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sinta 's review for:
The Assault
by Harry Mulisch
A well-written, short read. I do wonder how much beauty was lost in translation. I did not feel as fearful as I expected to, given the references to the fragility of life, the arbitrariness of survival and the superficiality of justice
Second book in a row to mention experiencing time as having your back to the future and facing the past. I wonder if this is a Dutch thing, as it is a Māori thing, or merely a coincidence that this author thinks this way.
Quotes:
"Here: symballeton, that's a duality, the coming together of two things, two. Now the two armies also make sense. This is a form you find only in Homer. Remember the word 'symbol, which comes from symballo, 'to bring together, 'to meet? Do you know what a symbolon was?" "No," said Peter in a tone implying that he couldn't care less. "What was it, Papa?" asked Anton. "It was a stone that they broke in two. Say I am a guest in another city, and I ask my host whether he would be willing to receive you too. How can he be sure that you really are my son? We make a symbolon. He keeps one half, and at home I give you the other. So then when you get there, they fit together exactly."
“But the sky was the same: massive Alps of clouds with beams of light leaning against them.”
“He had, besides, the more or less mystical notion that the narcotics did not make the patient insensitive to pain so much as unable to express that pain, and that although drugs erased the memory of pain, the patient was nevertheless changed by it. When patients woke up, it always seemed evident that they had been suffering.“
“Still, national politics meant little to him: about as much as paper airplanes would mean to the survivor of a plane crash.”
Second book in a row to mention experiencing time as having your back to the future and facing the past. I wonder if this is a Dutch thing, as it is a Māori thing, or merely a coincidence that this author thinks this way.
Quotes:
"Here: symballeton, that's a duality, the coming together of two things, two. Now the two armies also make sense. This is a form you find only in Homer. Remember the word 'symbol, which comes from symballo, 'to bring together, 'to meet? Do you know what a symbolon was?" "No," said Peter in a tone implying that he couldn't care less. "What was it, Papa?" asked Anton. "It was a stone that they broke in two. Say I am a guest in another city, and I ask my host whether he would be willing to receive you too. How can he be sure that you really are my son? We make a symbolon. He keeps one half, and at home I give you the other. So then when you get there, they fit together exactly."
“But the sky was the same: massive Alps of clouds with beams of light leaning against them.”
“He had, besides, the more or less mystical notion that the narcotics did not make the patient insensitive to pain so much as unable to express that pain, and that although drugs erased the memory of pain, the patient was nevertheless changed by it. When patients woke up, it always seemed evident that they had been suffering.“
“Still, national politics meant little to him: about as much as paper airplanes would mean to the survivor of a plane crash.”