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narrativeleaves 's review for:
The Bridge on the Drina
by Ivo Andrić
"Is this an allusion to Zorka?" Stiković suddenly asked.
"Yes, if you like, let us talk of that too. Yes, because of Zorka also, you do not care a jot for her. It is only your inability to stop and restrain yourself before anything which momentarily and by chance is offered you and which flatters your vanity. Yes, that is so. You seduce a poor, muddled and inexperienced schoolmistress just as you seize articles and poems, deliver speeches and lectures. And even before you have completely conquered them you are already tired of them, for your vanity becomes bored and looks for something beyond. But that is your own curse too, that you can stop nowhere, that you can never be sated and satisfied. You submit everything to your vanity but you are yourself the first of its slaves and its greatest martyr. It may well be that you will have still greater glory and success, a greater success than the weakness of some love-crazed girl, but you will find no satisfaction in any one thing, for your vanity will whip you onwards, for it swallows everything, even the greatest successes and then forgets them immediately, but the slightest failure or insult it will remember forever. And when everything is withered, broken, soiled, humiliated, disintegrated and destroyed about you, then you will remain alone in the wilderness you have yourself created, face to face with your vanity and you will have nothing to offer it. Then you will devour yourself, but that will not help you, for your vanity accustomed to richer food will despise and reject you. That is what you are, though you may seem different in the eyes of most men and though you think differently of yourself. But I know."
"Yes, if you like, let us talk of that too. Yes, because of Zorka also, you do not care a jot for her. It is only your inability to stop and restrain yourself before anything which momentarily and by chance is offered you and which flatters your vanity. Yes, that is so. You seduce a poor, muddled and inexperienced schoolmistress just as you seize articles and poems, deliver speeches and lectures. And even before you have completely conquered them you are already tired of them, for your vanity becomes bored and looks for something beyond. But that is your own curse too, that you can stop nowhere, that you can never be sated and satisfied. You submit everything to your vanity but you are yourself the first of its slaves and its greatest martyr. It may well be that you will have still greater glory and success, a greater success than the weakness of some love-crazed girl, but you will find no satisfaction in any one thing, for your vanity will whip you onwards, for it swallows everything, even the greatest successes and then forgets them immediately, but the slightest failure or insult it will remember forever. And when everything is withered, broken, soiled, humiliated, disintegrated and destroyed about you, then you will remain alone in the wilderness you have yourself created, face to face with your vanity and you will have nothing to offer it. Then you will devour yourself, but that will not help you, for your vanity accustomed to richer food will despise and reject you. That is what you are, though you may seem different in the eyes of most men and though you think differently of yourself. But I know."