Take a photo of a barcode or cover
A review by sinta
Titaantjes by Nescio
4.0
I am still a young titan, waiting for something to happen. But nothing will
Quotes:
Oh, we took our revenge, we learned languages they had never even heard of and we read books they couldn’t even begin to understand, we experienced feelings they never knew existed.
And how we had thought our way through the whole universe, without words; and how God had filled our head, our heart and our spine, and how stark raving mad they would look if we told them about it. And how, with all their money and their trips to Switzerland and Italy and God knows where else and with all their clever hard work, they could never feel such things.
But still, they had us in their power, they confiscated the greater part of our time, they kept us out of the
sunshine and away from the meadows and the seaside. They forced us constantly to fill our thoughts with their incomprehensible business. Even though that only went so far. They chewed us out; at the office we were totally insignificant.
He started to argue with Bekker about the heath. It was a miracle of erudition. He tried to convince Bekker that it was a mistake to withdraw from the world and go off to the heath, which he would never do anyway. An artist belongs at the centre of modern life.
But I also had a feeling I hadn’t known before. All those days had passed and many more days would pass as well, and on every one of them my expectations would remain unfulfilled and my longings unsatisfied.
I stood on the Rhenen tower and looked into the distance, and my heart went out into the distance, to the red sky in the west. But even if I could have flown off the top of the tower into that distance, I would have found only the distance nearby, and my heart would have gone out to the distance once more. And what good did it do me – the wisdom that taught me that nothing would ever change, it would be like this for ever?
Every day we longed for something, without knowing what. It got monotonous. Sunrise and sunset and sunlight on the water and behind the drifting white clouds – monotonous – and the darker skies too, the leaves turning brown and yellow, the bare treetops and poor soggy fields in the winter – all the things I had seen so many times and thought about so many times while I was gone and would see again so many more times, as long as I didn’t die. Who can spend his life watching all these things that constantly repeat themselves, who can keep longing for nothing?
And now the gorse was blooming again, and the lilacs and apple trees and chestnuts, and the sun was blazing down on all of it. Full of emotion, I had seen it all again. And while I was thinking about it, my vague longings and expectations faded away.
I hear the wind rustling through the high pines, through the forests of certainty, of knowing that all this exists whenever I decide to think it. I am grateful that this has been given to me.
But to keep this awareness always is granted to no man.
When I was young there were so many times when I wished something would happen, anything. But nothing ever happened.
God’s throne is still unshaken. His world just takes its course. Now and then God smiles for a moment about the important gentlemen who think they’re really something. A new batch of little Titans are still busy piling up little boulders so that they can topple him down off his heights and arrange the world the way they think it should be.
And so everything takes its little course, and woe to those who ask: Why?
Quotes:
Oh, we took our revenge, we learned languages they had never even heard of and we read books they couldn’t even begin to understand, we experienced feelings they never knew existed.
And how we had thought our way through the whole universe, without words; and how God had filled our head, our heart and our spine, and how stark raving mad they would look if we told them about it. And how, with all their money and their trips to Switzerland and Italy and God knows where else and with all their clever hard work, they could never feel such things.
But still, they had us in their power, they confiscated the greater part of our time, they kept us out of the
sunshine and away from the meadows and the seaside. They forced us constantly to fill our thoughts with their incomprehensible business. Even though that only went so far. They chewed us out; at the office we were totally insignificant.
He started to argue with Bekker about the heath. It was a miracle of erudition. He tried to convince Bekker that it was a mistake to withdraw from the world and go off to the heath, which he would never do anyway. An artist belongs at the centre of modern life.
But I also had a feeling I hadn’t known before. All those days had passed and many more days would pass as well, and on every one of them my expectations would remain unfulfilled and my longings unsatisfied.
I stood on the Rhenen tower and looked into the distance, and my heart went out into the distance, to the red sky in the west. But even if I could have flown off the top of the tower into that distance, I would have found only the distance nearby, and my heart would have gone out to the distance once more. And what good did it do me – the wisdom that taught me that nothing would ever change, it would be like this for ever?
Every day we longed for something, without knowing what. It got monotonous. Sunrise and sunset and sunlight on the water and behind the drifting white clouds – monotonous – and the darker skies too, the leaves turning brown and yellow, the bare treetops and poor soggy fields in the winter – all the things I had seen so many times and thought about so many times while I was gone and would see again so many more times, as long as I didn’t die. Who can spend his life watching all these things that constantly repeat themselves, who can keep longing for nothing?
And now the gorse was blooming again, and the lilacs and apple trees and chestnuts, and the sun was blazing down on all of it. Full of emotion, I had seen it all again. And while I was thinking about it, my vague longings and expectations faded away.
I hear the wind rustling through the high pines, through the forests of certainty, of knowing that all this exists whenever I decide to think it. I am grateful that this has been given to me.
But to keep this awareness always is granted to no man.
When I was young there were so many times when I wished something would happen, anything. But nothing ever happened.
God’s throne is still unshaken. His world just takes its course. Now and then God smiles for a moment about the important gentlemen who think they’re really something. A new batch of little Titans are still busy piling up little boulders so that they can topple him down off his heights and arrange the world the way they think it should be.
And so everything takes its little course, and woe to those who ask: Why?