The young man standing opposite me smiled. Then he dropped on his knees and with a dreamy look on his face told me: "There has never been a time in which I have been convinced from within myself that I am alive. You see, I have only such a fugitive awareness of things around me that I always feel they were once real and are now fleeting away. I have a constant longing, my dear sir, to catch a glimpse of things as they may have been before they show themselves to me. I feel that then they were calm and beautiful. It must be so, for I often hear people talking about them as though they were."
—Franz Kafka, "Conversation with the Supplicant" (1909) (trans. Willa & Edwin Muir 1948)
This is so fascinating to me, especially, "to catch a glimpse of things as they may have been before they show themselves to me." The idea of self-revelation, self-showing, ultimately, self-giving, is central in modern theological discussion. I think you even get a sense of that centrality in the Balthasar quote that I just posted; the highest revelation in perfect self-giving. But what about Kafka's idea of the thing before it shows itself, before it gives itself to be seen? I am inclined to say that the thing is most beautiful when it is opening itself out to the other, pouring itself forth, and not when it is closed off within itself. Either way, great stuff.
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