What Cannot Letters Inspire?

Letters of Abelard and Heloise, tr. John Hughes (London, 1776), II., Heloise to Abelard, 87-88:

If a picture, which is but a mute representation of an object, can give such pleasure, what cannot letters inspire? They have souls; they can speak; they have in them all that force which expresses the transports of the heart; they have all the fire of our passions; they can raise them as much as if the persons themselves were present; they have all the softness and delicacy of speech, and sometimes a boldness of expression even beyond it. [•••]

Letters were first invented for comforting such solitary wretches as myself. Having lost the substantial pleasures of seeing and possessing you, I shall in some measure compensate this loss by the satisfaction I shall find in your writing. There I shall read your most secret thoughts; I shall carry them always about me; I shall kiss them every moment: if you can be capable of any jealousy, let it be for the fond caresses I shall bestow on your letters, and envy only the happiness of those rivals. That writing may be no trouble to you, write always to me carelessly, and without study: I had rather read the dictates of the heart than of the brain. I cannot live if you do not tell me you always love me; but that language ought to be so natural to you, that I believe you cannot speak otherwise to me without great violence to yourself. And since, by that melancholy relation to your friend, you have awakened all my sorrows, it is but reasonable you should allay them by some marks of an inviolable love.

Retired To These Deserts And At Peace

Francisco de Quevedo (1580-1645), Desde la Torre (translated as From the Tower by Elwin Wirkala):

        Retired to these deserts and at peace,
        and with but few, though learnèd, books beside,
        I live conversing now with the deceased,
        and listen with my eyes to those who died.

        Open, whether or not I miss their points,
        they mend or fecundate my everything,
        their music’s muted counterpoints when joined
        with this life’s dream bespeak awakening.

        Great Souls absented by mortality,
        in death avenging injuries of years,
        the learnèd press, Oh Josef, has set free!

        Hours fled forever disappear,
        but they are best accounted for in letters,
        read and studied, when they make us better.

        Retirado en la paz de estos desiertos,
        Con pocos, pero doctos libros juntos,
        Vivo en conversación con los difuntos,
        Y escucho con mis ojos a los muertos.

        Si no siempre entendidos, siempre abiertos,
        O enmiendan, o fecundan mis asuntos;
        Y en músicos callados contrapuntos
        Al sueño de la vida hablan despiertos.

        Las Grandes Almas que la Muerte ausenta,
        De injurias de los años vengadora,
        Libra, ¡oh gran Don Josef!, docta la Imprenta.

        En fuga irrevocable huye la hora;
        Pero aquélla el mejor cálculo cuenta,
        Que en la lección y estudios nos mejora.

Making Room For Another

Henry David Thoreau, Journal, Oct. 24, 1837:

Every part of nature teaches that the passing away of one life is the making room for another. The oak dies down to the ground, leaving within its rind a rich virgin mould, which will impart a vigorous life to an infant forest. The pine leaves a sandy and sterile soil, the harder woods a strong and fruitful mould.

So this constant abrasion and decay makes the soil of my future growth. As I live now so shall I reap. If I grow pines and birches, my virgin mould will not sustain the oak; but pines and birches, or, perchance, weeds and brambles, will constitute my second growth.

So Tiresome A Scene

David Hume, A Treatise on Human Nature, vol. II., pt. III., sect. X. (ed. T. H. Green & T. H. Grose, London: Longmans, 1882, pp. 226-7):

Human life is so tiresome a scene, and men generally are of such indolent dispositions, that whatever amuses them, tho’ by a passion mixt with pain, does in the main give them a sensible pleasure.

Silent And Triumphant Love

Miguel de Unamuno, Essays and Soliloquies, tr. J. E. Crawford Flitch (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1925), Don Quixote’s Niece, 110-111:

“Take my mouth and cover it with warm kisses in silence, and renounce a cold eternity of fame in the mouths of those whom you will never know. Will you hear them speaking of you when you are dead? Bury all your love in my breast, and if it is a great love, it is better that you should bury it in me than that you should lavish it among men who easily forget and soon pass away. They are not worthy of admiring you, my Alonso, they are not worthy of it. You will live for me alone and so you will live more truly for all the universe and for God. So living, your might and your heroism will seem to be lost, but don’t mind that. Do you not know the infinite streams of life which flow from a silent and heroic love, flowing out in wave after wave beyond humanity to the orbit of the remotest of the stars? Do you not know that the silent and triumphant love of a happy pair of lovers is a fount of mysterious energy that irradiates a whole people and all generations to come to the end of time? Do you not know what it is to guard the sacred fire of life, fanning it to ever brighter flame in simple and silent worship? Love, the simple act of loving, without deeds, is itself a heroic deed. Come and renounce all your deeds in my arms—the dim obscurity of your repose in my arms will be a seed-time which will bear fruit in the deeds and glory of others to whom your very name will be unknown. When even the echo of your name is no longer borne upon the air, when there is no longer any air to bear the echo of it, the embers of your love will warm the ruins of perished worlds. Come and give yourself to me, Alonso, for though you should never ride abroad redressing wrongs, your greatness will not be lost, for in my heart nothing is lost. Come, rest your head upon my heart and I will carry you thence to the rest that has no ending.”

No Man Knows The Other

Hermann Hesse, In the Mist = Im Nebel, tr. Harry Steinhauer:

        Strange, to wander in the mist!
        Every bush and stone is lonely,
        no tree sees the other,
        each one is alone.

        The world was full of friends for me,
        when my life was still bright;
        now, when the mist falls,
        not one is visible any longer.

        Truly, no one is wise,
        who does not know the dark,
        which inescapably and softly
        separates him from them all.

        Strange, to wander in the mist!
        To live is to be lonely.
        No man knows the other,
        each one is alone.

Dearest Soul

Martin Heidegger's letter to Elfride (his future wife), 13 Dec., 1915 (found in: Martin Heidegger, Letters to his Wife 1915-1970, tr. R. D. V. Glasgow (UK/USA: Polity Press, 2008), 4-6):

Come, Dearest Soul, and rest against my heart, I want to look for ever into the depths of your fairy-tale eyes and thank you—Dearest Soul—it is given to me to experience ever new, wonderful things in you—you are mine—& am I to bear this unutterable happiness, are my hands sacred enough tremblingly to clasp yours, is my soul, harried through all the throes of doubt, a worthy shrine wherein your love may dwell for all eternity?

My great happiness weighs me to the ground—in the end, it is above all those of a philosophical nature who experience such uncommon happiness in all its fullness. The philosopher sees the ultimate in all things, experiences the deepest foundations of all existence, thrills in this god-born wondrous happiness—Dearest Soul, I can only accept this wonderful thing with the painful reverence that is ultimately deeper than what we call joy; why do people often weep for happiness? why, when I read your angelically pure poem drenched in the sunshine of fairy-tales, intoxicated with the felicity of childhood, could I not help but fling myself down & close my eyes?—were they the throes of eternity that chased wildly through my soul & then suddenly left behind in me that silence of the stormless mountain, in which all objects grow towards the infinite?

Yes, & so, Dearest Soul, let me accept all happiness with great reverential, prayerful humility & always be ailing with this happiness, for then I am gladdest, happiest & strongest, in this great weight of experiencing I can feel the problems lie heavy on my soul like gigantic boulders; and this burden, which draws its force from the eternal, unleashes the opposing force in me & I feel my sinews tauten & I reach for the heavy hammer of the interminable search for knowledge which gropes forward through dark tunnels of abstraction—& suddenly it comes whistling down & the rock face cracks asunder, the shards fly into the depths & the blue of the sky laughs in on us & profusion of blessing gushes over us & you, Dearest Soul, lean trembling on my shoulder & can still feel the shake of my arm, which is yet infused with the weight of the hammer—

Dearest Soul, and now I must go down on my knees before you, lay your wondrous hand, transfused with blessing, on my tortured brow—and forgive your boy, forgive me for being so full of restlessness on Sunday, I am human & as such hurled into the antagonism of the sensual and the spiritual; but with you it is given to me to experience what is beyond the antagonism, where all tensions are resolved, where everything is sacred & all darkness is banished—Dearest Soul, I'll for ever be your debtor—

I ought to rest now, but no, I cannot. Resting on your bosom, I would gladly recount every last detail of my modest life—

But perhaps you have already beheld me in the intuition of your soul—a simple boy, living with modest, pious people in the country, a boy who could still see the glass globe by the light of which his grandfather sat on a three-legged stool and hammered nails into shoes, who helped his father with the cooperage & forced the hoops into place around the barrels, the hammer-blows resounding through the small, winding alleys; who savoured all the wonderful poetry open to a sexton's son, lay for hours up in the church tower & gazed after the swifts & dreamt his way over the dark pine forests; who rummaged about in the dusty old books in the church loft & felt like a king among the piles of books which he did not understand but every one of which he knew & reverentially loved.

And when that boy, who would get the key to the tower from his father & could choose which of the other boys was allowed up with him & so had a certain prestige & power & was always the leader in all the raids and games of soldiers, the only one allowed to carry the iron sabre; when that boy came home from Latin at the young vicar's and often brought mistakes with him, he would cry his heart out on his good mother's shoulder, though she herself could not give him any help—the little brooder had to 'study' & was allowed to go to grammar school on Lake Constance & in the fifth form when he brought home nothing less than a 'Schiller' as first prize, he was even in the local paper & from then on, as people still say today, he was never again seen in the holidays without a book. And he delved & sought & became quieter and quieter & already he had a vague ideal—the scholar—in his mind—though his pious, simple mother hoped for a 'priest'—it was a struggle for him to win the right to live purely on knowledge, to make his mother believe that the philosopher too can achieve great things for men & their eternal happiness—how often did she ask her son, 'what is philosophy, do tell me', & he couldn't give an answer himself— [. . .]

—my Dearest Soul scatters the roses on the steep mountain path up to the towering peaks of pure knowledge & most blissful experience in these two creatures whom God was leading along their paths, his inscrutable path, until suddenly, filled with the pangs of holy craving, they found one another; the two of them will build themselves a happiness in which spirit, purity, goodness rush together and, overflowing, pour forth into the languishing souls of those who thirst—

Dearest Soul, clasp your pure hands together & place them in mine—take my soul, it is yours—you saint—and let the flames and glowing heat come together and as they flare up consume one another in the longing for

αὐτὸ τὸ θεῖον καλόν μονοειδές 

'the divine itself in its unchangeable beauty'.

A Silence More Significant Than Any Story

Henry David Thoreau, Journal, January 11, 1857:

I never chanced to meet with any man so cheering and elevating and encouraging, so infinitely suggestive, as the stillness and solitude of the Well Meadow Field. 

Men even think me odd and perverse because I do not prefer their society to this nymph or wood-god rather. But I have tried them. I have sat down with a dozen of them together in a club, and instantly they did not inspire me. One or another abused our ears with many words and a few thoughts which were not theirs. There was very little genuine goodness apparent. We are such hollow pretenders. I lost my time.

But out there! Who shall criticise that companion? It is like the hone to the knife. I bathe in that climate and am cleansed of all social impurities. I become a witness with unprejudiced senses to the order of the universe. There is nothing petty or impertinent, none to say, «See what a great man I am!» There chiefly, and not in the society of the wits, am I cognizant of wit. Shall I prefer a part, an infinitely small fraction, to the whole? There I get my underpinnings laid and repaired, cemented, levelled. There is my country club. We dine at the sign of the Shrub Oak, the New Albion House. 

I demand of my companion some evidence that he has travelled further than the sources of the Nile, that he has seen something, that he has been out of town, out of the house. Not that he can tell a good story, but that he can keep a good silence. Has he attended to a silence more significant than any story? Did he ever get out of the road which all men and fools travel? You call yourself a great traveller, perhaps, but can you get beyond the influence of a certain class of ideas?

Philosophy: The Doctrine Of Longing

Friedrich von Schlegel, The Philosophy of Life, and Philosophy of Language, tr. A. J. W. Morrison (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1847), lecture II., pp. 34-35, 37-38:

. . . longing—an indefinite feeling of profound desire, which is satisfied with no earthly object, whether real or ideal, but is ever directed to the eternal and the divine. And although it presupposes, as the condition of its existence, no special genius or peculiar talents, but proceeds immediately out of the pure source of the divinely created and immortal soul—out of the everlasting feelings of the loving soul—still, from causes which are easily conceivable, a pure development of this species is far rarer than even of the enthusiasm for art. No doubt, in certain happy temperaments, under circumstances favorable to their free expansion, this vague longing is peculiar to the age of youth, and is often enough observed there. Indeed, it is in that soft melancholy, which is always joined with the half-unconscious, but pleasant feeling of the blooming fullness of life, that lies the charm which the reminiscence of the days of youth possesses for the calm and quiet contemplations of old age. Here, too, the distinctive mark between the genuine and the spurious manifestations of this feeling is both simple enough, and easily found. For as this longing may in general be explained as an inchoate state—a love yet to be developed—the question reduces itself consequently to the simple one of determining the nature of this love. If, upon the first development and gratification of the passions, this love immediately passes over to and loses itself in the ordinary realities of life, then is it no genuine manifestation of the heavenly feeling, but a mere earthly and sensual longing. But when it survives the youthful ebullition of the feelings, when it does but become deeper and more intense by time, when it is satisfied with no joys, and stifled by no sorrows of earth—when, from the midst of the struggles of life, and the pressure of the world, it turns, like a light-seeing eye upon the storm-tossed waves of the ocean of time, to the heaven of heavens, watching to discover there some star of eternal hope—then is it that true and genuine longing, which, directing itself to the divine, is itself also of a celestial origin. Out of this root springs almost every thing that is intellectually beautiful and great—even the love of scientific certainty itself, and of a profound knowledge of life and nature. Philosophy, indeed, has no other source, and we might in this respect call it, with much propriety, the doctrine or the science of longing. But even that youthful longing, already noticed, is oftentimes a genuine, or, at least, the first foundation of the higher and truer species, although, unlike the latter, it is as yet neither purely evolved nor refined by the course of time.

. . . This beautiful longing of youth, a fruitful fancy, and a loving soul, are the best and most precious gifts of benignant nature, that dispenses with so liberal a hand, or, rather, not of nature, but of that wonderful Intelligence that presides in and over it. They form, as it were, a fair garden of hidden life within man. But as the first man was placed in the garden of Eden, not merely for his idle enjoyment, but, as it is expressly stated, “to dress it and to keep it,” so here also, when this law of duty is neglected, the inmost heart of the most eminent characters and of the most richly-endowed natures becomes, as it were, a Paradise run wild and waste. . . . 

. . . three forms of man’s higher effort—viz., longing, true love, and genuine enthusiasm . . . As . . . the thinking soul is the living center of the human consciousness, so, on the other hand, the loving soul is the middle point and the foundation of all moral life, as it shows itself in that soul-bond of love, which, while it constitutes marriage, is tied and completed therein. On this union, then, which, as historically represented, appears to be the true commencement of civilized life, it will be necessary to say a few words; and the present seems the most appropriate place for them. Now, both in philosophy and in all general speculation, there are many reasoners who would derive every thing from material sensations, and seek to degrade all that is regarded as high and noble by mankind. So here, also, in the world’s mode of judging of this union—which, however, all publicly-acknowledged principles regard as holy—it, and all that belongs to it, is accounted for by some evanescent passion, some sensual impression, or some interested view or other, while the existence of any thing like true and genuine love is absolutely denied. But, in the first place, in the case of a union which embraces the entire man—his sensuous as well as his rational, or, as I should prefer to say, his earthly no less than his spiritual nature and temperament—it can not fairly be urged in objection to it, that both the elements of his mixed constitution are present in it. On the contrary, it is obviously most unjust, in our estimate of it, violently to separate what, even in the least corrupted disposition and purest characters, are most closely interwoven, or, rather, fused together, and to subject them to an invidious and destructive analysis. This is not the way to determine the characteristics of a true and of a false love. The distinction between them must rather be sought by a simpler method, similar to that which we followed in the case of longing and enthusiasm—by considering merely the total result. A feeling of this kind may appear at the beginning never so violent; it may even amuse itself with a thorough mental hallucination, which betrays itself in its very outward aspect, with the profoundest veneration, nay, deification of its admired object; but in married life this intense admiration soon gives place to satiety or indifference, and imbittered by mutual distrust and misunderstanding, it terminates in incurable discord. In such a case the feeling, even in its ardent beginnings, was no true love, but simply passion. But in those happy unions, where the first passionate ardor of youth yields only to an ever-growing and still purer development of mutual good-will and confidence—while self-sacrifice and patient endurance, both in good and evil fortune, do but cherish the same deep affection and calm friendship—here, from the very first, it was true and genuine love. For, however much the outward appearances of human life may seem to contradict it, there is not in nature, and even in the higher region, any love without a return. And as all true love is reciprocal, so also is true love lasting and indestructible; or, to “speak as a man,” even because it is the very inmost life of humanity, it is, therefore, true unto death.

Something Worth Living For

Henry David Thoreau, Journal, March 31, 1852 (emphasis mine):

Why the moaning of the storm gives me pleasure. Methinks it is be cause it puts to rout the trivialness of our fair-weather life and gives it at least a tragic interest. The sound has the effect of a pleasing challenge, to call forth our energy to resist the invaders of our life's territory. It is musical and thrilling, as the sound of an enemy's bugle. Our spirits revive like lichens in the storm. There is something worth living for when we are resisted, threatened. As at the last day we might be thrilled with the prospect of the grandeur of our destiny, so in these first days our destiny appears grander. What would the days, what would our life, be worth, if some nights were not dark as pitch,—of darkness tangible or that you can cut with a knife? How else could the light in the mind shine? How should we be conscious of the light of reason? If it were not for physical cold, how should we have discovered the warmth of the affections? I sometimes feel that I need to sit in a far-away cave through a three weeks' storm, cold and wet, to give a tone to my system. The spring has its windy March to usher it in, with many soaking rains reaching into April. Methinks I would share every creature's suffering for the sake of its experience and joy. The song sparrow and the transient fox-colored sparrow,—have they brought me no message this year? Do they go to lead heroic lives in Rupert's Land? They are so small, I think their destinies must be large. Have I heard what this tiny passenger has to say, while it flits thus from tree to tree? Is not the coming of the fox-colored sparrow something more earnest and significant than I have dreamed of? Can I forgive myself if I let it go to Rupert's Land before I have appreciated it? God did not make this world in jest; no, nor in indifference. These migrating sparrows all bear messages that concern my life. I do not pluck the fruits in their season. I love the birds and beasts because they are mythologically in earnest. I see that the sparrow cheeps and flits and sings adequately to the great design of the universe; that man does not communicate with it, understand its language, because he is not at one with nature. I reproach myself because I have regarded with indifference the passage of the birds; I have thought them no better than I.

Let No Man Seek To Make It Easy

Carl C. Jung, “The Love Problem of a Student,” in Civilization in Transition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978, vol. 10 of the Collected Works), §§231-2, 111-112:

. . . Love requires depth and loyalty of feeling; without them it is not love but mere caprice. True love will always commit itself and engage in lasting ties; it needs freedom only to effect its choice, not for its accomplishment. Every true and deep love is a sacrifice. The lover sacrifices all other possibilities, or rather, the illusion that such possibilities exist. If this sacrifice is not made, his illusions prevent the growth of any deep and responsible feeling, so that the very possibility of experiencing real love is denied him.

Love has more than one thing in common with religious faith. It demands unconditional trust and expects absolute surrender. Just as nobody but the believer who surrenders himself wholly to God can partake of divine grace, so love reveals its highest mysteries and its wonder only to those who are capable of unqualified devotion and loyalty of feeling. And because this is so difficult, few mortals can boast of such an achievement. But, precisely because the truest and most devoted love is also the most beautiful, let no man seek to make it easy. He is a sorry knight who shrinks from the difficulty of loving his lady. Love is like God: both give themselves only to their bravest knights.

Still Ignorant Remain

Saʿdī Shīrāzī, The Gulistān; Or, Rose Garden, tr. Edward B. Eastwick (London: 1880, 2nd edt.), ch. VIII., 206:

        How much soe’er thou learn’st, ’tis all vain;
        Who practise not, still ignorant remain.
        A quadruped, with volumes laden, is
        No whit the wiser or more sage for this:
        How can the witless animal discern,
        If books be piled on it? or wood to burn?

We Were One

Heloise to Abelard, in Abelard and Heloise: The Love Letters, A Poetical Rendering, tr. Ella C. Bennett (San Francisco & New York: Paul Elder and Com., 1907), 1-2:

        My Abelard, my love, my own adored!
        When last I wrote to thee my soul I poured,
        In all its grief and anguish from my heart—
        O Abelard, my love, why did we part?
        Why didst thou hide thyself in gloomy cell,
        And banish me, ’til earth seemed part of Hell?
        And my last letter! O not answered yet!
        I cannot for one single hour forget
        That we were one. At night from dreams I call
        Thy name aloud, in pain, then like a pall,
        The ceiling of my cell o’ercaps my view,—
        And visions fade again that brought me you!

        Think you at night when at my prayers I kneel,
        That only thoughts celestial through me steal?
        Think you the sound of orisons divine
        Can banish that lost bliss—that you were mine?
        That once you loved me, we together slept,
        Together laughed and loved, together wept;
        Together shared each joy, each pain, each thought? [...]

With Inner Devotion

Novalis, «Christianity or Europe: 1799», in Philosophical, Literary, and Poetic Writings, tr. James D. Reid (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2024), 242:

. . . [L]oving souls preserve locks of hair or notes from their deceased sweethearts,1 and feed upon their sweet ardor until death reunites them. With inner devotion one collected everything that once belonged to these beloved souls, and those who received or only touched one of these consoling relics considered themselves fortunate.

1. According to the editors of HKA, Novalis did just this after the death of Sophie. 

Woman's Oaths

Heinrich Heine, Lyrical Interlude (1822-23) = Lyrisches Intermezzo, XIII., tr. Edgar Alfred Bowring:

        Swear not at all, but only kiss!
            All woman’s oaths I hold amiss;
        Thy word is sweet, but sweeter far
        The kisses that my guerdon are.
        These keep I, while thy words but seem
        A passing cloud, or fragrant dream.

          O schwöre nicht und küsse nur,
        Ich glaube keinem Weiberschwur!
        Dein Wort ist süß, doch süßer ist
        Der Kuß, den ich dir abgeküßt;
        Den hab’ ich, und dran glaub’ ich auch,
        Das Wort ist eitel Dunst und Hauch.

Grief Not Cured

Abraham Cowley, Constantia and Philetus, ll. 317-8:

        Hee who acquainteth others with his moane,
        Addes to his friend's grief, but not cures his owne.

Nought But Death

Abraham Cowley, Constantia and Philetus (written around 1630, when Cowley was only twelve years old), ll. 445-476:

        I trust (deare soule) my absence cannot move
        You to forget, or doubt my ardent love;
        For were there any meanes to see you, I
        Would runne through Death and all the miserie
        Fate could inflict, that so the world might say,
        In Life and Death I lov’d CONSTANTIA.                    450
        Then let not (dearest sweet) our absence sever
        Our loves, let them ioyn’d closely still together,
        Give warmth to one another, till there rise
        From all our labours, and our industries
        The long-expected fruits; have patience (Sweet)
        There's no man whom the Summer pleasures greet
        Before he tast the Winter; none can say,
        Ere Night was gone, he saw the rising Day.
            So when wee once have wasted Sorrowe’s night,
            The sunne of Comfort then, shall give us light.       460
                                                                                PHILETUS.

        Your absence (Sir) though it be long, yet I
        Neither forget, nor doubt your Constancie.
        Nor, need you feare, that I should yeeld vnto
        Another, what to your true Love is due.                       470
        My heart is yours, it is not in my claime,
        Nor have I power to give it away againe.
        There's nought but Death can part our soules, no time
        Or angry Friends, shall make my Love decline:
            But for the harvest of our hopes I’le stay,
            Vnlesse Death cut it, ere’t be ripe, away.
                                                                            CONSTANTIA.

The Process Of Projection

Carl G. Jung, The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, tr. R. F. C. Hull (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2nd edt., 1969 = Bollingen Series XX., The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, vol. 8), IV., General Aspects of Dream Psychology, On the Nature of Dreams, 264-266:

Just as we tend to assume that the world is as we see it, we naïvely suppose that people are as we imagine them to be. In this latter case, unfortunately, there is no scientific test that would prove the discrepancy between perception and reality. Although the possibility of gross deception is infinitely greater here than in our perception of the physical world, we still go on naïvely projecting our own psychology into our fellow human beings. In this way everyone creates for himself a series of more or less imaginary relationships based essentially on projection. Among neurotics there are even cases where fantasy projections provide the sole means of human relationship. A person whom I perceive mainly through my projections is an imago or, alternatively, a carrier of imagos or symbols. All the contents of our unconscious are constantly being projected into our surroundings, and it is only by recognizing certain properties of the objects as projections or imagos that we are able to distinguish them from the real properties of the objects. But if we are not aware that a property of the object is a projection, we cannot do anything else but be naïvely convinced that it really does belong to the object. All human relationships swarm with these projections; anyone who cannot see this in his personal life need only have his attention drawn to the psychology of the press in wartime. Cum grano salis, we always see our own unavowed mistakes in our opponent. Excellent examples of this are to be found in all personal quarrels. Unless we are possessed of an unusual degree of self-awareness we shall never see through our projections but must always succumb to them, because the mind in its natural state presupposes the existence of such projections. It is the natural and given thing for unconscious contents to be projected. . . . So long as the libido can use these projections as agreeable and convenient bridges to the world, they will alleviate life in a positive way. But as soon as the libido wants to strike out on another path, and for this purpose begins running back along the previous bridges of projection, they will work as the greatest hindrances it is possible to imagine, for they effectively prevent any real detachment from the former object. We then witness the characteristic phenomenon of a person trying to devalue the former object as much as possible in order to detach his libido from it. But as the previous identity is due to the projection of subjective contents, complete and final detachment can only take place when the imago that mirrored itself in the object is restored, together with its meaning, to the subject. This restoration is achieved through conscious recognition of the projected content, that is, by acknowledging the “symbolic value” of the object.

. . . We understand another person in the same way as we understand, or seek to understand, ourselves. What we do not understand in ourselves we do not understand in the other person either. So there is plenty to ensure that his image will be for the most part subjective. As we know, even an intimate friendship is no guarantee of objective knowledge.

Being Transported

Roger Scruton, Why Beauty Matters, 2009:

Ornaments liberate us from the tyranny of the useful, and satisfy our need for harmony; in a strange way, they make us feel at home; they remind us that we have more than practical needs; we are not just governed by animal appetites, like eating and sleeping; we have spiritual and moral needs, too, and if those needs go unsatisfied, so do we. We all know what it is like, even in the everyday world, suddenly to be transported by the things we see, from the ordinary world of our appetites to the illuminated sphere of contemplation. A flash of sunlight, a remembered melody, the face of someone loved: these dawn on us in the most distracted moments, and suddenly life is worthwhile. These are timeless moments, in which we feel the presence of another higher world.

Silence, Solitude, Grief, Love, & Thought

Henri-Frédéric Amiel, Journal Intime, from August 28, 1875 (tr. Mrs. Humphrey Ward):

I know that the world, which is only eager to silence you when you do speak, is angry with your silence as soon as its own action has killed in you the wish to speak. . . . Premature despair and the deepest discouragement have been my constant portion. Incapable of taking any interest in my talents for my own sake, I let everything slip as soon as the hope of being loved for them and by them had forsaken me. A hermit against my will, I have not even found peace in solitude, because my inmost conscience has not been any better satisfied than my heart.

Does not all this make up a melancholy lot, a barren failure of a life? What use have I made of my gifts, of my special circumstances, of my half-century of existence? What have I paid back to my country? Are all the documents I have produced, taken together, my correspondence, these thousands of journal pages, my lectures, my articles, my poems, my notes of different kinds, anything better than withered leaves? To whom and to what have I been useful? Will my name survive me a single day, and will it ever mean anything to anybody? A life of no account! A great many comings and goings, a great many scrawls—for nothing. When all is added up—nothing! And worst of all, it has not been a life used up in the service of some adored object, or sacrificed to any future hope. Its sufferings will have been vain, its renunciations useless, its sacrifices gratuitous, its dreariness without reward. . . . No, I am wrong; it will have had its secret treasure, its sweetness, its reward. It will have inspired a few affections of great price; it will have given joy to a few souls; its hidden existence will have had some value. Besides, if in itself it has been nothing, it has understood much. If it has not been in harmony with the great order, still it has loved it. If it has missed happiness and duty, it has at least felt its own nothingness, and implored its pardon.

. . . What I have found difficult is to keep up a prejudice in favor of any form, nationality, or individuality whatever. Hence my indifference to my own person, my own usefulness, interest, or opinions of the moment. What does it all matter? Omnis determinatio est negatio. Grief localizes us, love particularizes us, but thought delivers us from personality. . . . To be a man is a poor thing, to be a man is well; to be the man—man in essence and in principle—that alone is to be desired.