書抄 #8
Quite out of the blue a bizarre and compelling idea came to my head today: that we have ended up as human beings through forgetfulness, through lack of attention, and that in reality we are creatures participating in a vast, cosmic battle that has probably been going on since time immemorial, and which, for all we know, may never end. All we see of it are glimmers, in blood-red moons, in fires and gales, in frozen leaves that fall in October, in the jittery flight of a butterfly, in the irregular pulse of time that can lengthen a night into infinity or come to a violent stop each day at noon. I am actually an angel or a demon sent into the turmoil of one life on a sort of a mission, which is either carrying itself out without my help, or else I have totally forgotten about it. This forgetfulness is part of the war – it’s the other side’s weapon, and they’ve attacked me with it so that I’m wounded, invalided out of the game for a while. As a result, I don’t know how powerful or how weak I am – I don’t know anything about myself because I can’t remember anything, and that’s why I don’t try to look for either weakness or power in myself. It’s an extraordinary feeling – to imagine that somewhere deep inside, you are someone completely different from the person you always thought you were. But it didn’t make me feel anxious, just relieved, finally free of a kind of weariness that used to permeate my life.
Olga Tokarczuk. House of Day, House of Night. Trans. Anotonia Lloyd-Jones. Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 2003. p 72-73
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