeats, atrocities, and alarms, the general mentality of the New Yorker was not one of siege, panic, or grim resignation to fate but rather the toe-wiggling, tea-sipping contentment of a woman curled on a sofa, reading in front of a fire with cold rain rattling against the windows. The economy was experiencing a renewal not only of sensation but of perceptible movement in its limbs, Joe DiMaggio hit safely in fifty-six straight games, and the great big bands reached their suave and ecstatic acme in the hotel ballrooms and moth-lit summer pavilions of America.

It is said that the essence of Zen is the absence of all particularities, and that the real power to see consists in the knowledge that one's own heart possesses neither form nor feature. Yet the power to sec, which is capable of properly envisaging the absence of feature, must be exceedingly keen in resisting the charm of formal appearances. How can a person who is unable to see forms or features with selfless keenness so vividly see and apprehend formlessness and featurelessness? Thus the clear form of a person like Tsurukawa who emitted brightness by the mere fact of his existence, of a person who could be reached by both hands and eyes, who could in fact be called life for life's sake, might, now that this person was dead, serve as the clearest possible metaphor to describe unclear formlessness; and his sense of his own existence might become the most real, existent model of formless nihility. It seemed, indeed, as though he himself might now have become nothing more than such a metaphor. For example, the aptness and suitability of the juxtaposition between Tsurukawa and May flowers was precisely the aptness and suitability of those flowers which, as a result of his sudden May death, had been thrown onto his coffin.

When I put together my early bands, usually some other singer who was short of one would take it away. It seemed like this happened every time one of my bands was fully formed. I couldn’t understand how this was possible seeing that these guys weren’t any better at singing or playing than I was. What they did have was an open door to gigs where there was real money. Anybody who had a band could play at park pavilions, talent shows, county fairgrounds, auctions and store openings, but those gigs didn’t pay except maybe for expenses and sometimes not even for that. These other crooners could perform at small conventions, private wedding parties, golden anniversaries in hotel ballrooms, things like that — and there was cash involved. It was always the promise of money that lured my band away. Truth was, that the guys who took my bands away had connections to someone up the ladder. It went to the very root of things, gave unfair advantage to some and left others squeezed out. How could somebody ever reach the world this way? It seemed like it was the law of life. It got so that I almost always expected to lose my band and it didn’t even shock me anymore if it happened. It was beginning to dawn on me that I would have to learn how to play and sing by myself and not depend on a band until the time I could afford to pay and keep one.

...and the handsome jester, Devil’s Gold, is shaking his bead-covered rattle, making medicine and calling us by name. We are so tired from our long walk that we cannot but admire his gilded face and his yellow magic blanket. And, holding each other’s hands like lovers, we stoop and admire ourselves in the golden pool that flickers in the great campfire he has impudently built at the crossing of two streets in Heaven. But we do not step into the pool as beforetime. Our boat is beside us, it has overtaken us like some faithful tame giant swan, and Avanel whispers: “Take us where The Golden Book was written.” And thus we are up and away. The boat carries us deeper, down the valley. We find the cell of Hunter Kelly,— . St. Scribe of the Shrines. Only his handiwork remains to testify of him. Upon the walls of his cell he has painted many an illumination he afterward painted on The Golden Book margins and, in a loose pile of old torn and unbound pages, the first draft of many a familiar text is to be found. His dried paint jars are there and his ink and on the wall hangs the empty leather sack of Johnny Appleseed, from which came the first sowing of all the Amaranths of our little city, and the Amaranth that led us here. And Avanel whispers:—“I ask my heart: —Where is Hunter Kelly, and my heart speaks to me as though commanded: ‘The Hunter is again pioneering for our little city in the little earth. He is reborn as the humblest acolyte of the Cathedral, a child that sings tonight with the star chimes, a red-cheeked boy, who shoes horses at the old forge of the Iron Gentleman. Let us also return’.” It is eight o’clock in the evening, at Fifth and Monroe. It is Saturday night, and the crowd is pouring toward The Majestic, and Chatterton’s, and The Vaudette, and The Princess and The Gaiety. It is a lovely, starry evening, in the spring. The newsboys are bawling away, and I buy an Illinois State Register. It is dated March 1, 1920. Avanel of Springfield is one hundred years away. The Register has much news of a passing nature. I am the most interested in the weather report, that tomorrow will be fair. THE END - Written in Washington Park Pavilion, Springfield, Illinois.

These pages were once blank, they were my unprospected lands. Here, the streams and hillsides I would have traced, the pathways and streets I would have mapped, here, the pavilioned city I would have built, with its golden domes, its towering spires, its proud, fluttering flags. I will never build it now.

My gaze is drawn to an elaborate pavilion nearby. It sits off the ground on golden clawed feet, looking for all the world as though it could scuttle off if its owner gave the command.

To Merveilleuse's surprise she comes across a large ram in a clearing, with gilt horns and a garland of flowers round his neck, reposing on a couch of orange blossom beneath a pavilion of golden cloth. But still, a ram, with his nose like an ink blot, flies on his white lashes, wool the color of curds. Around him a hundred gaily decked sheep graze not on grass but coffee, sherbet, ices, and sweetmeats, whilst partaking in games of basset and lansquenet. Soon he takes her into a cavern, which is a gate to his underworld kingdom. It has meadows of a thousand different flowers; a broad river of orange-flower water; fountains of Spanish wine and liqueurs. There are entire avenues of trees, stuffed with partridges better larded and dressed than you would get them at the finest Paris restaurants; quails, young rabbits, and ortolans. In certain parts, where the atmosphere appears a little hazy, it rains bisque d'écrevisses, foie gras, and ragout of sweetbreads. His palace is formed by tangled orange trees, jasmines, honeysuckle, and little musk-roses, whose interlaced branches form cabinets, halls, and chambers, all hung with golden gauze and furnished with large mirrors and fine paintings.

Moonlight drifted as quietly as falling snow, illuminating the pavilion roofs and the animal shaped statues that lined the swooping eaves. Floor lanterns spilled golden light across the frosted courtyards, and against the latticed labyrinth of doors and windows. Silence reigned, except for the distant ring of the great bell, echoing through the capital and rumbling over Changdeok Palace. By the twenty-eighth ring, the palace gates would be bolted shut for the night.