The Defense

... In such circumstances the Defence was naturally in a very ticklish and difficult position. Yet that, too, was intentional. For the Defence was not actually countenanced by the Law, but only tolerated, and there were differences of opinions even on that point, whether the Law could be interpreted to admit such tolerance at all. Strictly speaking, therefore, none of the counsels for the defence was recognised by the Court, all who appeared before the Court as counsels being in reality merely in the position of pettifogging lawyers. That naturally had a very humiliating effect on the whole profession, and the next time K. visited the Law-Court offices he should take a look at the lawyers' room, just for the sake of having seen it once in his life. He would probably be horrified by the kind of people he found assembled there. The very room, itself small and cramped, showed the contempt in which the Court held them. It was lit only by a small skylight, which was so high up that if you wanted to look out, you had to get some colleague to hoist you on his back, and even then the smoke from the chimney close by choked you and blackened your face. To give only one more example of the state the place was in — there had been for more than a year now a hole in the floor, not so big that you could fall through the floor, but big enough to let a man's leg slip through. The lawyers' room was in the very top attic, so that if you stumbled through the hole your leg hung down into the lower attic, into the very corridor where the clients had to wait. It wasn't saying too much if the lawyers called these conditions scandalous. Complaints to the authorities had not the slightest effect, and it was strictly forbidden for the lawyers to make any structural repairs or alterations at their own expense. Still, there was some justification for this attitude on the part of the authorities. They wanted to eliminate defending counsel as much as possible, the whole onus of the Defence must be laid on the accused himself. A reasonable enough point of view, yet ...

—Franz Kafka, The Trial (1925) (trans. W. & E. Muir, rev. Butler 1956)

'mute and secret fires'

I rose, went to the window, and stood there till morning . . . the lightning did not cease for an instant. It was what the peasants call a Sparrow Night. I looked at the silent, sandy stretch, at the dark mass of the Neskootchny Gardens, at the yellowish façades of distant buildings which seemed to quiver too, with each faint flash. I gazed, and could not tear myself away. This silent lightning, this controlled light, seemed to answer to the mute and secret fires which were blazing within me. Morning began to dawn. The sky was stained crimson. As the sun rose, the lightning became fainter and less frequent; the flashes came more and more seldom, and finally ceased, drowned in the clear and unambiguous light of the rising day. And the flashes within me died down too. I felt weary and at peace, but the image of Zinaida still hovered triumphant over my soul, though even this image seemed more tranquil. Like a swan rising from the grasses of the marsh, it stood out from the unlovely shapes which surrounded it, and I, as I fell asleep, in parting for the last time clung to it, in trusting adoration.

Oh, gentle feelings, soft sounds, the goodness and the gradual stilling of a soul that has been moved; the melting happiness of the first tender, touching joys of love—where are you? Where are you?

—Ivan Turgenev, First Love (1860, trans. I. Berlin 1950)

That bread you possess...

The bread that you possess belongs to the hungry. The clothes that you store in boxes, belong to the naked. The shoes rotting by you, belong to the bare-foot. The money that you hide belongs to anyone in need. You wrong as many people as you could help.

—St. Basil of Caesarea, "Homily on Avarice" (circa 370)

'one of the biggest defects of books'

I've got lots of detective hats, three. I put them on whenever I find out mysterious things are going on in the palace. And I start to investigate, stealthily. It's not like the research I do with Mazatzin, because I do that with books. Books don't have anything in them about the present, only the past and the future. This is one of the biggest defects of books. Someone should invent a book that tells you what's happening at this moment, as you read. It must be harder to write that sort of book than the futuristic ones that predict the future. That's why they don't exist. And that's why I have to go and investigate reality.

—Juan Pablo Villalobos, Down the Rabbit Hole (2010, trans. Rosalind Harvey 2011)

Myth, History, Theology

[Ian] Davie has an interesting section where he talks about the nature of mythological and poetic writing—which is the genre of the Vedas and other early Hindu scriptures on which the later, more philosophical commentaries were based. Having distinguished the vertical (ontological) dimension from the horizontal (historical, empirical), he explains that the "vertical" is always best expressed in poetry and myth. This leads him to deplore the "demythologization" of religion. In a theological context, he says, the word "mythology" means "the horizontal (i.e., spatio-temporal) representation of a vertical (i.e., eternal) truth: when there is no vertical dimension, I would want to say we are dealing, not with theological myth, but with theological fable."

The theological method... is neither one nor the other; neither mythological nor historical, but a combination of both. Thus it uses history as a critique of myth, and myth as a critique of history; for the whole theological purport of myth is to indicate the limits of history, to elicit from the mythological language (which it necessarily uses in speaking of events which are transhistorical, in the exact sense that they are limits of history) a sense of what lies beyond history, the "beyond" of all time.

—Ian Davie's Jesus Purusha, quoted in Stratford Caldecott, The Radiance of Being: Dimensions of Cosmic Christianity (2013)

'when but a finger of one of us is hurt'

And is not that the best-ordered State in which the greatest number of persons apply the terms 'mine' and 'not mine' in the same way to the same thing?

Quite true. 

Or that again which most nearly approaches to the condition of the individual—as in the body, when but a finger of one of us is hurt, the whole frame, drawn towards the soul as a centre and forming one kingdom under the ruling power therein, feels the hurt and sympathizes all together with the part affected, and we say that the man has a pain in his finger; and the same expression is used about any other part of the body, which has a sensation of pain at suffering or of pleasure at the alleviation of suffering.

Very true, he replied; and I agree with you that in the best-ordered State there is the nearest approach to this common feeling which you describe.

Then when any one of the citizens experiences any good or evil, the whole State will make his case their own, and will either rejoice or sorrow with him?

Yes, he said, that is what will happen in a well-ordered State.

—Plato, The Republic, Book V (360 B.C.E.; trans. B. Jowett 1894)

Final Roll Call

Now, a few nights later, he and the soldiers he got were crowded into a chapel for the memorial service, which ended with something called the Final Roll Call.

"Sergeant Jubinville," a sergeant called out.

"Here, First Sergeant," Jubinville called back.

"PFC Devine," the sergeant called out.

"Here, First Sergeant," Devine called back.

"PFC Harrelson," the sergeant called out.

The chapel was silent.

"PFC James Harrelson," he called out.

The chapel remained silent.

"PFC James Jacob Harrelson," he called out.

And the silence continued, unbearably, until it was interrupted by the sharp slap of gunfire.

Bang, pause, bang, pause, bang.

—David Finkel, The Good Soldiers (2009)

Two times two is five is sometimes also a most charming little thing.

But man is a frivolous and unseemly being, and perhaps, similar to a chess player, likes only the process of achieving the goal, but not the goal itself. And who knows (one cannot vouch for it), perhaps the whole goal mankind strives for on earth consists just in this ceaselessness of the process of achievement alone, that is to say, in life itself, and not essentially in the goal, which, of course, is bound to be nothing other than two times two is four--that is, a formula; and two times two is four is no longer life, gentlemen, but the beginning of death. At least man has always somehow feared this two times two is four, and I fear it even now. Suppose all man ever does is search for this two times two is four; he crosses oceans, he sacrifices his life in the search; but to search it out, actually to find it--by God, he's somehow afraid. For he senses that once he finds it, there will be nothing to search for. Workers, when they're done working, at least get their pay, go to a pot-house, then wind up with the police--so it keeps them busy for a week. But where is man to go? Something awkward, at any rate, can be noticed in him each time he achieves some such goal. Achieving he likes, but having achieved he does not quite like, and that, of course, is terribly funny. In short, man is comically arranged, there is apparently a joke in all this. But still, two times two is four is a most obnoxious thing. Two times two is four--why, in my opinion, it's sheer impudence, sirs. Two times two is four has a cocky look; it stands across your path, arms akimbo, and spits. I agree that two times two is four is an excellent thing; but if we're going to start praising everything, then two times two is five is sometimes also a most charming little thing.

--Fyodor Dostoevsky (trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky), Notes from Underground (1864) 

It's a wish for God to be here, on earth, visible

"You seem upset," he says to me.  

"I am but I don't know why." 

"Those planes." 

"No, I was before." 

"I think I know why," he says.  

"Why." 

"You don't like thinking I have - had - ordinary feelings." 

"I do like it." 

"No, all of you lay people hate it. It makes you anxious, and angry at me. You would rather imagine me as uncontaminated, pure, innocent, whatnot." 

"I do like thinking that one person I know lived without violence," I admit. 

"It's bigger than that," Tom says. "It's existential. It's a wish for God to be here, on earth, visible." 

The war planes seem abandoned. The site they occupy is absolutely without a sign of human life. But the sound of one buzzing in the faraway cut in the air like the shape of a dog. "Don't worry. I won't tell you anything personal," Tom says and speeds up the car. "Give me that water."

-- Fanny Howe, Indivisible (2000)

'snap and bite at every trifle'

And at this period she was absorbed in becoming a young lady. She was intelligent enough, but not interested in learning. At first, she thought all the girls at school very ladylike and wonderful, and she wanted to be like them. She came to a speedy disillusion: they galled and maddened her, they were petty and mean. After the loose, generous atmosphere of her home, where little things did not count, she was always uneasy in the world, that would snap and bite at every trifle.

—D.H. Lawrence, The Rainbow (1915)