I have been searching for this author far and wide- trying to remember his last name. I have read him once in a world literature class and only remembered the impression he made on me. Because I have extremely intellectual friends- he came back to revisit me. This story was absolutely genius.
"Then I reflected that everything happens to a man precisely, precisely now. Centuries of centuries and only in the present do things happen; countless men in the air, on the face of the earth and the sea, and all that is really happening is happening to me..."
When you boil it down yes- we can only experience the present.
"I talked with him for scarcely an hour, but during that hour he was Goethe. . ."
Goethe is the ultimate symbol of genius.
"The author of an atrocious undertaking ought to imagine that he has already accomplished it, ought to impose upon himself a future as irrevocable as the past."
"The instructions to turn always to the left reminded me that such was the common procedure for discovering the central point of certain labyrinths."
"I imagined it infinite, no longer composed of octagonal kiosks and returning paths, but of rivers and provinces and kingdoms... I thought of a labyrinth of labyrinths, of one sinuous spreading labyrinth that would encompass the past and the future and in some way involve the stars."
In which men can get lost in...
"In all fictional works, each time a man is confronted with several alternatives, he chooses and eliminates the others; in the fiction of Ts'ui Pen, he chooses-- simultaneously -- all of them. He creates, in this way, diverse futures, diverse times which themselves proliferate and fork."
We choose all possibilities at once.
"He believed in an infinite series of times, in a growing, dizzying net of divergent, convergent and parallel times. This network of times which approached one another, forked, broke off, or were unaware of one another for centuries, embraces all possibilities of time. We do not exist in the majority of these times; in some you exist, and not I; in others I, and not you; in others, both of us. In the present one, which a favorable fate has granted me, you have arrived at my house; in another, while crossing the garden, you found me dead; in still another, I untter these same words, but I am a mistake, a ghost."
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One of the most fascinating works I have read- about time. We exist in all possibilities and everything is flexible. One time I am your friend and yet another I am your enemy.
The question I have is: What in us makes us constant throughout these different possibilities of us?
--
Pdf- Translated by D.A.Y.
"Then I reflected that everything happens to a man precisely, precisely now. Centuries of centuries and only in the present do things happen; countless men in the air, on the face of the earth and the sea, and all that is really happening is happening to me..."
When you boil it down yes- we can only experience the present.
"I talked with him for scarcely an hour, but during that hour he was Goethe. . ."
Goethe is the ultimate symbol of genius.
"The author of an atrocious undertaking ought to imagine that he has already accomplished it, ought to impose upon himself a future as irrevocable as the past."
"The instructions to turn always to the left reminded me that such was the common procedure for discovering the central point of certain labyrinths."
"I imagined it infinite, no longer composed of octagonal kiosks and returning paths, but of rivers and provinces and kingdoms... I thought of a labyrinth of labyrinths, of one sinuous spreading labyrinth that would encompass the past and the future and in some way involve the stars."
In which men can get lost in...
"In all fictional works, each time a man is confronted with several alternatives, he chooses and eliminates the others; in the fiction of Ts'ui Pen, he chooses-- simultaneously -- all of them. He creates, in this way, diverse futures, diverse times which themselves proliferate and fork."
We choose all possibilities at once.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
One of the most fascinating works I have read- about time. We exist in all possibilities and everything is flexible. One time I am your friend and yet another I am your enemy.
The question I have is: What in us makes us constant throughout these different possibilities of us?
--
Pdf- Translated by D.A.Y.
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