As we manipulate everyday words, we forget that they are fragments of ancient and eternal stories, that we are building our houses with broken pieces of sculptures and ruined statues of gods as the barbarians did.
Interpretation
Words are powerful and rooted in deep history, yet we often overlook their significance.
Bruno Schulz reflects on the nature of language, suggesting that our everyday communication is intertwined with ancient narratives and histories. He warns us that in our modern world, we risk losing sight of the profound stories and meanings carried by words, as they are akin to the remnants of once-great art and civilization. This quote invites us to consider the depth and significance behind what we say and how we engage with language, urging us to appreciate the historical context that shapes our understanding.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of literature and language.
Animals! the object of insatiable interest, examples of the riddle of life, created, as it were, to reveal the human being to man himself, displaying his richness and complexity in a thousand kaleidoscopic possibilities, each of them brought to some curious end, to some characteristic exuberance.
An event may be small and insignificant in its origin , and yet, when drawn close to one’s eye, it may open in its center an infinite and radiant perspective because a higher order of being is trying to express itself in it and irradiates it violently.
The days hardened with cold and boredom like last year's loaves of bread. One began to cut them with blunt knives without appetite, with a lazy indifference.
There are things than cannot ever occur with any precision. They are too big and too magnificent to be contained in mere facts. They are merely trying to occur, they are checking whether the ground of reality can carry them. And they quickly withdraw, fearing to loose their integrity in the frailty of realization.
I ask you only to stop imagining that you were born, have parents, are a body, will die and so on. Just try, make a beginning-it is not as hard as you think.
Take me and cast me where you will; I shall still be possessor of the divinity within me, serene and content.
A man has made at least a start on discovering the meaning of human life when he plants shade trees under which he knows full well he will never sit.
... the reason life works at all is that not everyone in your tribe is nuts on the same day. [pp. 65-66]
It was both odd and unjust, a real example of pitiful arbitrariness of existance, that you were born into a particular time & held prisoner there whether you wanted it or not. It gave you an indecent advantage over the past and made you a clown vis-a-vis the future.
A journey never ends. Only the travellers end.
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