Genius

But to find no contradiction in the union of old and new, to contemplate the Ancient of days with feelings as fresh, as if they the sprang forth at his own fiat—this characterizes the minds that feel the riddle of the world, and may help to unravel it! To carry on the feelings of childhood into the powers of manhood, to combine the child's sense of wonder and novelty with the appearances which every day for perhaps forty years has rendered familiar, this is the character and privilege of genius, and one of the marks which distinguishes genius from talent.

—Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Biographia Literaria (1817)

'a harmony thrust on an imperfect world'

Then I thought of the dead man, and how pale his face would be, and I said into the passing floes of mist:

"I'll say to Christy when next we argue about religion: 'Christy, beauty is all there is. It's the end. It's the only perfect thing there is. It is the perfection of the moon, Christy, a harmony thrust on an imperfect world. Everything comes from it—all our beliefs and faiths—all our dreams of a perfect world hereafter. So that if there were a square moon, Christy, you'd be talking about the corners of heaven. All life! Everything! In the perfect moon!'"

—Seán O'Faoláin, Bird Alone (1936)

'all things end by becoming me'

Morning after morning, when I saw her kneel among the communicants waiting for the communion, I, who knelt behind her, wanted to stroke her ankle in her shoe. Her curls under her father's old hat became the curls of all the women in the world; her waist was the waist of a statue; she was losing her identity for me already, merged into myself. But that is the misfortune of my nature, that all things end by becoming me until now, nothing exists that is not me.

—Seán O'Faoláin, Bird Alone (1936)

In silence, I understood, and I remembered

To keep you is no gain, to kill you is no loss. Under the rules of the Organization we were reduced to this dictum. How was I to live by such words? With so many carted away on the tiniest pretense, how could any child believe she would live beyond this day, this moment? How could she hope for tomorrow? In a world of senseless death, I didn't see the purpose, couldn't grasp the meaning. If this was our collective karma, then why was I still alive? If anything, I was as guilty as those who survived and as innocent as those who died. What name then can I give to the force that carried me on? With each life taken away, a part of it passed on to me. I didn't know its name. All I could grasp was the call to remember. Remember. I lived by this word.  

After that day at the rice fields, I no longer feared guns because I no longer feared death. The brigade leader continued to threaten me. But I never answered her. Instead, silence took root in my blood. I became deaf. I became mute. I thought only of the work in front of me. Standing in the paddy, I planted the rice shoots. When eating, I could only think of eating. In sleep, I thought of nothing else. Hunger made my body frail. Many times I was punished for being too lazy. Without rice, I lived on leaves and small animals found in the mud. The tiniest I would swallow at once. Sometimes I would be punished, though I could never know when. It was futile to worry, to think of tomorrow. The life I'd once known was gone, and with it, the people. There was nothing to say, no one left for me to speak of, so I chose not to speak.  

Still, I saw. Still, I heard. In silence, I understood, and I remembered.

--Vaddey Ratner, In the Shadow of the Banyan (2012)