The Fatal Skin by Balzac

"He had escaped from the realities of life, rising gradually toward an ideal world, finally attaining the enchanted palace of Rapture, where the universe appeared to him in shapes and forms of fire..."

I like how the "ideal world" is on the way up... and how it is a soft "gradual" rising.

"Where can you find, floating in all the ocean of literature, any book capable of matching the artistry this news item" 'Yesterday, at four o'clock, a woman there herself into the sea from the top of the Pont des Arts?'"

Marvelous. This hints to the psychological process of that woman to get to the point of throwing herself. What turmoil there must have been in her soul, in her being. Nothing like that can be written down..

"Between the rich promise that beckons a young man to Paris and his decision to kill himself, only God knows what a turmoil, there must have been of ideas, of poems left unfinished, of moments of despair, of stifled sobs, of futile endeavors, of abortive masterpieces. Every act of suicide is an epic of melancholy."

Such youth to be so horribly destroyed...the life killed inside him.

"The peace and silence that a scholar needs has a special sweetness that is as intoxicating as love. Exercising the mind, pursuing ideas, quietly contemplating the wisdom of science, rewards us with ineffable delights, as indefinable as everything else about the intellect, which functions in mysterious ways invisible to our outer senses. Furthermore, we are always forced to explore physical mysteries by physical parallels. For instance, the pleasure of swimming alone in a lake of crystal-clear water, surrounded by rocky crags, woodland, and flowering meadows and caressed by a soft breeze, may gibe the ignorant a very fervent suggestion of the happiness I felt when my spirit was warmed by the first gleams of some strange new illumination, when I hearkened to the frightening confusion of inspiration, when from some unknown source concepts came flooding through my throbbing brain. To feel that an idea, some generalization of human affairs, is beginning to take shape like the sun rising at dawn, or better yet, growing like a child, reaching puberty, and slowly becoming mature; that is a joy far above other earthly pleasure, or rather, it is a divine delight."

Divine delight is so beautifully said. Nothing can be compared to the beautiful process of the "birth" of an idea, a concept. It involves all part of ourselves in it- the mind, the soul, the heart. Our entire being is constantly striving for an idea that can transport us from one realm to the other. And magical is it when we have found it, the key that unlocks the realms of our imagination. It goes beyond our pathetic existence into things that can only be "invisible to our outer senses". Yes, mysterious is the mind!

"Love stars as a spring of limpid purity from a bed of gravel, water cress, and flowers; it grows into a stream and then a river, changing its nature and its appearance as it flows along; and finally it merges itself into that measureless ocean which to limited minds seems more dull monetary, but in which great souls plunge themselves in inexhaustible contemplation. How can we try to describe all the evanescent nuances of feeling, all those things that mean so much, things said in a tone more expressive than all the words in the language, glances more compelling than the most thrilling of odes? In any one of the magical sequences through which we fall in love with a woman there are profundities deeper than all the poetry ever written. How could we ever reconstruct in commentaries the mysterious stirrings of the heart to passion, since we lack adequate words to depict the visible mysteries of beauty?"

And just the visible mysteries we cannot describe- but what about the ones unseen? The ones that go beyond the physical and reach the soul? Those, we cannot even fathom, let alone describe. I love the way he says "reconstruct in commentaries" as if we sat around discussing "the mysterious stirrings of the heart to passion"- the idea itself is even ridiculous. But that is just it- this certain attempt in itself is ridiculous...

And what love can do to the "great souls"- can exhaust them in contemplation- because one cannot fully understand it, yet it is so beautiful to bask in its mystery.

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Pub by Signet Classics