Knut Hamsun Quotes

...I will exile my thoughts if they think of you again, and I will rip my lips out if they say your name once more. Now if you do exist, I will tell you my final word in life or in death, I tell you goodbye.

I love three things, I then say. I love a dream of love I once had, I love you, and I love this patch of earth. And which do you love best? The dream.

Truth is neither ojectivity nor the balanced view; truth is a selfless subjectivity.

Do not forget, some give little, and it is much for them, others give all, and it costs them no effort; who then has given most?

Keep it, keep it!" I answered. "You are very welcome to it! It is only a couple of small things, doesn't amount to anything—about everything I own in the world.

I suffered no pain, my hunger had taken the edge off; instead I felt pleasantly empty, untouched by everything around me and happy to be unseen by all. I put my legs up on the bench and leaned back, the best way to feel the true well-being of seclusion. There wasn't a cloud in my mind, nor did I feel any discomfort, and I hadn't a single unfulfilled desire or craving as far as my thought could reach. I lay with open eyes in a state of utter absence from myself and felt deliciously out of it.

But things worked out. Everything works out. Though sometimes they work out sideways.

But what really matters is not what you believe but the faith and conviction with which you believe…

Love is every bit as violent and dangerous as murder.

I was on the verge of crying with grief at still being alive.

The intelligent poor individual was a much finer observer than the intelligent rich one. The poor individual looks around him at every step, listens suspiciously to every word he hears from the people he meets; thus, every step he takes presents a problem, a task, for his thoughts and feelings. He is alert and sensitive, he is experienced, his soul has been burned...

It was not my intention to collapse; no, I would die standing.

I see stars before my eyes, and my thoughts are swept up into a hurricane of light.

I can't even make up a rhyme about an umbrella, let alone death and life and eternal peace.

And the great spirit of darkness spread a shroud over me...everything was silent-everything. But upon the heights soughed the everlasting song, the voice of the air, the distant, toneless humming which is never silent.

Please God, please Knut Hamsun, don't desert me now. I started to write and I wrote: The time has come," the Walrus said, To talk of many things: Of shoes — and ships — and sealing-wax — Of cabbages — and kings —

Small jerks began to appear in my legs, my walk became unsteady precisely because I wanted it to be smooth.

I have gone to the forest

But now it was spring again, and spring was almost unbearable for sensitive hearts. It drove creation to its utmost limits, it wafted its spice-laden breath even into the nostrils of the innocent.

And love became the world's beginning and the world's ruler; but all its ways are full of flowers and blood, flowers and blood.

The heavy red roses smoldering in the foggy morning, blood-colored and uninhibited, made me greedy, and tempted me powerfully to steal one--I asked the prices merely so I could come as near them as possible.

What is progress? That we can drive faster on the roads? No, progress is the rest the body needs and the peace the soul requires. Progress is man"s well being.

The other one he loved like a slave, like a madman and like a beggar. Why? Ask the dust on the road and the falling leaves, ask the mysterious God of life; for no one knows such things. She gave him nothing, no nothing did she give him and yet he thanked her. She said: Give me your peace and your reason! And he was only sorry she did not ask for his life.

The long, long road over the moors and up into the forest - who trod it into being first of all? Man, a human being, the first that came here. There was no path before he came.

I was conscious all the time that I was following mad whims without being able to do anything about it … . Despite my alienation from myself at that moment, and even though I was nothing but a battleground for invisible forces, I was aware of every detail of what was going on around me.

An increasing number of people who lead mental lives of great intensity, people who are sensitive by nature, notice the steadily more frequent appearance in them of mental states of great strangeness ... a wordless and irrational feeling of ecstasy; or a breath of psychic pain; a sense of being spoken to from afar, from the sky or the sea; an agonizingly developed sense of hearing which can cause one to wince at the murmuring of unseen atoms; an irrational staring into the heart of some closed kingdom suddenly and briefly revealed.

Og kjærligheten blev verdens ophav og verdens hersker, men alle dens veier er fulle av blomster og blod, blomster og blod.

There are some people who cannot help giving. Why? Because they experience a real psychological pleasure in doing so. They don't do it with an eye to their own advantage, they do it on the quiet; they detest doing it openly because that would take away some of the satisfaction. They do it in secret, with quick trembling hands, their breasts rocked by a spiritual well being which they do not themselves understand.

I felt pleasantly empty, untouched by everything around me and happy to be unseen by all.

You are right; I am not good at moving in society. Be merciful. You do not understand me; I live in the woods by choice--that is my happiness. Here, where I am all alone, it can hurt no one that I am as I am; but when I go among others, I have to use all my will power to be as I should.

أنت فقير لدرجة لا تسمح لك بوجود الضمير, أنت جوعان

No worse fate can befall a young man or woman than becoming prematurely entrenched in prudence and negation.

There was a rock in front of my hut, a tall, gray rock. By its looks it seemed to be well-disposed toward me...

Do you know what constitutes a great poet? He is a person without shame, incapable of blushing. Ordinary fools have moments when they go off by themselves and blush with shame; not so the great poet.... If you really have to quote someone, quote a geographer; that way you won't give yourself away. (p 44)

The poet must always, in every instance, have the vibrant word... that by it's trenchancy can so wound my soul that it whimpers.... One must know and recognize not merely the direct but the secret power of the word; one must be able to give one's writing unexpected effects. It must have a hectic, anguished vehemence, so that it rushes past like a gust of air, and it must have a latent, roistering tenderness so that it creeps and steals one's mind; it must be able to ring out like a sea-shanty in a tremendous hour, in the time of the tempest, and it must be able to sigh like one who, in tearful mood, sobs in his inmost heart.

And love was creation's source,creation's ruler; but all love's ways are strewn with blossoms and blood, blossoms and blood.

A shaft of sweetness shoots through me from top to toe when the sun rises; I shoulder my gun in silent exaltation.

I'll exile my thoughts if they think of you again, and I will rip my lips out if they say your name once more. Now if you do exist, I will tell you my final word in life or in death, I tell you goodbye.

سأقول لك شيئاً واحداً يا إلهي الطيّب, يكفي هذا!

إنني منارة بيضاء في وسط بحر الإنسانية العكر

The whisper of the blood and the pleading of the bone marrow.

Love is God’s first word, the first thought that sailed through his mind. When he said: Let there by light! there was love. And he was well-pleased with what he had made, nor did he wish any of it unmade. And love was the world’s origin and the world’s ruler; but all its ways are filled with flowers and blood, flowers and blood.

The dark monsters out there would suck me up when night came on, and they would carry me far across the sea and through strange lands where no humans lived.

In my solitude, many miles from men and houses, I am in a childishly happy and carefree state of mind, which you are incapable of understanding unless someone explains it to you.

What have you done to your eyes? They’re all red. Have you been crying?’ ‘No,’ he answers, laughing, ‘but I’ve been staring into my fairy tales, where the sun is very strong.

A country preacher could not have looked more full of milk and honey than this formidable writer, whose words had always left long bloody marks wherever they fell.

A swarm of tiny noxious animals had bored a way into my inner man and hollowed me out.

Never stand around saying 'Poor thing' and being pitiful when things are being killed. It makes them tough and harder to kill. Remember that!

Well, bless my soul, what stupid creatures one has to mix with in this world!

Rather than admire the mediocre great men over whom passersby nudge each other in awe, I venerate the young, unknown geniuses who die in their teens, their souls shattered - delicate, phosphorescent glowworms that one must see to know they really did exist.

But now the world breaks in on us, the world is shocked, the world looks upon our idyll as madness. The world maintains that no rational man or woman would have chosen this way of life - therefore, it is madness. Alone I confront them and tell them that nothing could be saner or truer! What do people really know about life? We fall in line, follow the pattern established by our mentors. Everything is based on assumptions; even time, space, motion, matter are nothing but supposition. The world has no new knowledge to impart; it merely accepts what is there.

If she only knew that all of his poems had been written to her and no one else, every single one, even the one to Night, even the one to the Spirit of the Swamp. But that was something she should never know.

My head was emptying and emptying, and in the end it sat light and void on my shoulders. I percieved this gaping emptiness in my head with my whole body, I felt hollowed out from top to toe.

Summer is the time for dreaming, and then you have to stop. But some people go on dreaming all their lives, and cannot change.

I would be beholden to no man, not even for a blanket.

No matter how much I kept telling myself that I was behaving like an idiot, it was no use.

What does the world know? Nothing! You simply get used to something, you accept it and acknowledge it, because your teacher has acknowledged it before you; everything is just a supposition—indeed, even time, space, motion, matter are suppositions. The world knows nothing, it merely accepts things…

What would it profit us, after all, even from a purely practical viewpoint, if we stripped life of all poetry, all dreams, all beautiful mysteries, all lies? What is truth, can you tell me that? You see, we only advanced by way of symbols, and we change the symbols as we progress.

I have no respect to merchants and preachers; as far as I’m concerned, their only talent is coming up with the right word at the right time. What is a professional preacher, really? He is a kind of middleman who for the wrong reasons tries to make people buy his goods. The more he sells, the more his stock rises. The louder he hawks his wares, the larger his business grows.

Takva je ljubav. Ona može da uništi čoveka, i nanovo ga podigne i preporodi. Danas može da voli mene, sutra tebe, a već sutra uveče nekog stranca, toliko je nestalna. Ali može i da bude čvrsta kao nesalomljiv pečat, može neugasivo da plamti do samrtnog časa.

Asked what love is, some reply: It is only a wind whispering among the roses and dying away. But often it is an inviolable seal that endures for life, endures till death. God has fashioned it of many kinds and seen it endure or perish.

Man sværmer om sommeren, så holder man op for den gang. Men nogen sværmer hele sitt liv og står ikke til å forandre.

Growth of the soil was something different, a thing to be procured at any cost; the only source, the origin of all. A dull and desolate existence? Nay, least of all. A man had everything; his powers above, his dreams, his loves, his wealth of superstition.

Slik var kjærligheten. Den kunde ruinere sin mand, gjenreise ham og brændemeærke ham igjen; den kunde elske mig idag, dig imorgen og ham imorgen nat, så ubestandig var den. Men den kunde også holde fast som et ubrytelig segl og blusse like uutslukelig til dødens stund, for så evig var den.

When I got outside, I came to a standstill and said loudly in the open street, as I clenched my hands: ”I will tell you one thing, my good Lord God, you are a bungler!” and I nod furiously, with set teeth, up to the clouds; ”I will be hanged if you are not a bungler.

A few days back someone sent me two feathers. Two bird's feathers in a sheet of note-paper with a coronet, and fastened with a seal. Sent from a place a long way off; from one who need not have sent them back at all. That amused me too, those devilish green feathers.

No he tenido la mujer que hubiera necesitado en la vida; pero no por esto carezco de alegrías. Sólo que las enturbio; siempre las enturbio.

The ships whose masts I saw outlined against the sky looked, with their black hulls, like silent monsters that were raising their hackles and lying in wait for me.

Gud hvor De ser ut som en sån melankolsk fabelkat.

كعادتي كان أول ما جال بخاطري عندما فتحتُ جفوني هو ذلك الهاجس القديم: هل هناك ما أتطلع إليه هذا الصباح؟

God had poked His finger down into my nerves and gently, almost without thinking, brought a little confusion among those threads. And God had pulled His finger back, and behold--there were filaments and fine rootlike threads on His finger from the threads of my nerves. And there remained an open hole behind His finger which was the finger of God, and a wound in my brain behind the path of His finger. But after God had touched me with the finger of His hand, He let me be and touched me no more and let nothing evil come upon me. He let me depart in peace and He let me depart with the open hole. And nothing evil will come upon me from God who is the Lord through all Eternity....

A man comes walking north. He carries a sack, the first sack, containing provisions for the road and some implements. The man is strong and rough-hewn, with a red lion beard and little scars on face and hands, sites of old wounds--were they gotten at work or in a fight? Maybe he has been in jail and wants to go into hiding, or perhaps he is a philosopher looking for peace; in any case, here he comes, a human being in the midst of this immense solitude. He walks and walks, in a silence broken by neither bird nor beast.

لما خرجت وقفت في وسط الطريق وقلت بصوت عال وقد كورت يدي: "شيء واحد أريد أن أقوله لك يا مولاي العزيز ويا إلهي، أنت فاجر بلا حياء!" وصرفت بأسناني هائجاً ثائراً ووجهي إلى السماء: "ليأخني الشيطان إن لم تكن فاجراً بلا حياء!".

An intense, peculiar exhalation of light and colour emanates from these fantasies of mine. I start with surprise as I note one good thing after another, and tell myself that this is the best thing I have ever read. My head swims with a sense of satisfaction; delight inflates me; I grow grandiose.

It is the reign of Autumn, the height of the Carnival of Decay, the roses have got inflammation in their blushes, an uncanny hectic tinge, through their soft damask. I felt myself like a creeping thing on the verge of destruction, gripped by ruin in the midst of a whole world ready for lethargic sleep.

If I happened to find a diamond one day, I would call it Dagny, because the very sound of your name thrills me. I only wish that I could forever hear your name, hear it spoken by all men and beasts, by every mountain and every star. I wish I were deaf to every sound except your name ringing in my ears day and night for the rest of my life.

Genius in the popular sense has become common. (...) Rather than admire the mediocre great men over whom passersby nudge each other in awe, I venerate the young, unknown geniuses who die in their teens, their souls shattered - delicate, phosphorescent glowworms that one must see to know they really did exist.

There was a merciless gnawing in my chest, a queer silent labor was going on in there. I pictured a score of nice teeny-weeny animals that cocked their heads to one side and gnawed a bit, then cocked their heads to the other side and gnawed a bit, lay perfectly still for a moment, then began anew and bored their way in without a sound and without haste, leaving empty stretches behind them wherever they went.

I sat looking at her with rapt attention. My heart was thumping, the blood coursing warmly through my veins. What a wonderful pleasure to be sitting in a human dwelling again, hear a clock ticking, and talk with a lively young girl instead of with myself! Why don't you say something?" Ah, how sweet you are!" I said. "I'm sitting here getting fascinated by you, at this moment I'm thoroughly fascinated. I can't help it. You are the strangest person that... Sometimes your eyes are so radiant, I've never seen anything like it, they look like flowers. Eh? No, no, maybe not like flowers but... I'm madly in love with you, and it won't do me a bit of good. What's your name? Really, you must tell me what your name is..." No, what's your name? Goodness, I almost forgot again! I was thinking all day yesterday that I must ask you. Well, that is, not all day yesterday, I certainly didn't think about you all day yesterday." Do you know what I've called you? I have called you Ylajali. How do you like it? Such a gliding sound-" Ylajali?" Yes." Is it a foreign language?" Hmm. No, it's not." Well, it isn't ugly.

I tell you, you Heaven's Holy Baal, you don't exist; but that, if you did, I would curse you so that your Heaven would quiver with the fire of hell! I tell you, I have offered you my service, and you repulsed me; and I turn my back on you for all eternity, because you did not know your time of visitation! I tell you that I am about to die, and yet I mock you! You Heaven God and Apis! with death staring me in the face - I tell you, I would rather be a bondsman in hell than a freedman in your mansions! I tell you, I am filled with a blissful contempt for your divine paltriness; and I choose the abyss of destruction for a perpetual resort, where the devils Judas and Pharaoh are cast down!

He never read a book but often thought about God; it was unavoidable, a matter of simplicity and awe. The starry sky, the soughing of the forest, the solitude, the big snow, the majesty of the earth and what was above the earth filled him with a deep devoutness many times a day. He was sinful and godfearing; on Sundays he washed himself in honour of the holy day but worked as usual.

Gladness is intoxicating. I fire my gun and an unforgettable echo answers from crag to crag, floats out over the sea and rings in some sleepless helmsman’s ears. What am I glad about? A thought that comes to me, a memory, a sound in the forest, a human being. I think of her—I close my eyes and stand still on the road and think of her, counting the minutes.

I began running so as to punish myself, left street after street behind me, pushed myself on with inward jeers, and screeched silently and furiously at myself whenever I felt like stopping. With the help of these exertions I ended up far along Pile Street. When I finally did stop, almost weeping with anger that I couldn’t run any farther, my whole body trembled, and I threw myself down on a house stoop. “Not so fast!” I said. And to torture myself right, I stood up again and forced myself to stand there, laughing at myself and gloating over my own fatigue. Finally, after a few minutes I nodded and so gave myself permission to sit down; however, I chose the most uncomfortable spot on the stoop.

During those days, both the bed and my little rickety table were swimming in notes and scribbled-over manuscripts that I took turns working on, adding new ideas that occurred to me in the course of the day, crossing out material or freshening up the dead passages with a lively word here or there, and pushing on from sentence to sentence with great labor.

The sad rocking chair in the corner was actually a joke of a chair: if one started laughing at it, one could die laughing. It was too low for a grown man, and besides, it was so tight, one needed a shoehorn to get back out of it. In short, this room was simply not furnished in a way appropriate to intellectual effort, and I did not intend to keep it any longer.

And here we go creating great men out of artisans who happened to have stumbled on a way to improve electrical apparatus or pedal through Sweden on a bicycle! And we solicit great men to write books promoting the cult of other great men! It's really very funny, and worth the price of admission! It will all end up with every village having his own great man - a lawyer, a novelist, and a polar explorer of immense stature! And the world will become wonderfully flat and simple and easy to master . . .

She came quickly over to me and held out her hand. I looked at her full of distrust. Was she doing this freely, with a light heart? Or was she doing it just to get rid of me? She put her arm around my neck, tears in her eyes. I just stood and looked at her. She offered me her mouth but I couldn't believe her, it was bound to be a sacrifice on her part, a means of getting it over with. She said something, it sounded to me like "I love you anyway!" She said it very softly and indistinctly, I may not have heard it correctly, perhaps she didn't say exactly those words. But she threw herself passionately on my neck, held both arms around my neck a little while, even raised herself on tiptoe to reach well up, and stood thus. Afraid that she was forcing herself to show me this tenderness, I merely said "How beautiful you are now!" That was all I said. I stepped back, bumped against the door and walked out backward. She was left standing inside.

La oscuridad reinaba en torno a mí; todo estaba tranquilo, todo. Pero en las alturas zumbaba el eterno canto de la atmósfera, ese bordoneo lejano, sin modulaciones, que jamás se calla. Presté atención tanto tiempo a ese murmullo sin fin, a ese murmullo morboso, que comenzó a turbarme. Eran, sin duda, las sinfonías de los mundos girando en el espacio por encima de mí, las estrellas que entonaban un himno.

Some flies and gnats were sitting on my paper and this disturbed me; I breathed on them to make them go, then blew harder and harder, but it did no good. The tiny beasts lowered their behinds, made themselves heavy, and struggled against the wind until their thin legs were bent. They were absolutely not going to leave the place. They would always find something to get hold of, bracing their heels against a comma or an unevenness in the paper, and they intended to stay exactly where they were until they themselves decided it was the right time to go.

Det kan regne og storme, det er ikke derpaa det kommer an, ofte kan en liten Glæde bemægtige sig en paa en Regnveirsdag og faa en til at gaa avsides med sin Lykke. Man stiller sig da op og gir sig til at se ret frem, nu og da ler man tyst og ser sig omkring. Hvad tenker man paa? En klar Rute i et Vindu, en Solstraale i Ruten, en Utsigt til en liten Bæk og kanske til en blaa Rift på Himlen. Det behøver ikke at være mere.

I imagined I had discovered a new word. I rise up in bed and say, "It is not in the language; I have discovered it. 'Kuboa.' It has letters as a word has. By the benign God, Man you have discovered a word!... 'Kuboa' ... a word of profound import. [...] Some minutes pass over, and I wax nervous; this new word torments me unceasingly, returns again and again, takes up my thoughts, and makes me serious. I had fully formed an opinion as to what it should not signify, but had come to no conclusion as to what it should signify. [...] Then it seems to me that some one is interposing, interrupting my confab. I answer angrily, "Beg pardon! You match in idiocy is not to be found; no, sir! Knitting cotton? Ah! go to hell!" Well, really I had to laugh. Might I ask why should I be forced to let it signify knitting cotton, when I had a special dislike to its signifying knitting cotton?

I lie and repeat these words over to myself, and find that they are capital. Little by little others come and fit themselves to the preceding ones. I grow keenly wakeful. I get up and snatch paper and pencil from the table behind my bed. It was as if a vein had burst in me ; one word follows another, and they fit themselves together harmoniously with telling effect. Scenes piles on scene, actions and speeches bubble up in my brain, and a wonderful sense of pleasure empowers me. I write as one possessed, and fill page after page without a moment’s pause

A maiden was imprisoned in a stone tower. She loved a lord. Why? Ask the wind and the stars, ask the god of life; for no one else knows these things. And the lord was her friend and her lover; but time passed, and one fine day he saw someone else and his heart turned away. As a youth he loved the maiden. Often he called her his bliss and his dove, and her embrace was hot and heaving. He said, Give me your heart! And she did so. He said, May I ask you for something, my love? And she answered, in raptures, Yes. She gave him all, and yet he never thanked her. The other one he loved like a slave, like a madman and a beggar. Why? Ask the dust on the road and the falling leaves, ask life’s mysterious god; for no one else knows these things. She gave him nothing, no, nothing did she give him, and yet he thanked her. She said, Give me your peace and your sanity. And he only grieved that she didn’t ask for his life. And the maiden was put in the tower. . . .

I was fading helplessly away with open eyes, staring straight at the ceiling. Finally I stuck my forefinger in my mouth and took to sucking on it. Something began stirring in my brain, some thought in there scrabbling to get out, a stark-staring mad idea: What if I get a bite? And without a moment’s hesitation I squeezed my eyes shut and clenched my teeth together. I jumped up. I was finally awake. A little blood trickled from my finger, and I licked it off as it came. It didn’t hurt, the wound was nothing really, but I was at once brought back to my sense. I shook my head, went over to the window and found a rag for the wound. While I was fiddling with this, my eyes filled with water --- I wept softly to myself. The skinny lacerated finger looked so sad. God in heaven, to what extremity I had come!

I believe I can read a little in the souls of those around me; maybe it is not so. Oh, when I have a good day I feel as if I can peer deep into other people’s souls, although I don’t have a particularly good head on my shoulders. We sit in a room, some men and women and I, and I seem to see what is going on in the hearts of these people and what they think of me. I put something into every flashing glance of their eyes; occasionally the blood rushes to their cheeks so they turn red, at other times they pretend to be looking another way while still watching me out of the corner of their eyes. There I sit observing all this, and nobody suspects that I see through every soul. For several years I have thought I could read the souls of everybody. Maybe it is not so. . . .

I opened my eyes; how could I keep them shut when I could not sleep? The same darkness brooded over me; the same unfathomable black eternity which my thoughts strove against and could not understand. I made the most despairing efforts to find a word black enough to characterize this darkness; a word so horribly black that it would darken my lips if I named it. Lord! how dark it was! and I am carried back in thought to the sea and the dark monsters that lay in wait for me. They would draw me to them, and clutch me tightly and bear me away by land and sea, through dark realms that no soul has seen. I feel myself on board, drawn through waters, hovering in clouds, sinking--sinking.

-რას არ ჩაიდენს კაცი! თქვენდამი სიყვარულის გამო ზურგს უკან გაგჭორეთ კიდეც და კეკლუცი გიწოდეთ. შევეცადე, რამენაირად დამემდაბლებინეთ და ამგვარად საკუთარი თავი მენუგეშებინა, რათა გული საბოლოოდ არ გამტეხოდა. მშვენივრად ვიცი, რომ ჩემთვის მიუწვდომელი ქალი ხართ. აგერ უკვე მეხუთედ გხედავთ, მაგრამ გული მხოლოდ დღეს გადაგიშალეთ, თუმცა ამის გაკეთება პირველივე დღეს შემეძლო. გარდა ამისა, დღეს დაბადების დღე მაქვს, ოცდაცხრა წლის შევსრულდი და დილიდანვე მშვენიერ გუნებაზე ვარ. მთელი დღეა ვღიღინებ. ჰოდა, რატომღაც ვიფიქრე... კაცს რომ ასეთი სისულელეების სჯერა, ბუნებრივია, სასაცილოა, მაგრამ რატომღაც საკუთარ თავს მაინც ვუთხარი: დღეს მას თუ შეხვდები, ყველაფერი უნდა აუხსნა და სიმართლეში გამოუტყდე. ბევრი არაფერი დაშავდება, რაც უნდა იყოს, დღეს ხომ დაბადების დღე გაქვს. ესეც შეგიძლია უთხრა და იქნებ მაშინ მაინც გაპატიოს-მეთქი. გეცინებათ, არა? დიახ, ვიცი რომ მართლა სასაცილოა. მაგრამ ახლა საქმეს ვეღარაფრით ვუშველი. ასე რომ, მზად ვარ, ხარკი სხვა დანარჩენებივით მეც შემოგწიროთ.

Then we were at the fountain - we stop and look up at the many illuminated windows of number 2. "This is as far as you can walk me," she says. "Thanks for taking me home." I bowed, not daring to say a word. I doffed my hat and stood bareheaded. I wondered if she would give me her hand. "Why don't you ask me to walk back with you part of the way?" She says playfully. But she looks down at the tip of her shoe. "Gee," I answer, "if only you would!" "Sure, but only a little way." And we turned around. I was utterly bewildered, I didn't know which way was up anymore; this person turned all my thinking topsy-turvy. I was enchanted, wonderfully glad; I felt as though I were dying from happiness. She had expressly wanted to go back with me, it wasn't my idea, it was her own wish. I gaze and gaze at her, growing more and more cocky, and she encourages me, drawing me toward her by every word she speaks. I forget for a moment my poverty, my humble self, my whole miserable existence, I feel the blood coursing warmly through my body as in the old days, before I broke down.

Digo-te, ó sagrado Baal do céu, que não existes. Mas, se existisses, eu te amaldiçoaria de tal modo que esse teu céu palpitaria com o fogo do inferno. Em verdade te digo: ofereci-te meus serviços e tu os recusaste; repeliste-me, e hoje eu te viro as costas para sempre, pois nunca soubeste conhecer a hora da Visitação. Em verdade te digo: sei que vou morrer, e, não obstante, com a morte diante dos olhos, eu te desprezo, ó celeste Ápis. Empregaste contra mim a força, e não sabes que jamais me dobrei perante a adversidade. Pois deverias sabê-lo. Por acaso dormias quando plasmaste meu coração? Em verdade te digo: durante toda a vida, cada gota de sangue em minhas veias sentirá alegria em desprezar-te e escarnecer de tua Graça. A partir deste momento, renuncio a ti, a tuas pompas e tuas obras; lançarei o anátema sobre meu pensamento, se jamais ele te pensar; arrancarei os lábios se jamais eles pronunciarem teu nome. Se existires, digo-te a última palavra da vida e da morte: digo-te adeus. Depois, calo-me, viro-te as costas e sigo meu caminho.

...As I lie there in this position, letting my eyes wander down my breast and legs, I notice the twitching motion made by my foot at each beat of my pulse. I sit up halfway and look down at my feet, and at this moment I experience a fantastic, alien state I’d never felt before; a delicate, mysterious thrill spreads through my nerves, as though they were flooded by surges of light. When I looked at my shoes, it was as though I had met a good friend or got back a torn-off part of me: a feeling of recognition trembles through all my sense, tears spring to my eyes, and I perceive my shoes as a softly murmuring tune coming toward me. Weakness! I said harshly to myself, and I clenched my fists and said: Weakness. I mocked myself for these ridiculous feelings, made fun of myself quite consciously; I spoke very sternly and reasonably, and I fiercely squeezed my eyes shut to get rid of my tears. Then I begin, as though I’d never seen my shoes before, to study their appearance, their mimicry when I move my feet, their shape and the worn uppers, and I discover that their wrinkles and their white seams give them an expression, lend them a physiognomy. Something of my own nature had entered into these shoes --- they affected me like a breath upon my being, a living, a breathing part of me…