fiefoe

Dan Wang

A strain of materialism, often crass, runs through both countries, sometimes producing veneration of successful entrepreneurs, sometimes creating displays of extraordinary tastelessness, overall contributing to a spirit of vigorous competition. .. Both countries are full of hustlers peddling shortcuts, especially to health and to wealth.
Really, everything that can go wrong in urban design has gone wrong in Beijing.
I endured all three years of Xi’s pursuit of zero-Covid, which started impressively until it plunged the country into broad misery.
* sustained rise in living standards and the authoritarian pulses emanating out of Beijing. It became no contradiction for me to appreciate that things are getting better and getting worse. I saw how China is made up of both strong entrepreneurs and a strong government, with a state that both moves fast and breaks things and moves fast and breaks people.
China learned so well from the United States that it started to beat America at its own game: capitalism, industry, and harnessing its people’s restless ambitions. If you want to appreciate what Detroit felt like at its peak, it’s probably better to experience that in Shenzhen
* A procedure-obsessed left conspired with a thoughtlessly destructive right to constrain the government. Neither the left nor the right allows the state to deliver essential goods expected by the public.
The best hedge I know against heightening tensions between the two superpowers is mutual curiosity.
* an American elite, made up of mostly lawyers, excelling at obstruction, versus a Chinese technocratic class, made up of mostly engineers, that excels at construction.
* Capitalist America intrudes upon the free market with a dense program of regulation and taxation while providing substantial (albeit imperfect) redistributive policies. Socialist China detains union organizers, levies light taxes, and provides a threadbare social safety net. The greatest trick that the Communist Party ever pulled off is masquerading as leftist. While Xi Jinping and the rest of the Politburo mouth Marxist pieties, the state is enacting a right-wing agenda that Western conservatives would salivate over: administering limited welfare, erecting enormous barriers to immigration, and enforcing traditional gender roles
Deng Xiaoping promoted engineers to the top ranks of China’s government throughout the 1980s and 1990s. By 2002, all nine members of the Politburo’s standing committee—the apex of the Communist Party—had trained as engineers.
A rough rule of thumb is that China produces one-third to one-half of nearly any manufactured product, whether that is structural steel, container ships, solar photovoltaic panels, or anything else.
Five out of the last ten presidents attended law school. In any given year, at least half the US Congress has law degrees, while at best a handful of members have studied science or engineering.
You can’t build companies worth trillions without legal protections. But lawyers are also part of the reason that the Bay Area and much of the country are starved of housing and mass transit.
* China embraced engineering in all its dimensions. Its leaders aren’t only civil or electrical engineers. They are, fundamentally, social engineers. .. The Soviet Union inspired many of Beijing’s leaders with a love of heavy industry and an enthusiasm to become engineers of the soul—a phrase from Joseph Stalin repeated by Xi Jinping
it feels like China’s leadership is made up entirely of hydraulic engineers, who view the economy and society as liquid flows, as if all human activity—from mass production to reproduction—can be directed, restricted, increased, or blocked with the same ease as turning a series of valves. <> Can a government be too efficient? Six years in China taught me that the answer is yes, when it is unbounded by citizen input. There are many self-limiting aspects of a system that makes snap decisions with so little regard for people.
things that no other state would have attempted, like holding on to a zero-Covid strategy until it drove the country mad. The fundamental tenet of the engineering state is to look at people as aggregates, not individuals... Its philosophy is to maximize the discretion of the state and minimize the rights of individuals.
* Engineers often treat social issues as math exercises... There is no confusion about the purpose of zero-Covid or the one-child policy: The number is right there in the name.
As impressive as China’s railways and bridges may be, they carry enormous levels of debt that drag down broader growth. Manufacturers produce so many goods that China’s trade partners are now grumbling for protection.
To capture both the traumatic aspects of the engineering state and its capacity to produce great pride, I like to think of a hypothetical question: What was the worst year to be born in modern China?
That was the Great Leap Forward, when tens of millions perished from agricultural collectivization, quack agronomy, natural disasters, and Mao’s order to melt down household tools for the metal, all leading to the sort of mass starvation
Also around then, if he were an urban resident, Yao would catch China’s housing privatization. As the state moved to dismantle socialism, it offered homes to urban workers for a song. It was one of the greatest wealth transfers in history:
* The year 2008 offers a direct comparison between California’s speed and China’s speed. That year, California voters approved a state proposition to fund a high-speed rail link between San Francisco and Los Angeles; also that year, China began construction of its high-speed rail line between Beijing and Shanghai. Both lines would be around eight hundred miles long upon completion... China opened the Beijing–Shanghai line in 2011 at a cost of $36 billion. ... The first segment of California’s train will start operating, according to official estimates, between 2030 and 2033. Which means that the margin of error for estimating when a partial leg of California’s high-speed rail will open is the same as the time it took China to build the entire Beijing–Shanghai line.
Though the political views of law students may twist in unexpected directions, we should keep in view that they are entwined most firmly around a pillar of personal ambition... More than any other group in the United States, lawyers are afforded license to be generalists, permitted to stomp into whichever intellectual realm pleases them.... In recent decades, lawyers have been able to muscle out economists even in economic policymaking. The Biden administration was staffed by many graduates of Yale Law,
* While engineers envision bridges, lawyers envision procedures... The United States is unusual among Western countries for having so many lawyers: four hundred lawyers per hundred thousand people, which is three times higher than the average in European countries. Since lawyers are everywhere, proceduralism has reached everywhere,.. The other problem of the lawyerly society is a systematic bias toward the well-off.
The Communist Party has relentlessly broken up entrenched interests, partly to prevent rich people from gaining political power and partly to spread material benefits throughout the country.
No military can be powered by artificial intelligence alone; it will need drones and munitions... Over the past decade, the United States brought lawyers to a technology fight.
If Americans look deeply into China, they will find reflections of its lost powers. China, right now, is in the midst of pursuing its own Great Society, where even its poorest provinces have impressive levels of physical dynamism.
The state-owned distillery behind Maotai, the hundred-proof spirit made of sorghum, grew into one of China’s most valuable companies. Its capital city of Guiyang now hosts several of the country’s biggest data centers.
* I saw that big guitar ornaments were hanging off of streetlamps. In the distance, I spied a hill topped by a giant rock guitar. It turned out that we were cycling through Zheng’an County, the self-styled guitar capital of the world. According to state media, one of every seven guitars made worldwide is produced in this township we passed through by chance. <> That is another feature of the engineering state: Manufacturing hubs are everywhere, often making goods you don’t expect.
China does little by way of redistribution from the wealthy to the poor; rather, it is enacting a Leninist agenda in which the state retains enormous discretion to command economic resources in order to maintain political control and to build toward a post-scarcity world.
In 2010, only half of Guizhou’s children attended high school—the lowest rate in the country.
* A Chinese citizen born when the country completed its first expressway would—by the time she reached the legal driving age of eighteen in 2011—be able to drive on a highway system that surpassed the length of the US interstate system. By 2020, China had built a second batch of expressways that again totaled the length of the US system.
China’s ports became the world’s busiest. Shanghai alone moved more containers in 2022 than all of the US ports combined.
Above all, China built housing. Its urban population has grown by an average of sixteen million people each year since 1978, which means, in effect, that the state built a new city the size of greater New York City and greater Boston combined every year for thirty-five years... the 4.4 billion tons of cement that China produced from 2018 to 2019 nearly equals the amount of cement the United States produced over the entire twentieth century.
Chinese have mustered tremendous enthusiasm for destroying the nation’s physical heritage in the recent past. It was prominent during the Cultural Revolution, when Mao ordered Red Guards to loot Buddhist temples, smash Confucian statues, and desecrate ancestral tombs.
People unable to appreciate the benefits of material improvements also don’t understand how it produces pride and satisfaction. China’s transformation has given people running water and toilets, mass transit and highways, beautiful parks and modern malls.
* When Beijing began construction of its high-speed rail program in 2008, critics charged that it was foolish for a then-poor country to acquire the sorts of luxury infrastructure out of reach even for many rich countries. “Infrastructure investment can be too good for a country’s development level,” concluded a line from economist Michael Pettis, which was not an atypical sentiment.
* an educational system steeped in Marxism. For them, production was a noble deed to advance communism, while consumption was a despicable act of capitalism. This party believes that only the state has the wisdom to invest in strategic megaprojects, whereas consumers will waste money on themselves.
Beijing has announced several times that it would impose a property tax. Each time it faltered. One of the political reasons is that China’s leaders are familiar with the American slogan “No taxation without representation.” Since the state levies relatively light taxes, which it takes unobtrusively from citizens, it reduces the risk that people start asking questions... Around 10 percent of its GDP goes toward social spending, compared to 20 percent in the United States and 30 percent among the more generous European states.
a gigantic effort to draw water from China’s southern rivers toward its parched northern cities, along three canal systems, targeting completion in 2050. The plan envisions the creation of large water reservoirs across the country and the construction of major flood-control projects. <> The Fourteenth Five-Year Plan outlines interstellar research and other state-directed megaprojects.
* Of Guizhou’s eleven airports, five have less than a dozen flights each week—and there are three more airports still under construction. Guizhou has become one of China’s most indebted provinces, and it’s starting to feel real fiscal distress. In an unusual move, Guiyang’s finance bureau issued a public outcry in 2022 that it was at the end of its ability to deal with the debt. Quickly afterward, the government deleted its own admission.
Discipline Inspection to descend on Guizhou. They are unbound by even the modest levels of legal niceties afforded in China. Rather than investigating legal crimes, their remit is to find “violations of party discipline,” a nebulous charge that includes not only corruption but also misuse of public funds and political disloyalty to the Communist Party. That makes the commission akin to the Inquisition
One of the Communist Party’s personnel practices (inherited from imperial times) is to rotate officials between various jurisdictions, forcing them to gain broad experience and preventing them from drawing their power base from their home province.... Joe Biden’s, who, before becoming vice president and then president, spent his entire political life representing Delaware.
* since local governments don’t have property taxes, they primarily fund themselves through land sales to real estate developers. This combination of personnel policy and fiscal quirks produces officials like Li Zaiyong who invest in glamorous projects and whose failures are apparent only after they’ve left office.
I sometimes think of Tianjin’s library as a metaphor for China’s economy: great hardware that looks impressive from a distance, not filled with the softer stuff that actually matters... Moody’s, the American credit rating firm, listed Tianjin and Guizhou as China’s two most heavily indebted regions. Each has a debt-to-GDP ratio approaching that of Italy’s.
* “American manufacturers constantly asked themselves whether making masks and cotton swabs was part of their ‘core competence.’ Most of them decided not.” He put down his teacup and looked at me. “Chinese companies decided that making money is their core competence, therefore they go and make masks, or whatever else the market needs.” <> In 2020, I could have picked up face masks that were branded Foxconn (the world’s largest electronics contract manufacturer), BYD (the world’s largest electric vehicle manufacturer), or JD.com (China’s second-largest e-commerce platform).
China won’t become the world’s biggest economy by building more tall bridges. It also can’t continue manufacturing more than twice the number of cars it sells at home. And the United States is starting to realize the problems of being too focused on the demand side of the economy. When the federal government offers, for example, rental support in housing-scarce cities, landlords can raise their prices, leaving renters no better off.
When I look at the United States, I marvel both at how much it did build before 1970 as well as how little it constructed afterward. China spent 13.5 percent of its GDP on infrastructure investment in 2016, whereas the US average over the past three decades is closer to 3 percent each year.
I came across a Metro North timetable from 1915. It revealed that the express train from New York’s Grand Central Terminal to New Haven took the same amount of time then as in 2025: around two hours.
Unfortunately, Cape Wind was in Nantucket Sound, home to some of the wealthiest, and mostly liberal, US citizens, like the Kennedy family, whose compound is in Hyannisport. These residents banded together, formed a nonprofit, and enlisted lawyers that included one of Harvard’s best-known constitutional law professors to challenge the development. After sixteen years of lawsuits, the developer abandoned the project.
So far, however, building big has improved the lives of regular people, not just a narrow set of elites. This lack of emphasis on efficiency has been key to another Chinese success: Part of the reason that China dominates advanced manufacturing technologies is precisely because it tolerates lower profits while cultivating a large workforce.
It was at Foxconn’s Henan sites where some of the most dramatic protests against zero-Covid took place, when young men flung bricks into massed ranks of riot police.
Shenzhen: Threaded between big avenues are bustling pockets of semi-preserved village structures that imbue the city with more liveliness than glass skyscrapers are able to provide.
United wrote that Apple booked fifty business-class seats daily from San Francisco to Shanghai, from which the airline made $35 million each year. That’s over eighteen thousand business-class seats on one route.
* These components were getting better every year, part of a trend that Chris Anderson, former editor of Wired, called “the peace dividends of the smartphone wars.” The hundreds of billions of dollars invested in the smartphone supply chain have caused the cost of electronic components—cameras, sensors, batteries, modems—to plummet. .. Electric vehicles are full of the electronic components borrowed from smartphones; the consumer drone is roughly a reassembly of a smartphone camera and sensor with propellers for flight.
By the time that the iPhone X was released in 2017, Chinese firms were making acoustic parts, charging modules, and battery packs. According to a teardown analysis, China’s contribution to the iPhone X reached around 25 percent of the final value of the phone.
* We can see how China values process knowledge through its approach to architecture too. That reveals something deeper and more interesting about its culture. One of my favorite books about China is a collection of essays called The Hall of Uselessness by the Belgian sinologist Simon Leys... The approach in China, as Leys points out, is for builders to yield to the onrush of time by using eminently perishable, and indeed fragile, materials. By building temples out of wood with paneling sometimes made of paper, Chinese architecture has built-in obsolescence, demanding frequent renewal. .. The shining exemplar of this idea is found not in China but at the Ise Grand Shrine (or Ise Jingu) in Japan... It is also about the preservation of craft knowledge. Twenty years is the length of a generation, and the caretakers of the Ise Jingu have attempted to ensure that knowledge about how to rebuild this shrine can be passed on to descendants.
Embracing process knowledge means looking to people to embody eternity rather than to grand monuments. Furthermore, instead of viewing “technology” as a series of cool objects, we should look at it as a living practice.
Process knowledge is hard to measure because it exists mostly in people’s heads and the pattern of their relationships to other technical workers. We tend to refer to these intangibles as know-how, institutional memory, or tacit knowledge. They are embodied by an experienced workforce like Shenzhen’s... The value of these communities of engineering practice is greater than any single company or engineer. Rather, they have to be understood as ecosystems of technology.
Andy Grove, the legendary former CEO of Intel, said it best in 2010: that the United States needs to focus less on “the mythical moment of creation” and more on the “scaling up” of products. .. Viewing technology as people and process knowledge isn’t only more accurate; it also empowers our sense of agency to control the technologies we are producing.
US manufacturing employment peaked in 1980 at nineteen million workers. In 2000, it still had seventeen million. .. In 2025, the United States has around thirteen million manufacturing workers.
One prominent line of argument regarding General Electric was that the company was taken over by finance. That applies in greater force against Boeing. Once run by engineers obsessed with safety and quality, its leadership shifted to executives more focused on delivering shareholder value than good planes.
* Tesla’s presence jolted China’s electric vehicle market. China’s business community began using the term “catfishing” for what Tesla was doing in China. The idea was that introducing a powerful new creature into the domestic environment would make Chinese firms swim faster.
The results of the Chinese government’s unceasing interventions in the economy are at best ambiguous. Economic studies have shown that the recipients of Chinese subsidies have, on average, lower productivity growth. .. China’s tech successes are no convincing demonstration that a wise state can plan the future. When the state shoves its weight around—forcing foreign companies to hand over technology, showering a favored sector with subsidies, injuring a firm while elevating another—it is often far from being helpful.
The US government has indulged a preening self-regard concerning how much technological power its country still wields.
* Xi isn’t just ambitious about manufacturing. A better word to describe his views might be “completionist.”... a 2024 boast from the minister of industry and information technology that China has a “comprehensive” industrial chain, since it produces something in each of the 419 industrial product categories maintained by the United Nations to classify industrial production. It’s a very Chinese sort of boast.
That is what the engineering state is about. It likes to build not just public works but also manufacturing capacity.
In the heavily censored realm of the Chinese internet, where no group is allowed to be very organized, one set of intellectuals has made themselves heard. They are loosely affiliated writers who refer to themselves as the Industrial Party. Their views are simple to summarize: that nation-states ruthlessly compete with each other; that science and technology are the decisive forces in this Darwinian competition; and that therefore the state must be organized around the pursuit of science and technology.
* Perhaps the most interesting way that the Industrial Party’s ideas have been propagated is through an online novel, The Morning Star of Lingao, which has been serialized by a group of authors since 2009. It is an alternate-history project that imagines that five hundred people from contemporary China traveled back in time to Lingao County in Hainan (the tropical island that is China’s southernmost province) in the year 1628. Their goal? To trigger an industrial revolution in the Ming dynasty.
Scientists and engineers are the ultimate decisionmakers, leaving no room for humanists, the faint of heart, or sentimentalists. Governments are made to submit to the will of select geniuses who do not hesitate to sacrifice millions. The prevailing idea in Liu’s trilogy is that the only hard truth is survival, where opposing civilizations resemble “blood-drenched pyramids lit by insidious fires seen through dark forests.”
Rare earth metals are not really rare. Processing them, however, demands enormous amounts of energy and water while spewing carcinogens into the atmosphere. Few parts of the Western world have the stomach for processing rare earth metals, which is why China controls this supply chain.
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For his third term, Xi shrank the Politburo to twenty-four members, dropping the one space that had been given to a woman. By locking women out of China’s political leadership, Xi might well have been trying to set an example.
Only a year after proclaiming the new communist state, he sent troops into Korea, mostly to fight US forces who were newly armed with nuclear weapons. Various world leaders were taken aback by his serene attitude toward atomic attack.
central idea was to develop the mathematics to control complex systems by feeding the system’s outputs back into its algorithms as a continuous optimization. It is the study of regulation and control of technological or biological systems. Cybernetics has occupied an intellectual sweet spot: electrifying in its premise—attracting subordinate terms like “machine intelligence” and “systems analysis” that are irresistible in themselves—and constructed with an inherent vagueness that affords it the theoretical space to wriggle out of refutation... Martin Heidegger claimed that philosophy was dying, and cybernetics would be its successor.
* Just One Child. During policy conferences, Song and his team of elite scientists made their case with calculations from China’s most sophisticated computers. Skeptics of a one-child policy were making population projections with the aid of an abacus or a handheld calculator. Song Jian presented his group’s projections in precise, machine-generated lines on graph paper; other groups drew uneven squiggles by hand. It was never a fair fight.
This incident in Guan County is known by two names: the “childless hundred days” as well as the “slaughter of the lambs,” since 1991 was the year of the sheep in the Chinese zodiac. The slaughter ended well for Zeng. He was rewarded with successively more desirable promotions in Shandong.
State-enacted kidnapping was one of the perverse consequences of the one-child policy. China started sending children abroad starting in the early 1990s.
In 2025, adult diapers are expected to outsell baby diapers. China has already grown old before it grew rich: When Japan’s population started to decline (fourteen years before China’s), it was more than twice as rich.
Demanding a politically loyal cadre to have many children is not new. I think Heinrich Himmler, however, said it better when he exhorted SS officers to have more than four children: “Think of Bach! He was the thirteenth child in his family! After the fifth or sixth, or even the twelfth child, if Mama Bach had said ‘that’s enough now,’ which would have been understandable, the works of Bach would never have been written.”
Marriage has become even less appealing since Chinese judges are increasingly reluctant to grant a divorce: 70 percent of divorce applications were granted in the mid-2000s, a rate that fell to 40 percent a decade later.
* China’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic embodies all of the engineering state’s merits and madnesses. It is a powerful reminder of how the engineering state could accomplish things that few other countries would even attempt, while revealing how its literal-minded enforcement can lead to tragic results for human well-being and freedom.
The day after Wu Fan’s defiant proclamation, Shanghai announced it would lock down. The announcement was ever so softly worded. Shanghai was enacting a “partial pause” to enter a “quiet period” that would last eight days.
* Since the start of the pandemic, the state had dispatched megaphone-equipped drones to nag the uncompliant. A person walking without a mask might hear a whirring craft above his head, from which a distorted, barking voice would yell at him to mask up or return home.
The city’s top mental health official introduced an unexpectedly sparky phrase in an otherwise drab press conference on the course of the virus, demanding that Shanghainese “repress your soul’s yearning for freedom.”
Delivery workers: A few made the choice to be homeless in order to continue work. At the cost of sleeping under bridges or in other public spaces, they were able to roam around the city, delivering food to earn higher commissions.
After taking the infected to quarantine facilities, health authorities entered people’s homes to sanitize them. That meant dousing everything in disinfectant—furniture, books, electronics, clothing, the piano. Pet owners faced a particular dilemma.
One video managed to achieve censorship escape velocity. Someone (or a group of people) collated a chronological montage of audio clips into a video titled “Voices of April.” The six-minute clip included Wu Fan’s remark that Shanghai was too important to lock down; shouts of people demanding food; a man pleading for his sick father to have medical treatment;
* Only later did the increasingly severe movement controls and state disregard for any medical condition except Covid turn the strategy into a farce. Officials brought a literal-mindedness to enforcing zero-Covid that created situations best described as whimsical. The coastal city of Xiamen swabbed the mouths of fresh-caught fish to test for Covid. A panda research base in Chengdu tested every animal in its facility. Medical workers chased down Tibetan and Mongolian herdsmen—who probably saw nothing but yaks for days on grassland steppes—to swab their mouths.
Yunnan: It is part of a vast zone of highland Southeast Asia that various scholars have labeled Zomia, which holds innumerable hill peoples who have developed state-repellent practices. James C. Scott has written most elegantly about how people in Zomia have become “barbarians by design,” who cultivate shifting root crops (which are less assessable by tax collectors) and maintain an oral culture (which makes their histories and ethnic identities more malleable).
With its lake, nature, and sunny weather, the city has gained the nickname of Dalifornia. .. Yunnan can be a hub for drug trafficking, cryptocurrency gatherings, or the most radical activity in recent years: lax Covid enforcement.
Xi Jinping wanted nothing to go wrong in 2022. At the party congress that October, he was about to appoint himself to a third term. It would have disrupted his political plans to let Covid break loose in China
Carrying blank pieces of paper became a way to symbolize China’s censorship. It was a perfect echo: Whiteness represented the enforcement of pandemic controls, through the protective medical suits of massed groups of dabai (big whites), until young people appropriated it for protest. Later, anti-Covid demonstrations in China were collectively known as “the white paper protests.”
* For three years, the government made it difficult for people to buy ibuprofen, Advil, and other fever reducers for fear that people might disguise their fevers to avoid detection. During an outbreak, pharmacies limited purchases of fever meds or removed fever meds from their shelves entirely. Therefore, much of the Chinese population met this Covid wave without medication on hand... It is a perfect encapsulation of the engineering state’s twisted logic.
Propaganda authorities had no special warning, though they shifted seamlessly from declaring that the virus must be stomped out in one week to saying that everyone had to be responsible for their own health the next. It felt like living through the scene in Orwell’s 1984, in which officials switched directions, mid-speech, declaring that Oceania was at war with Eastasia rather than Eurasia.
In authoritarian China, the politician who oversaw the largest lockdown was elevated to the second-highest office. <> And so the Covid-19 pandemic ended in China as it began, hostage to political events:
The best psychedelic mushrooms are supposed to grow in elephant dung, leading to a story I heard of a legendary set of backpackers who have been hopping from one dung heap to another on a long, unbroken trip.
The engineering state tends to begin impressively and end disastrously. The pursuit of zero-Covid isn’t the only example of that tendency I lived through. The regulatory storm that Xi unleashed against China’s digital platforms is another case in point.
Over the course of 2021, hardly any major Chinese tech company emerged unscathed. Xi’s regulatory storm wiped out a trillion dollars of market value from Chinese companies. New Oriental, one of the education companies, lost 90 percent of its market cap and then laid off 60 percent of its employees. Alibaba toppled from being an $800 billion company to just a quarter of that size two years later.
The trouble with Xi Jinping is that he is perhaps 60 percent correct on everything... Does big tech have too much power? Fine, but stomping out their businesses has traumatized entrepreneurs. Are housing developers taking on too much debt? Yes, but driving many of them toward default subsequently triggered a collapse in homebuyer confidence, prolonging a property slump. Does the government need to rein in corruption? Definitely, but Xi has terrorized the bureaucracy to the point of paralysis. <> Sometimes, the only thing scarier than China’s problems are Beijing’s solutions.
The control neurosis of engineers is also an obstacle to another characteristic of a great power: a global currency. The US dollar is overwhelmingly the world’s dominant currency, while China’s renminbi accounts for 3 percent of global payments. That share has barely grown over a decade. Beijing has imposed a stiff system of capital controls to prevent money from easily moving out, which promises greater stability for the country’s highly leveraged financial system.
Two photographs have circulated on the Chinese internet: of the Belt and Road Forum in 2017, when Xi Jinping was surrounded by 120 world leaders, and of the same forum in 2023, when there were only three dozen.
Plenty of autocratic systems in history have delivered startling technological advances. <> German states, for example, have done just that. The nineteenth-century Prussian state combined autocracy with the invention of the modern research university. After Bismarck unified the German states under Prussian rule in Berlin
US support of Ukraine against Russian aggression also exposed the paltry state of its domestic munition capacity. In two days, Ukraine could fire as many shells as the United States makes in a month.
Even if the United States achieves artificial general intelligence, it will need to be able to actually manufacture drones or munitions; algorithms alone will never win a battle.
People find ways to adapt around the most onerous demands of the engineers. They wield weapons of the weak. When folks see a flurry of senseless rules from the government, they might react with foot dragging, petty noncompliance, feigned ignorance, and arguing back. The system for negotiability is one reason that people have been able to accommodate themselves to engineers.
* Chinese would recognize something in Robert Moses. He was an American urban planner who built at breakneck speed.
Not coincidentally, The Power Broker was also one of the books that played a part in the consolidation of the lawyerly society. On par with Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring and Ralph Nader’s Unsafe at Any Speed, it taught Americans to fear and loathe engineers.
If the left can reckon with Robert Moses, the right should reckon with Admiral Hyman Rickover—an engineer who improved national security through a large-scale, government-led project. <> Better known as the father of the nuclear navy, Rickover launched the USS Nautilus in 1954. It was the world’s first nuclear-powered submarine, able to travel underwater for weeks
I think about Robert Moses and Hyman Rickover not because they were gentle souls. Each had an unseemly lust for power. Both men were idealists with sharp elbows. Both men, as it happens, were also Jewish, experiencing prejudice in institutions meant to be genteel: Yale University for Moses and the US Navy for Rickover.
It costs five times as much to build a kilometer of subway in New York City as it does in Paris. If it only cost twice as much, it might be a national tragedy; since it costs five times as much, it is only a statistic.
* The United States inherited a common law system typical for anglophone countries, in which judges have much more discretion (relative to legislatures) to shape the law. It is no coincidence that housing and infrastructure costs are astronomically high across the anglosphere, including in the United Kingdom, New Zealand, and Ireland.
Both countries have an ethos of self-transformation that have become deformed in various ways. For both countries to develop the potential of its people, they have to figure out how to fully express their transformational urge.

It came with cold air and curtained light. It came like a judgement, or, in benign version, like a blessing God had forgotten he had left on. It came for a handkerchief of blue sky, came on westerlies, sometimes – why not? – on easterlies, came in clouds that broke their backs on the mountains in Kerry and fell into Clare, making mud the ground and blind the air. It came disguised as hail, as sleet, but never as snow. It came softly sometimes, tenderly sometimes, its spears turned to kisses, in rain that pretended it was not rain, that had come down to be closer to the fields whose green it loved and fostered, until it drowned them.
I know it seems unlikely that Faha then might have been the place to learn how to live, but in my experience the likely is not in God’s lexicon.
lonely old houses out the country that are home to rheumatism and damp and the battle of the long afternoons, its doors are shielded by caution and fear of the corrosive nature of nostalgia.
by the mercy of creation the soonest thing to evaporate in memory is hardship and rain
Rain: That it had once started was already a fable, as too now would become the stopping. <> The known world was not so circumscribed then nor knowledge equated with facts. Story was a kind of human binding.
Road: The one outside my grandparents’ house was mud, tramped hard and soft and hard and soft again, it was foot- and wheel- and hoof-made and bowed upwards in its centre like a spine along which pulsed the townland,
In the fields the cattle, made slow-witted by the rain, lifted their rapt and empty faces, heavy loops of spittle hanging, as though they ate watery light.
One of the privileges of living in a place forgotten is the preservation of individuality. In Faha, because the centre was distant and largely unknown, eccentric was the norm.
They were men from out the townlands whose character was made crystalline by solitude. That they were going to attend church was not in doubt, but because of the thorny relation of religion to the masculine they would show no eagerness and shielded off any sense of the spiritual with a studied casualness and a mastery of the essential art of saying nothing.
People in Faha hadn’t got the hang of parking yet. That Holy Week it was still five years before the introduction of the driving test, and another three before anyone in Faha would attempt to pass it.
one huddled abashed but no less seedful one of Morrisseys, each born in April nine months after the hay-making and each with something of summer in their natures.
Some women took the head-covering rule as an invitation to display, most notably Mrs Sexton who had a line in outlandish hats, one creation a kind of exotic wonderland with a hill of artificial flowers that were an Indies atop her, complete with tiny green hummingbird, and required significant mastery of equipoise as she came to the altar-rail.
What I was like then is hard to capture, the Crowe-ness in me manifest mostly in self-contradiction, my character an uneven construct that swung between flashes of fixedness and rashness, immovability and leap.
* his first tactic when I told him I was leaving was to say nothing at all. He tented his long fingers and tapped them, like a small church coming asunder and being pressed together.
It was a common stupidity then to think of your father as unreachable. I did not try to reach him until twenty years later, the year he was dying, and the first time I ever called him by his name.
But there’s something undoing about the dying light of mid-afternoon. In that empty old house on Marlborough Road all that had stitched me into this life came undone and I couldn’t escape the feeling that folded against my back were wings that had failed to open.
Ganga had the large ears that God puts on old men as evidence of the humour necessary for creation. Perhaps following the prompting of his physiognomy, he had the philosophy that life was a comedy. Like one of those rubber figures that cannot be toppled, in him this philosophy was irrefutable,
* There was a world of saints then and people knew the Saints’ Days and whose feast fell when, and from the full gallery they chose favourites. Doady’s missal bulged with all the regulars... as well as a personal selection of Saints of Last Resort.
shouting down the line the kind of wooden conversation they may one day use on Mars. The telephone had a winder on the side and, like the cartoon bombs in comics, a large battery on the floor with wires coming out of it.
In her speech were bits of Irish and words that were halfway between two languages, accommodated into the mixture but strange as sloe berries
They lived by dispute, and as there were often several running concurrently you had to be alert to keep up, to understand that when Doady shouted ‘Water!’ it meant Ganga had let his hands drip instead of turning them in the cloth... But in all Ganga maintained the equilibrium of the just and could not be risen or riled. And in this was the theatre of their marriage, which in Faha was also a spectator sport,
Half an hour later, once he had gone outside to see to the animals, Doady took the tongs and repositioned all the sods, the way they should be. She said nothing about it, he said nothing about it. The fire survived it all.
Doady with glasses off, then on, then off again worked by paraffin lamplight with wools and threads of unmatched and often garish colours at elbows, knees, seats and cuffs, every angle of him that needed to be thatched back in against the exuberance of his leaking out.
Making the Welcome remained a kind of constitutional imperative. My grandparents, like all the old people in Faha then, preserved intact ancient courtesies. The cost of it, the way they would be living in the days after we left, was not hinted at, nor did it once occur to me.
during the Second World War Ireland fell out of synch with the world. The British, with breathtaking command, introduced something called Double Summertime, putting the clocks two hours forward to enable a longer working day. The Irish did not, and in fact Dublin was, is, and will always be twenty-five minutes and twenty-one seconds behind Greenwich
Rain in Clare chose intercourse with wind, all kinds, without discrimination, and came any way it could, wantonly.
when you’re a boy your grandfather’s chest has a peculiar and profound allure, like a spawn pool for salmon, wherein mysteries are resolved.
* the well (which was not the well you see with stone wall and pulley in English picture books, but a glassy green eye in rushy ground two fields over, which was ‘cleaned’ in summertime by the antique practice of slipping into that eye an eel), and carried back again, slopping until you found that pace, old as time, by which a man or woman walks with water.
the smell of rain in all its iterations, the smell of distant rain, of being about to rain, of recent rain, of long-ago rain, the insipid smell of drizzle, the sweet one of downpour, the living smell of wool, the dead smell of stone, the metallic ghost stench of mackerel that disobeyed the laws of matter and like Jesus outlived itself by three days.
It was where you lived by the clock of your stomach, came back to the house only when you were hungry, ate whatever was put before you, and ran out again, only partly aware of the privilege of solitude and the gift of time.
up on the bog there was turf to be turned – ‘You’re the perfect size for this job’ – lifted and turned and footed again, and again, because with turf the rain defeated all ploys amateur and ingenious to make believe it didn’t exist,
seventy since public electric lighting was switched on while Charles Stewart Parnell, addressing a large crowd, used the light as a symbol of a free Ireland, Faha still had no electricity.
you felt blindly for her teat which was a thing unimaginable, large as your boy-hand, pink and coarse and somehow worn too as you coaxed down and not just squeezed out a fierce jet of milk that came hot and greyish and shot alarmingly sideways against the enamel of the bucket with an urgent milk-music.
You fell brownly asleep and into another dimension where a ragged version of yourself plunged through a world vivid but infirm until you woke to unseen light and a bat asleep upside down just above your bed.
a man who had probably been slight when young but the world had muscled and beer had bulked him, so although of mid-height he was strong and square and full, but he carried the weight of himself with a look of bemusement, as if it was he who told the world the joke of himself.
Because this was sixty years ago some details are imagined. Nobody who’s lived an anyway decent amount of life remembers everything.
* The travellers came out of storytime, you felt, and although some were notorious and some had the guards in plodding pursuit, for the most part they were harmless, understood to be a stray thread stitched into the fabric of the countryside
Perhaps... because of the mysterious attractiveness of those even tangential to music, he had a long train of rumoured paramours and illicit relations, all of which were in defiance of his actual looks and testament to the unknown depths of females.
* You live a decent length you get an appreciation for the individuality of creation. You understand there’s no such thing as the common man, and certainly not woman... Everybody carries a world. But certain people change the air about them... had the confidence of the storyteller when the story is still unpacked, its snaps not yet released.
he’d say, throw the eyebrows and extend towards you an inverted newspaper, folded even as a tablecloth, inside which was what you didn’t yet know about Sputnik, what the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs had promised now, and the news of Manchester United, to which, with the native affinity for tragedy, the sensate half of the country now supported after the Munich crash.
Time has unpeeled a history of infamy for the country’s institutions, and failures of compassion, tolerance and what was once called common decency were not hard to come upon. Faha was no different;
I’m at an age now when in the early mornings I’m often revisited by all my own mistakes, stupidities and unintended cruelties. They sit around the edge of the bed and look at me and say nothing. But I see them well enough.
And because an old man has only the story of his own life I am running across it still, a lanky seventeen-year-old from Dublin, shy and obdurate both, running with a premonition that I thought was doom but was maybe fate if you’re a party to that. I was running believing I was going to save him, when of course it was he who would save me.
So compelling is the evidence of our own eyes and ears, so swift is your mind to assemble your own version of the story, that one of the hardest things in this world is to understand there’s another way of seeing things.
We’re all, all the time, striving, and though that means there’s a more-or-less constant supply of failure, it’s not such a terrible thing if you think that we keep on trying. There’s something to consider in that.
* A key thing to understand about Ganga was that he loved a story. He believed that human beings were inside a story that had no ending because its teller had started it without conceiving of one, and that after ten thousand tales was no nearer to finding the resolution of the last page. Story was the stuff of life, and to realise you were inside one allowed you to sometimes surrender to the plot, to bear a little easier the griefs and sufferings and to enjoy more fully the twists that came along the way.
This was a country that through the ministry of the Church and other interested parties was encouraged to think of change not only with suspicion but outright fear,
* when the electricity did finally come, it was discovered that the 100-watt bulb was too bright for Faha. The instant garishness was too shocking. Dust and cobwebs were discovered to have been thickening on every surface since the sixteenth century. Reality was appalling... In the week following the switch-on, Tom Clohessy couldn’t keep mirrors in stock, had a run on hand-, oval-, round- and even full-length as people came in from out the country and bought looking glasses of all variety, went home, and in merciless illumination endured the chastening of all flesh when they saw what they looked like for the first time.
* Showing a keen understanding of the national character, the Electricity Board had secured a concluding masterstroke. By special arrangement, and the goodness of His Grace the Archbishop, each house that took the electricity would get a free Sacred Heart Lamp.
When you are born in one century and find yourself walking around in another there’s a certain infirmity to your footing. May we all be so lucky to live long enough to see our time turn to fable.
‘The notional is to be made actual,’ he said, and in the instant after, realising his register had gone over the heads of the parishioners, added: ‘The electricity is coming.’
The doctor kept his foreignness to Faha intact by being punctual, a thing unique in the parish, and establishing the phrase Troy-Time, which meant exact and the opposite of Tom-Time, which meant any time other than when Tom Keane said.
Irish forests, we had learned in school, were felled to make Lord Nelson’s fleet and were now fathoms deep with the rest of the Admiralty. Instead, after extensive research, which in those days meant sending a man, the Board learned that the best place to purchase the poles was the country of Finland.
Like all who had to outwit savage climate, Mr Salovarra eschewed sentiment and offered an inflated price of £4 a pole... Right here is the only one, said Mr Salovarra and smiled. He had the kind of teeth that suggested the tearing of fish-flesh.
In the deep woods was a preternatural silence and a sense of the beginnings of time, and Mangan was not surprised to learn of the Finnish epic poetry of the Kalewala in which the earth is created from pieces of duck egg
sometime you could do worse than go out into the country, find one of those quiet roads where time is dissolved by rain, look out across ghost fields that were once farmed and you’ll still see some of those poles An tUasal Mangan first laid a frozen hand on in the forests of Finland.
it’s human nature to dream, and in the vexed nature of marriage to hope time will harmonise the irreconcilable.
He looked blankly at his audience, air leaking out of his performance, then some switch inside his memory was thrown, he blinked twice, tapped his forefinger on the table, and added: ‘Of course, there can be trouble with the insulators for the HT and the LT fuses too.’
The rain having departed, the evening sky was million-flecked. It felt opened, as though previous ones you just now realised had been closed. Because there was no electric light, because we were at one of the edges of the universe, and because they were usually shielded with an impenetrable cloud, the stars hung with naked wonder.
interest in others perhaps the first of the many things extinguished by alcohol / There are better smiles on deflated footballs.
(all places had their own propriety, and Craven’s was that it was a place of despair, it was where there was no further to fall, where you could hunker down and linger in the dark
It wasn’t only that this didn’t happen in Craven’s, it was that there was something raw in it, something deeply felt, that was, even to those who had descended blinking into the umbrae and penumbrae of numberless bottles of stout, immediately apparent and made those who first looked now look away. <>Christy sang. I cannot tell you how startling it was. If you believe in a soul, as I do, then my soul stirred.
* It seems to me the quality that makes any book, music, painting worthwhile is life, just that. Books, music, painting are not life, can never be as full, rich, complex, surprising or beautiful, but the best of them can catch an echo of that, can turn you back to look out the window, go out the door aware that you’ve been enriched, that you have been in the company of something alive that has caused you to realise once again how astonishing life is... that illumination, which feels I’m going to say holy, by which I mean human raptness... It felt like an intimacy you weren’t entitled to, but knew it privileged you
drunk: The stars slid down the velvet sky. You could put them back in place by locking them in your gaze and lifting your head slowly, slowly up. Stay, stars.
It is a freeing thing to flow into the dark. Now that I am entering my Fourth Age, the Age of Completion they call it, I think of that cycle ride and take courage from it. We could barely see the road we raced down. We came round the bend at Furey’s and past Considine’s discovering that blind cycling is its own art and into each instant compresses the knowledge of how to master it.
flew glorious for one long and sublime instant before landing face-first in the cold puddle and muck of reality. <> 11. By the grace of new chapters, it was morning.
Thatch has the density of a fairytale forest... The roof is minutely alive and feels forgiving, as though it has lifted like an eyebrow towards the sky with surprise and welcomes back the all-but-forgotten.
* I cannot be sure what I heard that night, what I heard later and added to the fog-memory, and what invented, a perplex that deepens after sixty years, but with less consequence. The truth turns into a story when it grows old. We all become stories in the end. So, though the narrative was flawed, the sense was of a life so lived it was epic.
And so, it was only gradually, over the days to come, when they lifted their eyes and saw the improbable plane of blue overhead, that people began to acknowledge to themselves that up to now they had been living under a fall of watery pitchforks. <> At that time, there endured in Faha an antique belief common in all rainy places, that sunlight was curative.
let escape brown flights of moths whose larvae dated to the days of Parnell and who now transitioned to powder in mid-air. I saw them but did not remember for fifty years until I saw a figure pixelate on a screen. The moths of Easter, I said aloud, and they flew in memory and dissolved again the way the smallest things of your life do... Set outside, big-jointed furniture creaked an asymptotic series of aches that soon went unremarked because it was understood to be the bone-music of resurrection.
he had told the crews the best way to solve any disputes was shame... Second, there was the question of unworthiness. This had been ingrained by the Church from birth. With recourse to a pure Aristotelian logic, the bishops understood that making people feel lesser was a way of making the Almighty mightier, and with native extremism Faha took that to new lows.
* There was one of those mild breezes that in April can seem eloquent. What I remember are the birds, sudden quickened flights of them, ten, twenty taking flight together, with a magician’s flourish, leaving bare one tree and finding another. <> From a lifetime, how do you recall such a thing? The truth is you don’t exactly. But you think you do, and you might have. At this stage that’s good enough. Main point is, it seems to me every life has a few gleaming times, times when things were brighter, more intense and urgent, had more life in them I suppose.
He had the wan face of a farmer in calving season, eyes small from lack of sleep and close encounters with viscera.
A mirror of what confession was for the soul, surfaces had to be made spotless. I’m probably not the only one who, going from house to house and witnessing this, would have thought: what soaps and abrasives it might take to launder my spirit.
Women enjoy watching men work, the same way men enjoy watching women dance. There’s otherness and mystery in it.
Blackall’s. The one-time land agent’s house, it was infamous in the parish, its history leaving a stain that had endured the way it might at a plague site despite the passing of a hundred years and the balm of generation.
He lifted the teacup and performed an impeccable demonstration of how you deny reality.
Savouring the turn in the story, she said no more. She looked above us into the immensity of the firmament. ‘And,’ she said again, forefingering the bridge of her glasses and with the unbounded theatrics of all the O Siochrus milking all the udders of the pause... She lowered her voice. ‘Didn’t Sullivan the undertaker find the host after, stuck to the roof of her mouth.’... The conundrum landed, we were silently all Sullivan then, trying to decide which way to send the host.
There was every reason to feel natural joy in the world, but for the one that makes it accessible. When your spirit is uneasy, stillness can be a kind of suffering. And when you’re young, the unlived life in you, all that future, urgent and unreachable, can be unbearable.
When you’ve been raised inside a religion, it’s not a small thing to step outside it. Even if you no longer believe in it, you can feel its absence. There’s a spirit-wound to a Sunday. You can patch it, but it’s there,
You were inside the engine of Easter. With the enduring magic by which a people, on budgets thin as air, not only survive but celebrate, the feast was everywhere being readied.
She knew who was in which grave, and who in the one below that one (and the ones below those too, who were working their way back to the surface through the self-raising agent of a colloquy of worms fat and contented from passing through life, until chosen by Simon of the Kellys as best bait for the smirking salmon passing in the river).
Mrs Moore landed... Flo, the world’s saddest feather duster... She held the record for ash-balancing. She would work with a burning cigarette held out ballerina-style in one hand, a tower of ash she didn’t need to look at building nicely while she dusted, or performed a slow-motion version of same, the dust in no danger, until the tower was certain to fall, and at the last moment, as though it were a smoking extension of herself, she would bring the cigarette to her small mouth and suck like the damned. She would draw on the cigarette and the smoke-coloured dashes of her eyebrows would float up and leave no doubt that from ashes to ashes was her destiny, and not such a bad one at that.
Mrs Moore was my grandfather’s surprise and understood that she was the least likely emissary of love, his way of acknowledging to Doady that he knew she was afflicted, and company would be a balm. Knowing that Doady would refuse any such, he had presented it as charity. Knowing that Mrs Moore would not accept charity, he had presented it to her as an act of kindness to his wife.
* One of the things about Irish music is how one tune can enter another. You can begin with one reel, and with no clear intention of where you will be going after that, but halfway through it will sort of call up the next so that one reel becomes another and another after that, and unlike the clear-edged definitions of songs, the music keeps linking, making this sound-map even as it travels it, so player and listener are taken away and time and space are defeated. You’re in an elsewhere. .. Which, I suppose, is both my method and aim in telling this story too.
It was inexplicably tender, the slightly abashed boyishness of a big man in his sixties. <> ‘For her I once ate a dozen purple tulips,’ Christy said, and in the blueness of his eyes you could see he was amazed by and not a little admiring of his younger self, who entered the garden on that statement and strode through, all innocence and earnestness, a wildly impetuous boy with small boots, glitter eyes and tufted hair, in love with Annie Mooney... Maybe you’ve seen that sometime sitting with an older person, the youth they were passes through their eyes, and is in silence acknowledged, hopefully acquitted.
Softly whistling all the while, he held in both hands the bulk of his belly and tried in vain to push it inside him. When this failed, by pressing from the top he tried to send it south below his beltline. He pulled up the underpants to try and arrange a meeting. Abandoning this, he sucked in his breath and stood to his full height and with both hands again pressed his belly in and upward, as if its rightful place was in his chest cavity. It remained there for five seconds, and for five seconds he was delighted at the figure he cut, the vanquishing of time, gravity and human sinkage.

‘How long is it since you saw her?’
‘In the flesh? Near enough fifty years.’
I nearly laughed.
‘But in every other way, some time every day since.’
And that stopped me. That was one of the things about him. He walked this line between the comic and the poignant, between the certainly doomed and the hopelessly hopeful. In time I came to think it the common ground of all humanity.

no one then spoke of their ailments, there was a now depreciated philosophy of offering it up and half the people of Faha were dead before they thought to complain of a pain.
‘Well, I can’t help. I’m not going to church. I don’t believe in God.’ <> ‘Sshhh.’ He patted down the thought with both hands like it was a small fire.
I was now aware that he had orchestrated everything, the job with the electrics, coming to Clare, to Faha, and to Doady and Ganga’s, so as to be at the altar-rails of St Cecelia’s on Easter Sunday to see Annie Mooney.
* With a slightly lesser view of humanity but an undiminished zeal, Mrs Queally unearthed a cousin of a cousin of her husband’s who worked in the Buttermarket in Limerick, took the bone-shaker two hours to the city, from the personal abundance set aside for the Bishop’s Palace purloined a portion, and came back on the bus with an archangel’s look of victory, the front four seats bedecked with lilies.
Eyes straight ahead, the women prayed that kind of timeless praying that rises murmurous and general the way you imagine the land might pray, dangles of rosary beads moving through fingers like some circular riverworks of soul.
The Latin rose and hung above the candled altar like air carvings, intricate and ornamental, and other, which was how God was supposed to be at the time.
In profile her face had a graven look, but also something of what, I would only come to understand years later, time did to great beauty, refine it, as though after coming through a fire.
To Ganga and Doady, Easter was an inarguable actuality same as the rain or the river, and with as little call for debate. I wasn’t wise enough to envy them then.
Doady did a small genuflect with her face. ‘Welcome, Mother.’
It is a dolorous fact that a meal, months in the dreaming, weeks in the planning and days in the preparation, is eaten in minutes.
Ganga, whose habit was to open his trouser belt after eating, made it halfway before he caught Doady’s glare and turned the unbuckling into a patting.
After a liquid lunch in Craven’s, he had found the margins of the roads badly drawn.
A small thing will feed a lover, and the thought that Annie Mooney had recognised him in the church that morning was enough to keep Christy’s heart high and his eyes glossed.
Without specific destination, but the knowledge that the heartland of the music was north of Kilmihil and south of Miltown, we pushed the bicycles out of Faha along roads hard and curved like bones in the moonlight.
As though an infinite store had been discovered, more and more stars kept appearing. The sky grew immense. Although you couldn’t see it, you could smell the sea.
It was a given then that with musicians in Clare it was difficult to start them, to stop them impossible.
They had no apparent inclination to take the instrument cases out of where they were stacked in the windowsill, until they did. And when they did, the air was changed. There’s no other way to say it. The smoky, dark corner of a dingy pub forgot that it was a nowhere. It became a locus, a centre, and we became a company, focused around tables where, behind abandoned butts smoking in ashtrays and pint glasses paused in mid-tide, two fiddles, a flute and a concertina made time stretch so it was now and back across the ages in the same moment.
the sliding slope of Church Street like a crooked yawn, the misaligned huddle of the shops and houses curved into a comma, paused beneath a sky now both opal and pink, the picture of actual earthly peace, or as near as. <> Christy sang the song up to the front windows of Gaffney’s chemist shop. I stood a little ways behind, like one holding the horses... With screwed-up eyes and throat-cords bulging, with bubbling porter-sweat and cuckoo-spittle, he was singing her into being and, by the power of an antique passion, porter and the potency of an old song, seeing her too. Whether the Annie Mooney of years earlier or the one in St Cecelia’s that morning, I couldn’t have said.
* because of what would become a lifelong weakness for fine words and minor chords, I think I believed not only would calamity pass but the tactic would prove ingenious... To the serenade, Nolan’s dog was not a convert... in the case of Faha was augmented by Clancy’s cock, Hayes’s hens, and then, wait, Healy’s ass in the half-acre behind the hardware shop. In truth nothing in creation could be declared a fan, and, though the singing was neither drunken nor loutish, soon enough a rough chorus was barking and braying and the village was started from sleep with the forked hair and quizzical eyes of the burgled.
I realised that unlike those of us whose hope only came in one size, slim, Christy’s was still broad enough to survive the failure of his first approach... leaving behind us the operatic scene, the singing of the love-song, and a story that I’m assured is still told, embroidered into fable, sixty years later.
In an effort to elevate the status of the game and replicate the wireless commentaries on Radio Éireann, Thomas Nally employed a bullhorn and ran up and down the sideline broadcasting a pro-Fahaean version of what was happening. Not to be outdone in the battle for reality, Boola had a Brophy with a bullhorn who did likewise, running up and down the same sideline
Once standing, any decent story has a life of its own and can run whichever way it wants. So the details that Doady came home with, Christy’s calling out Annie’s name, his beating the chemist’s door with his fist and crying against the glass, like a child with a runny nose it may have picked up anywhere.
reasons for haste were harder to find, and the need to meet a deadline was understood to be an invention of convenience.
as though playing a close-to-the-chest card game against an opponent deep and devious and invisible, people like Maureen Tohill and Timmy Hayes gave out a contrarian view, It won’t keep up, and We’ll be paying for this yet, bluffing the Almighty to show his hand and keep the sun shining just to spite them.
And because old men no longer need adhere to the convention of time, and because memory dissolves it, I can be there still. I can be sat on the grass at our lesser picnic on the top of Master Quinn’s field and feel the sun striking down and know something of the peace of that pause, the dawning that opens in a person, which is not yet at the point of understanding, not yet anything solid or sure as a thought, but happens in a way that you may not realise until years later and miles away when it comes to you that just then, just there, you were brushed with nothing less than eternity, catching a sense of a place that has been before you and will be after you, and both were contained in that moment. In the mid-distance birds landing and lifting that were the same birds since forever and would be forever, and you in that forever too, sitting on the dry grass of a hill field in Faha aware that your whole life is an instant
* The thing about Doady’s brownbread is when you take a bite of it you’ve taken a bite out of the elements, earth, air, fire and water all, and while your mouth negotiates with the grainy dryness now made a ball by the moisture of the butter, while you realise that by an alchemy of bakery the lump of the bread in your mouth is bigger than it seemed in your hand,... while you’re eating Doady’s brownbread, keep chewing, you’re gagged by the essential stuff of substance, that insists on its own primacy, that, like life itself, is partways laughing at you and partways saying Take me seriously, because otherwise it may just choke you.
I hadn’t lived long enough to know there’s an infinity of ways to tell the same story, that human failure is a history without end, but so too human endeavour, and that between both lies the lot of the living.
the rearing of twelve contrary children had taught them to live by swallowing the stomach acid of first reaction,
That human beings loved truly only once was an unwritten tenet when the world was young, an idea fostered by the Church, supported by the coming knowledge of heart trauma, and by the bookstall of Spellissey’s where all the second-hand paperbacks told of First Loves. Second loves had small l’s, they existed, but were in the lexicon of male weakness
Without it ever clarifying itself in the front of his mind, without recourse to considerations of commerce or weighing the reasons for and against, but maybe following the deeper rationale of unreason that rain would always remind him of his wedding, in his case rain and love being inextricable, he finished his tea, looked out at the gleamy water rivering down the crooked smile of Church Street, and thought: We can do good here.
I’m not alone I suppose in sometimes thinking a thing I’ve imagined happened. I may be alone in thinking that doesn’t matter.
But in all western parishes the temporary was unhinged from the temporal by the fact that it was the term used by Government to account for the short-term, slapdash, second- and third-rate solutions that were applied to bad roads, school buildings, hospitals, and the like. The people lived in the permanently temporary.
begin the rough negotiation we all have to make with failure, blame and loss, / because I loved you once is among the saddest lines in humanity.
The sad truth is that, like fish, the looks of the Irish are not improved by sunshine,
After the same ten days the parish was already stippled with electricity poles. It was remarkable to look across fields where nothing had changed in a thousand years and see the stuck-up fingers, not yet wired or connected to anything, and not unlike the totems of a tribe landed from elsewhere and claiming territories by lines invisible and arbitrary.
I regret the scorn. It’s an acid vice of the high-minded.
as the shaft of timber sank into the hole and then began to rise like a giant’s needle into the sun. It was wonderful. I felt a surge of joy, the simple, original and absolute thrill of a physical victory over the ardours of the terrain,
Instead, suffering a heroic disorder, that was part not wanting to leave the only moment in my life so far when I was at one with other men, when the profound loneliness I lived in had been assuaged by the communal, and part unwilling to be the one letting down the side, I leaned in to the pole, believing for one blissed-out breath that I could defeat gravity and hold it upright myself.
The hotel responded with a diva’s tactic of theatrically falling apart.
In Faha, turf was burned, and perhaps because turf recalled its more glorious past as forest, and resented its fall to a fuel somewhere just above cow dung, or because in Faha dry turf was never actually dry, it burned poorly and every house smelled of turf until no one could smell it any more. Woodsmoke was the smell of money, of big houses and the gentry.
Meeting Sophie: You might think that in sixty-odd years I’d forget, lose the memory in my blood and in my bones of what that felt like, that the feeling would be lost, and my only recourse to invent a second-hand version or erase it altogether from the story. But you’d be wrong. Sometimes a moment pierces so perfectly the shields of our everyday it becomes part of you and enjoys the privilege of being immemorial... I remember the canal of my throat closing, I remember riots breaking out, sea in my ears, sweat on my lip, fish-hooks floating in my eyes, and the reflex that was general and immediate, crawling beneath my skin and birthing in me the archetypal response to great beauty: the overwhelming sense of my own ugliness.
For the first time in my life I am stopped in the thousand sensations, in the intoxicating strangeness of another person.
the river running with silver mockeries of moon.
* my grandfather’s way of telling a story was to go pell-mell, throwing Aristotle’s unities of action, place and time into the air and in a tumult let the details tumble down the stairs of his brain and out his mouth. He had grown up in an age when storytelling was founded on the forthright principles of passing the time and dissolving the hours of dark. In Faha’s case, this was a dark permanently tattooed with a rain that insisted on its own reality, trying to get into the house any way it could,... My point, the story had to compete with an emphatic actuality, and defeat it by an air-construct of the imagination, adhering to the Virgilian principle that if you can take the mind, the body will follow. To conquer both time and reality then, one of the unwritten tenets of the local poetics was that a story must never arrive at the point, or risk conclusion. And because in Faha, like in all country places, time was the only thing people could afford,
* Ganga, like me I suppose, chose the baroque, first because of the native precept to enjoy the music of telling, second, because English was a stolen language, and third, because the baroque offered a truer reflection of life as lived in Faha.
What followed in tumultuous fashion, a single sentence, quick-spoke and eye-popping and miraculous, bypassing both the principles of pauses and the mechanics of breath, my grandfather going for it, and in telling his side of what happened building a tower of description that was in constant danger of toppling over as more and more clauses were thrown on to it, adjectives and adverbs, bounteous, haltingly, found in pockets and pitched on, similes not spared, prepositions dangling and otherwise, metaphors throw them on there, in a telling urgent and excited
and yet, and yet still again, because you couldn’t deny it, because, if anything was, it was a fundament, it was in the first intention, part of the first motion when the first key was wound and the whole clockwork of man and woman was first set going, love was where everyone was trying to get to.
the first thing I thought of was Sophie Troy. (To say thought is a lie, it supposes a vacancy and then a conscious act, but she was there before I was aware of the words to think or say she was. To say thought suggests a singular act, I thought of her, but the truth was she was universal not singular, that is, she was all my thoughts and at the same time, so that they were not separate, not measured or measurable, not individual like memories... I knew I was in a state, if not to actually love, then certainly to give myself to that for which my temperament and education had prepared me, which is, to adore.
Though I would like to prove the authenticity of my person and the originality of my heart by saying here that no, for me it was different, the truth is we all sometime confirm the durability of clichés. So yes, the grass did seem to have greened overnight,
Beneath his hat Rushe’s face was crunched together, as though hastily assembled. He had the small mouth of a smaller man or one who distrusted words.
* It’s hard not to despise officialdom in all forms. The retreat of human beings behind it diminishes the nature of what we are. I’ve never known a man or woman to be better for the wearing of the uniform... that afternoon when Rushe appeared in my grandparents’ house he brought with him more than his person. In his manner and im-person, he brought the State, and in doing so, in his standing there, squat, rigid and bull-headed, in his use of a tone and language hitherto unknown inside the stone walls of that crooked house, an easier and more natural way of living was nearing its end.
‘Out of a sense of goodness.’ <> A parcel of silence landed between us then. It was as though I had opened a box from which a white dove had risen and flew now about the kitchen, the sense of goodness being just as outlandish.
He nodded towards where the river we knew was there was not there now. ‘That’s all.’ <> It was like something had fallen from the sky. It plummeted down and landed thump on the ground in front of us, feathers, bones in a twist, neck awry and blood from the beak.
Because I was incapable of inventing a unique behaviour, or the world had used up all its originality, with a sugared irresistibility, all the clichés of lovelorn behaviour stuck to me. I didn’t mind. There’s honour in the ghost-company of the unrequited.
It was a true thing that all incidents in the parish then had an afterlife and were tirelessly reanimated with an interpretative emphasis or edit. It was one of the threads that tied community and whether or not you had heard the story already didn’t matter, you listened to this version and nodded and said, ‘I know,’ and let that knowledge be a comfort between you for a time.
Keeping his eyes on the floor, he shook his head slowly and said, ‘If only Napoleon had invaded.’ It was a starter for which there was no finisher, but for the occasional muffled artillery of his gas... Mary Bruff, who never went anywhere without her cough, let it off now,
* everything from alliteration, allusion, amplification, analogy and anaphora (‘If you prick us do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh?’ I could recite every speech of Shylock’s once. God bless the day) to metonyms and metaphors, oxymorons and similes. After Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres, the next thing you learned in Latin was non solo sed etiam. What I’m saying is, it was foundational, and admired, the bit of flourish. <> On Moylan went, letting fly with antanagoge (‘This heater is not as beautiful as your fire, but it puts out more kilowatts’), enumeratio (‘The motor, the pump and the drum, all the very latest’) and epizeuxis (‘Power, power, power’).
intelligence in its ferocity a gift and a burden, something difficult to handle and extraordinarily sharp, like a sword in the soft tissue of the mind. In general, better not to be too intelligent, was Faha’s philosophy,
‘The hardship of your lives is over.’ <> It was a breathtaking sentence and the summit took a moment to take it in... The idea was too enormous, or the reality of experience too sharp to be digested. It was as if the hardship of their lives had been summoned, had come in the open front door, a history of cold and rain, of muck and puddle, dark, disappointment and struggle and disappointment again, and was face-to-face now with an army of gleaming white metal. As always when confronted with compelling fantasy, nobody knew what to say.
Like others there, I think my grandmother may have been chastened by a feeling the machines were looking at her, and her life, with cold judgement. I couldn’t help thinking of that moment when Pip looks at his boots and realises how crude they are.
Now, I didn’t draw the corollary then that the failure of his fifty-year love had provoked the birth of mine. I didn’t realise any connection,
now I was at the rails where, a little further along to the right, the three Troy sisters were kneeling and waiting, God forgive me, to put out their tongues.
Father Coffey..., gave the lie to his youth and inexperience and transcended the rigidity of the Church by doing the most remarkable thing. Understanding that I would not open my mouth, the host he had chosen for me he brought towards my closed lips and, when it was near enough to touch, in a fluid arc, as if nearness was enough, he brought it back and laid it in the ciborium and moved on to Geraldine O. So simple, graced and generous a gesture was it that not a single person in St Cecelia’s noticed. It was as though by mime I had received.
Doady look askance at her life and circumstance and release a host of hooped taupe mealworms into her belief in the pre-eminence of the home-made. She was not alone in this, a flaw in our nature makes the glamour of the new irresistible.
I understood that I had been wrong about Christy. I had come to believe his character irrepressible. I had thought of him as a force, with sureness of purpose, but, in doing so, I had robbed him of human dimension.
Christy looked away from me, broke open the cup of his hands, lowered them. He rocked slightly, rocking on the spike of the question so it went deeper all the time. There was suffering in it, I knew that, and was realising that when you’re seventeen the suffering of a man in his sixties can seem monumental, and till that moment you thought soul-torment the territory of the young
‘You will go see her tomorrow,’ he said. <> I invented a braver self and said, ‘I will.’... And because in our minds we could imagine ourselves knights of first and last loves, and because of the overpowering need for something to be done, I announced, ‘Tonight we are going to hear Junior Crehan.’
We followed the recipe for comedy that is two men on one bicycle, starting off with me on the bar, switching to Christy on the bar and sparing my wrists by his operating the handlebars, attempting a third variant with me up front like a giraffe transport sitting on the handlebars, before we accepted defeat and walked the bicycle like an indulged idiot companion
the nights she’d come to see him walk out on the stage, not missing a single performance he ever gave, were garlanded luminous vindication of her decision to say Yes, yes I will, feeling but not noting aloud the perplexed truth that by playing another he became the best version of himself
* in time the parish coming not only to expect but want the tragic tone of Mick Madigan, taking a dark joy from the truth of it and the fact that for some the world is without light. <> I saw Mick play maybe three times but have thought of him more than that. I note this here by way of excusing my own character at that age. It took me many years to conceive of life as comedy, or tragicomedy anyway. The part I was playing always seemed grave and earnest. I always felt there was something I must do.
Doctor Troy... clocked me with a look in which was translated his experience of every kind of human folly, a look which read instantly the nature of my vigil and in which there was not a little salt of derision.
If I couldn’t do anything yet about Sophie Troy I could about Annie Mooney. <> Now, as far as I was concerned there are two ways of living, and because we’re on a ball in space these were more or less exactly poles apart. The first, accept the world as it is... The second, that acceptance is surrender, that there’s a place for it but that place is somewhere just before your last breath... This was more or less the philosophy of Tess Grogan, who, well into her nineties, kept the finest garden in Faha. We lost a garden, she’d say, speaking of the time of Adam like it wasn’t so long ago... ‘We lost a garden, our whole lives we have to remake it.’
her eyes the same sorrowfulness that some call wisdom / I found myself in the footless place between story and truth.
the vexing truth that all men are impossible sentimentalists, who invented a religion of forgiveness and grace in the full knowledge of their own waywardness, all sorts, who sought forever the consolation of clemency and the embrace of their mothers.
* When you try and lift your mother it’s not the same as lifting another human being. The moment you do it you know you’ll never forget it for the rest of your life. You know there’s no frailty, nakedness, nor tenderness either, quite like this, and know that the moment you have her in your arms the feeling of it is entering you so profoundly that from here on it will form part of the knowledge of your blood and brain and soul too, whether you believe in souls or not.
The line of wire caught your eye, not only because your eye hadn’t attuned to seeing lines but because these were the first drawn by man on the air over that landscape, and spoke, in some part unsettlingly, of the dominion of science over nature and the reality of future times.
* It was a condensed explanation, but I came to understand him to mean you could stop at, not all, but most of the moments of your life, stop for one heartbeat and, no matter what the state of your head or heart, say This is happiness, because of the simple truth that you were alive to say it. <> I think of that often. We can all pause right here, raise our heads, take a breath and accept that This is happiness, and the bulky blue figure of Christy cycling across the next life would be waving a big slow hand in the air at all of us coming along behind him.
there was a piper in the corner, pipers then rare as hens’ teeth, and he played a plaintive music that was like the salt wind singing, utterly strange and familiar, unlike any other music really, an absolute music, uncompromising as a blackthorn, ancient and elemental, and in the air he played was a whole history of the troubled heart, and when I looked at Christy I saw the sorrow in his happiness had made shine his eyes.
The apprentice lover has to make it up as he or she goes along, they think no one has ever felt like this before. Others have loved, yes, but not like this is textbook. We all feel we are originals, maybe at the moment when we are most universal.

That was his religion, as he was each minute inventing it.
All he needed was to see her.
From this distance, when you get past the hopelessness of him, there’s something hopeful in that. In the cure of another.

It didn’t matter either that there was little talk between them – The German worked in a studied quiet – because by the time he was going home in the dark after, Ganga felt that more than the bicycle was repaired. <> The trouble was, for the companionship to continue, my grandfather had to keep breaking the bicycle.
so, while to throw yourself off the top of a steep timber stairs requires a fair bit of negotiation, and I suppose some courage, the courage is based on a fiction. He doesn’t know how much it will hurt. Not really.
In many versions, all of life is a fall from grace. In this one, I’m hoping to go the other way. I’m working on life as a rise to grace, after a fall. After several falls, in fact.
She tilted back her face as though it were an offering, brought the cigarette like an adorer to her lips and sucked a pucker smoke out of it at an angle of eleven o’clock.
who Charlie was was an April sun-shower, a quick and impetuous dazzlement, an untrappable tempered loveliness combined with a liveliness of mind that in those times the gentry called winning. <> I’m aware I’m speaking across the years here. But Charlie Troy was, well, a goddess.
* By the time I was turning in my grandparents’ gate I had found linear the corkscrew logic that by calling at the house and taking her sister to the pictures on Friday I would be proving my love for Sophie.
(banking scion) where soon after he’d start developing the soft, round bottom of a man who sat on money for a living. For his twenty-first birthday Eugene had been given a new set of teeth top and bottom. It was the done thing then among a certain class, and that was the one he was in, so the teeth were out, and he was out of kissing commission until the gums healed and he could say ‘Charlie’ without spraying.
I am an awkward and unnatural bird in neck-crane with lips pursed, as though succumbing to some elemental suction by which human beings are to be stuck together, laughably, by the lips, crossing the no-distance that is also enormous,
* Charlie’s kisses, were, I suppose, in The Book of Kisses. But they’d be in the chapter called Devouring. There was biting and gnawing and teeth-banging in them, an urgent air of mouth-to-mouth combat, wild and violent and driving to an end that was out of reach... She pulled me against her in a mime of movie stars, but the three-dimensionality of our bodies made a bumping mockery of blending, elbows and knees proving extra to the parts required and noses on standby with an abashed air of being in the way... even as your wrists were singing, the egg on your forehead breaking, and your eyes agape from the out-of-this-world experience of your face eaten by a swan.
what she wanted now was to feel the flesh of my chest, only to discover Christy’s shirt had no buttons, pulling it up, and pulling it up, choking me on the last-line-defence of my scapulas, and pulling it some more, half undressing a surrendered parachute-musketeer
But, with a bewildering contrariness, the intimacies of the Mars were between us and too vertiginous to cross. I was too removed from myself to know what I was feeling, but wonder was part of it and fizzing in me along a cable of pleasure fairly thickly embraided with guilt and betrayal.
was soon shaking in his chest, his happiness for me like small white feathers of down in the dark, going everywhere.
not unusual for these shelves, which had to be improvised at short order, to be uncarpentered constructs variously and ingeniously propped, tied, glued and hanging off stone walls whose last dignity was to refuse to be screwed.
Sophie opened the door. <> All of me knelt down. All of me bowed. Inside the chapel of myself, all my candles lit.
There was no time to consider it, I was face-to-face with an America of teeth, coast-to-coast and sea-to-shining-sea, whose immediate effect was to make you keep your mouth closed on your own peninsular coastline.
* an agreement between Ronnie and me to declare regulation standard a net with an irredeemable bow in the centre, I walked down the avenue in a suffused evening sunlight, knowing that two things were now certain. I would never again set foot inside the Mars. And my doom was complete, I was in love with the three Troy sisters.
the soft permissive comfort in the sound May. Say it and you sound the evening coming down over Faha and the fields about, the cattle standing in them and the river behind the street wearing the navy sky like a favoured scarf. May. A sound that comes around you. A sound that has your mother in it.
There was a day when my father and I brought her down the stairs between us to take her to a specialist in town. Her body felt disassembled.
An unsaid understanding, born out of being in the company of suffering, meant the three of us, doctor, priest and me, were in a conspiracy of silence.
about myself, which last made dawn on me that it’s only when someone asks you about yourself that you exist in the fourth dimension of a story. In none of this do I wish to pretend that I was any more assistance to her than anyone else might have been.
* What happened next, I didn’t make happen. By no means direct or indirect did I suggest it. I was resolved to my station of visitor, house-caller, tea and toast maker, press emptier, and took a jigsaw solace in fitting in in that small way.

Annie Mooney’s first proper conversation with Christy in fifty years began with a blunt declaration: I don’t want to speak about me. She wanted no acknowledgement of her illness. What she asked instead was for him to pick up the thread where their lives came apart and tell her where he went the day of their wedding.
His first words to her were the ones he had been holding in the barrel of his chest for so long they came out in a brine of sorrow:
‘Please forgive me.’

Some stories are too good not to be told, was an alibi in Faha. She told it to her sister in Dublin, judging near three hundred miles a safe distance to let the cat out of the bag, but misjudging the legs of a story which started its return journey that same evening when her sister told a friend visiting from the story-bog of the Bog of Allen, Mrs Prendergast not only misjudging the cunning of the cat but the fleas of invention it would pick up along the way back. When, two weeks later, Mary O Donahue leaned into the counter to tell Mrs Prendergast in loud whispers what you wouldn’t believe about that electric man above in Crowe’s – Christy had been in prison in Mexico, he had seen the alligators sunning themselves on sandy banks
When at last Christy hung up and emerged out the front door, he had the unshelled shyness of all who’ve encountered the naked heart.
I knew she knew that I knew, and so on, but we put that knowledge back on the tree and made like the innocent.
This time he didn’t have to say This is Christy and she didn’t have to say I don’t want to talk about myself because he already knew the way ahead, which was the way of the storyteller, and, as though all day he had kept his finger in the pages, he was able to resume where he had left off when the previous night she had interrupted his account of himself
* he had already surmised that the way to prolong their reconnection was to invest the telling with vivid details, some of which, when he went to reach for them in memory, were not there, and he had to resort to a politician’s ploy of inventing the truth on the spot. As though under the influence of our cycling sojourns along corkscrew bends and crooked boreens, he let the story go down side roads, diversions of no fixed purpose other than the contrary one of going a different way, and soon found he could talk for half an hour and be only a half an hour further along the tale of his life.
‘And then I went to Morocco,’ Christy said, not missing the beat, and picking up from where he had left off, in the same way one tune bled into another in seisiúns and formed one continuous music, or, as he would become in the fable of this time, the Fahaean Scheherazade.
What Doady knew, without saying a word, was that, within the one-foot-after-the-other confines of that tightrope, they were free. <> That she didn’t bring up the question of the electricity with my grandfather was an act of love, and marriage.
Doady had had to invent a behaviour for a visitor who wouldn’t take tea. It was plumping unplump cushions
what it had felt to be in those places again where there was the strange human pleasure in painful memory.
The trinity of Sophie and Charlie and Ronnie was there, each in their own variant of magnificence. They each held my hand lightly a moment and were gone, as was true of their place in my life.
He sang as he had before, shut-eyed, head back and arms down. He sang the same song he had sung outside her window in the night. He sang it as if no one was listening but her. And all of Faha felt the same. In the face of the raw feeling, through a perfect stillness people made themselves invisible. Christy sang all the verses. He sang as though he was sending the song after her, as though the air and words of it could escape the confines of time and space and soon enough reach the next place where she was gone.
* But possibly that didn’t happen. As I think I’ve said, there are some memories you can’t lean on. You sense the railings of them but you don’t reach out a hand.
Junior Crehan: He was neither showy nor august, but he had the authority of tradition in him and the sense of that place. The feeling of it can’t be captured. I kept turning to look at Christy, because we’d done it, we’d found him, and I wanted to see the joy I knew would be in his face. <> It was there, even though he wasn’t.
* We all have to find a story to live by and live inside, or we couldn’t endure the certainty of suffering. That’s how it seems to me.
They are some of the only surviving photographs of the parish entire, as if it were the last day of community and after this people would stay in their homes among the comforts of an electric solitude.
The wisdom ran out there because he sent one of the Kellys for the holy water. I don’t know which one, at that age they all had the same tadpole face, but whichever it was, he defied all calculations of time and distance and didn’t come back, and still didn’t, finding a fresh wrong way to do a thing, and Moylan had to announce the hold-up to the crowd but assure them that Dublin was on standby.)
And it did not matter that all of this would pass, that’s what occurred to me. It didn’t matter this time and place would be gone, that these feelings would go to the place of all feelings once pure and complete... all of them would be gone but be like remembered music or the amassed richness of a lived life.

虽然是ABO，珍豪呷这篇显然是基于留学生现实，以至于有人被雷到的，老阿姨就看着挺乐呵，虽然情节比较随性。

>>　哇，Ian先生只提供过三次服务，虽然都如约完成，但“情绪安抚”这块全拿了最低的一颗星。
　　哎呀，次数太少，也许这三次差评样本是异常值呢。方溏按着自己烧的滚烫的额头，算了！

　　“OK！”方溏合掌一拍，“下周一。上午拍那个助教马屁，下午找Alpha退烧，晚上和资格考课题大战，就这样，解散！”

　　方溏是知道自己好看的——大概是Omega性征作祟，他像摔碎的一张黑胶唱片，一整张脸都是拼凑的圆弧的线条，圆蓬蓬的栗子棕的发，桃心脸，杏仁眼，只有眼梢倔强地飞出一点尖来。
　　而眼前的Alpha男生是通通相反，一切只是尖锐。宽肩窄腰，高鼻深目，黑色碎发下有一双蓝幽幽的眼眸。它们令方溏想起他冰箱上钉着的风景明信片，从白围栏探出身，棕榈掩映后的最蓝的海洋。

　　“你指出的这几点很对，确实是我考虑不周，”心平气和，心平气和，方溏开口，“但是在理论构筑这边，我觉得更多可能是学科训练的差异。”
　　“伊恩，你看，我是商学院的，我们对学术论文的要求一直是‘讲好一个故事’——不要复杂化，我的导师教给我的写作原则一直是‘KISS’，Keep It Simple and Stupid，保持简单和愚蠢……”
　　“这只是简单的愚蠢。”伊恩那无机质的蓝眼珠静静地注视着他。

　　好了，他错了，这家伙才不是人工智能，他已经违背了机器人三定律——不得伤害人类。

　　方溏觉得这Alpha的信息素正化作九节鞭来回抽打他，可惜自己的味道太过甜美且不稳定，不能凝聚成元气弹震死他！

　　“哦，祝你显著，”不知是否错觉，对方嘴角挑起了像素般的一个点，“可惜过不了伦理审核。”

　　WHAT——THE——FUCK!?   
　　十五分钟前，他确信会对自己寿命产生显著负向影响的男人，此刻同他一起锁在密室中。

上一秒他还能清晰感受到Alpha的犬牙流连在皮肤上，细细琢磨着，下一秒，所有的思绪都融化了，不快、尴尬、烦躁、愤懑……一切都消失殆尽，只有Alpha和Omega交融的信息素，如同火与火药最爆裂的亲吻。

　　“那种感觉就像你坐在彩虹上吐。”
　　喻茴歪过脑袋，他早已习惯好友的跳脱发言，“怎么说？”
　　“你知道吗，在标记之前，我真的非常、非常、非常讨厌他。”方溏找不到调鸡尾酒的搅拌勺，拿了根筷子搅拌他的龙舌兰日出，“然后，他一咬我——我就像被一朵祥云托着，飞升到了彩虹上。”...
　　“然后恍惚中你有一丝清醒，想说‘不对，咬我的不是我最讨厌的那个人吗，我要吐了！’结果他的信息素就像白云飘过来，跟棉花糖、不，跟萨摩耶毛茸茸的尾巴一样摩擦你的脸颊，你整个人又陷了进去。”

　　“这和你的状况很类似。”医生捏了捏小鸭子扁扁的塑料脑袋，发出“嘎”的一声，“这是你第一次和Alpha，而且是极高匹配度的Alpha进行了临时标记，所以你的身体、”
　　“认贼作父了。”
　　“唔，更准确地说是‘认贼做老公’。”
　　方溏呛到咖啡，剧烈地咳嗽起来。他赶忙说着“抱歉、抱歉”，抽了纸巾擦桌上的渍。

　　第二个Alpha则破口大骂，说夫妻两吵架能不能别把一个外人扯进来，你老公在你身上沾了一身味跟导弹防御系统似的他是来做义工不是来做感情的第三者的转手在Scent上举报了他。

　　在他的脑海中，伊恩突然捧着一束玫瑰在市政厅单膝下跪向他求婚，从此两人跨学科合作，发顶刊轮流做一作通讯，然后被人挂到小O书上，‘读博避雷北美某高校有毒夫妻店’，‘哎其实F老师人很好的，主要是他老公Y姓博导，人面兽心，长得帅又怎样，真的是toxic……’
　　Tang：如果我们真是命运伴侣怎么办？
　　C++：克服一下。
　　对着手机屏，方溏左手竖起大拇指，右手竖起中指。

“你的香味太浓了。”
　　哦哇，二振出击。这家伙说着令人误解的话，声音却和牛顿摆上来回的小钢珠一样冷清。
　　“伊恩，你的并发症里就没有让人变得明事理，把方溏PSYCH425大论文的‘C’改成‘A’的选项吗？”
　　“我的病症是失眠，并非痴呆。”

　　Alpha揽过他的腰一带，向后躺倒在床上。方溏还没来得及反应，对方仿佛已经读出Omega拥抱中隐含的诉求——他双手双脚地压上来，方溏整个人被嵌进他怀抱中，像森林大熊抱着一罐蜂蜜，没留一点缝隙。一双腿还被人前后用力夹着，方溏甚至能感受到对方的紧绷绷的、结实的大腿肌肉。

　　你还不是我喜欢的类型呢！方溏想咬死他，只是一来确实言不由衷，二来鉴于两人体型差，他大概会更像在主人怀里乱扑腾的暴躁吉娃娃。

　　夸张，方溏翻了个白眼，知道她们在查伊恩的谷歌学术（咱博士生最爱干的就是会议上认识新人后偷偷查人的文章发表），他也把脑袋歪过去看。

　　方溏既生气又有些尴尬，一直没主动联系他，而伊恩不知道是被咬不爽了还是因为约定的时间没到，也没发来消息。
　　其实这几天，方溏能隐隐感到分离焦虑的苗头又冒了出来，但一想到伊恩那张死人脸，他想想还是把苗头捆吧捆吧成粽子塞进了床底下。

　　其实是他懒得去学校，方溏住的小区甚至没有公交站，还得走到隔壁小区蹭。现在快入冬又冷，公交又慢，方溏一想到来回一个半小时就为了被这个Alpha咬一口就烦。当然，这种不好明说的。

　　方溏甚至觉得他们俩的信息素是一对朱丽叶与罗密欧，而他和伊恩是棒打鸳鸯的宿主——信息素匹配真是恐怖，怎么能临时标记了一次就这样难舍难分？
　　不过，总是比之前的状况要好的。如果说信息素紊乱是明的烈火，信息素成瘾则更像不大好的牙齿见了冷风、伊恩不在时，给予他一种微妙的、空荡荡的酸痛。

　　还是先杀去物业。
　　方溏拿出手机，开始录像发Instagram。
　　也是老天爷要让方溏的命运更合配他的po文#人类史上最大最恶绝望事件，他帖子还没发出去，厨房顶被水浸湿的警报器突然响起来，然后——一带十——十带百——公寓里所有的警报器都齐齐尖叫了起来——！

　　“……三小时？”
　　方溏认为伊恩给了他一个混合着“所以”、“你看”、“你个白痴”的冷酷眼刀。

　　他们这个大学镇虽小，居民区的划分也是阶级分明的。譬如方溏住的那个小区是“明明无神论者却会周末去教会蹭吃蹭喝包饺子的房子是廉租人生也是廉租”的政府公屋，伊恩这个则是属于“crazy rich Alphas”的豪华小区。
　　当伊恩的车开进小区时，方溏趴在车窗边，认为自己心情有点伊丽莎白第一次见到达西的大庄园。

　　方溏拎起置物架上的黑色T恤，突然就戏瘾大发。他最近很爱看那种军校AO短剧，里面装Beta的Omega都会偷偷闻同寝室Alpha的衣物来度过热潮期。
　　这能怪他吗？浴室就是会滋生人的表演欲望，不这么演，他也会拿起牙刷杯发表诺贝尔奖的获奖感言啊，但是干，他这个方向还拿不了诺贝尔……

　　方溏拎起置物架上的黑色T恤，突然就戏瘾大发。他最近很爱看那种军校AO短剧，里面装Beta的Omega都会偷偷闻同寝室Alpha的衣物来度过热潮期。

　　这能怪他吗？浴室就是会滋生人的表演欲望，不这么演，他也会拿起牙刷杯发表诺贝尔奖的获奖感言啊，但是干，他这个方向还拿不了诺贝尔……

　　虽然是第二次被临时标记，可是感受依旧和第一次一样鲜明——方溏觉得自己像被拔了气的充气城堡，四肢绵绵软软地就朝伊恩塌下去。他气球的皮肤下被灌满Alpha的气息，他柔软的腺体被伊恩的犬牙贯穿。
　　过了一会，又也许是天长地久，伊恩才放开他。方溏一开始还黏在人家身上，后来才像打了充气泵，缓缓弹回座椅。

　　其实在昨晚前，方溏还真没有搜索过伊恩——第一，读博读傻的征兆就是社交先查人论文。第二，天可怜见，一个博士生每天能偷窥的逆天同龄人履历的数量是有限的，不然生存危机（“我去为什么这些人那么能发”）和虚无主义（“但是发这么多又有什么意义呢说到底发论文没意义科研没意义我的人生也没有意义”）就会应运而生。
　　但昨天要做的事情实在太多，方溏要报损一大堆东西、要和毁了他公寓的酒鬼联系、要改TA作业、要准备周末和吉娜的例会、要联系一家餐厅做实地实验……
　　而在所有事情的堆积下，他选择了视奸伊恩的生平履历。

　　方溏盯着伊恩背影，在心中把他装入一个“完美芭比娃娃 – 博士版”的粉红盒子里。

　　书房里静得只有鼠标偶尔一点的脆响，这Alpha家伙恐怖如斯，干活时甚至不需要放点lo-fi女孩或者雨声白噪音什么的，就像一个纯正的神经病一样一直干一直干一直干。

　　“这都是信息素的功劳，你有没有意识到？”方溏喃喃。是的，现在书房里充斥着Alpha的信息素，就像是一个森林氧吧，甚至他们俩的针锋相对都蒙上了一层瑰色的滤镜，只有懒洋洋的、小猫爪子挠似的调侃。

　　伊恩冷冷盯着他，抬手抓起方溏的连帽衫兜帽盖在他脑袋上，然后坐回了办公椅，“你应当也写不出比PSYCH425的大论文更烂的东西了。”
　　方溏抬脚就去踹伊恩的旋转椅！结果此男臂力惊人抓着电脑桌一动不动！

//　　方溏的研究是我拿阈下营销(subliminal marketing)和跨感官整合知觉(Cross-modal perception)的一些内容瞎编的（但是给我自己编美了……）万一以后有番外我就把我们溏的整个研究计划书给编出来（谁看）

　　如果说伊恩有一种静音的美（意思是他那条舌头可以割掉了），眼前的男生则是一种丁零当啷的帅哥，看着他就觉得热闹。

　　“就是那种，如果在漫画里出场，鬓边网点应当贴一圈花朵和蝴蝶的美。”
　　“我想蝴蝶应当停在你鼻子上就行。”
　　“？”
　　“狗。”

　　！？方溏的惊叫在最后、舌头湿润的触感下变的软绵绵的一哼。紧接着，他就被人一推，丢回到沙发上。
　　“嘿！”方溏捂着后颈瞪着伊恩，“可以不要突然咬我吗？”
　　“你现在镇定了？”伊恩碾了碾手指，“可以去干活了。”
　　“什、”方溏话还没出口，却发现……自己原来还躁动不安的心现在变得好平静，像被人泡在薄荷的牙膏海，懒洋洋地漂浮着。他好像、他好像现在真的能继续写论文！？
　　方溏尤不甘心，“……我靠！你有行医资格吗你你就做大夫。”
　　伊恩没搭理他。
　　“这是工伤。”
　　“你有在工作？”

　　伊恩手一动、方溏更用力牵住他。
　　释放信息素、释放信息素……这太抽象了，他只能根据毕生所阅的武侠小说和动画片，合眼憋气，释放一圈查克拉一样的，嗯，他的信息素闻起来像蜂蜜橘子，所以想象中是橘色的光环围绕在他身边……

//　　短短十四章，方溏已对伊恩进行鸭塑、豹子塑、鲨鱼塑，伊恩睫毛骆驼塑，小伊恩酱蟒蛇塑（？），争取让大家在完结前看到免费的马戏团表演: )

　　没错，这不是错觉，当他们把车停在三层小洋房前，伊恩一身黑衣从座驾下来时，方溏很确信草坪上不少游荡笑闹的鬼魂、女巫、僵尸和科学怪人都朝这里看了过来。
　　要是信息素会尖叫的话，此刻正在科切拉音乐节高分贝大合唱。

　　方溏从没想过，他的初吻会是出于这样一个人道主义救援的场景。
　　Alpha的亲吻轻忽地像一片羽毛。可那羽毛是伊卡洛斯黏着蜜蜡的羽毛，一靠近太阳，融化在方溏的唇上，而热意整个地点燃了他。

　　方溏恶鬼附身似地一哆嗦，脑袋磕了下窗玻璃！方溏，别想。禁止发散。禁止苦难色情化。不要想一个Alpha的唇和他的舌。他撅起嘴巴吹了下刘海，强迫自己看向窗外一盏一盏模糊成光影的街灯。

　　方溏一怔，心口有些热，和一种被人猝然看见委屈的情绪。
　　“一个人出来读博还要应对Omega的信息素紊乱，真是辛苦了。”

　　是的，他的第一反应是羡慕。
　　为伊恩在这么年轻的年纪就找到了自己的科研母题。抛开父母的身份，裘德 · 杜若夫和伊煊的名字是会在具身认知研究中保留首字母的案例，那些关于ABO的誓言与背叛的细节……有一种，残酷的，属于神经科学的美丽。

　　“你是变态？”
　　“没吃过猪肉爱看猪跑跑马拉松跑跑百米赛跑怎么你了。”

　　他一瞬屏住了呼吸，视线从伊恩的鬓角、眼睫、鼻梁……一寸寸地往下看，他仿佛是在冬日的午后，站在湖泊的边缘探身看。
　　金波荡漾着，他感到美丽，也感到那伟力降临的惊悸。

　　但是，喂，说不联系就不联系么。咱们是这种地缘性的朋友吗，我那么聪明美丽的一个Omega果断地离开了你的巢穴，一点留念都没有吗？

　　哎呀，不好，习惯了，怎么一不注意又阴阳怪气上了。方溏真痛恨自己的伶牙俐齿，他认为自己很有必要和他互搏的左右脑开一个《你就是这么和你的crush说话的吗》的讲座，统一一下策略。

　　“我咬你，给你一个临时标记。”

　　Alpha的双眸是琥珀色的金快活，漾着滟滟的水光，
　　“你看看——你对伊恩的喜欢，是不是和他的信息素呈显著正相关？”
　　【作者有话说】
　　伊恩，家危，速归。
　　卢夏：呵呵，我总不能白被人叫猪吧。

　　“你才恶心呢！”他妈的倒打一耙，方溏拿电脑包打了他三下，“现在谁是舔过我嚼的口香糖的白痴，你再亲久点就滚你嗓子眼里去了！”
　　向来爱扮酷装逼的伊姓Alpha男大露出了他二十二年寿命中最为生动的表情：惊愕，嫌恶，茫然……方溏看得直乐，对方的蓝眼珠子却锁定了他。
　　“现在你嘴里还有东西吗？”
　　“什么鬼问题，当然没有，我的嘴巴又不是一顶魔术帽！”

　　屋子里突兀地安静下来。一秒钟，像大战之前，第一颗炮弹从明净浅蓝的天空落下的永恒的一秒钟。

　　那浓而密的睫毛轻颤了下，栖落在Omega被风雪冻得通红的面颊上。
　　伊恩应当是躺在最平坦坚硬的雪地上，下面是睡袋、再下面有泡沫防滑垫。但他仿佛又回到了五岁，他和爸爸去国家公园，租了皮艇，奋力划进春天的金色的湖泊中。
　　伊煊带了冰啤酒，他带了有字的画本。正午的阳光洒下来，他在无边无际湖水中央的一艘小船上，感到绵长的、永恒的晕眩。

　　“我的自尊心很受挫。”方溏揉了下他快耷拉上的眼皮，又低头咬了片薄荷叶在嘴里嚼吧。
　　视讯中喻茴凑近了点，看清他的样子后笑起来，“你知道你现在像什么吗？”
　　“什么？”
　　“蒸锅上被五花大绑的大闸蟹。不知道自己怎么了，所以钳子夹起姜片吃，以为能让自己好受些。”

　　- 你应当保持冷静思考 12-8_YE.docx
　　- S1_600原始数据.sav
　　- 你应当向我道歉 12-9_Tang.docx
　　- 信息素营销数新结果.spv
　　- 梦话请留着睡觉说 12-9_YE.docx
　　- 噢伊恩你草你自己去吧 12-10_Tang!!!!!.docx

　　“你经常用的东西是什么？笔记本电脑吗？”方溏决定自暴自弃，捏紧了被子，“别到时候我一下子浇坏了它你还得送去BEST BUY维修！”
　　“……你说得对。”Alpha陷入思考，仿佛真的致力于从心理学系跳槽成为一个大建筑师。

　　“嗳！”方溏制止住对方将要起身的动作，手却不小心按到Alpha呼吸绷紧时会块垒分明的腹肌……喔，就像近视的人脱了眼镜就听不清人讲话一样，方溏发现把手掌贴在伊恩的腹肌上能更好地帮他表达，好吧，勉为其难地摸一下，“不是这个原因！

　　——好像在这一刻，方溏才找到了真正的巢穴。小企鹅不行，柔软的、带着薄荷味的织物也做不到，只有在Alpha的亲吻、拥抱、和纷纷夜雪般的沉重身躯下，Omega才拥有彻底安心的所在。
　　伊恩的亲吻冰凉而温柔，却给予方溏一种魂飞魄散的快乐。他的身子是一阵冷，一阵热，好像在一瞬完成了某场生物的演化。Alpha持久的、深入的吻让他缩起肩膀，弓着腰，变成一弯煮熟的虾子。

　　“我并不想养一个情绪心理学的课堂论文曾拿过C的宝贝。”
　　“好了好了好了，”方溏拧了下对方的胳膊，“就算我同你是一本罗曼蒂克小说的主人公，四十章内你吐槽了这件事三次，人设也未免单薄。”

　　“我要把俄罗斯人和意大利人一个不留地……从信息素营销的领域驱逐出去……”方溏灌了口美式，边流眼泪，边默写一些以“-斯基”和“-维诺”为结尾的冗长姓氏。

　　原来是这样，就像卡尔维诺的那篇意大利童话一样，“最快乐的人是没有衬衫的”——方溏今天才懂得，原来他的快乐如此简单。
　　不需要什么物质刺激，只要能够让伊恩吃瘪，让那张万年扮酷的面魔罗冰块脸出现裂缝，他就有很多幸福和满足。
　　于是在伊恩神色木然地用方溏笔电做PPT时（他甚至不愿意开一下自己的电脑，仿佛会脏了它内存似的！），Omega捂着他热热的心口，去厨房准备了一碟零食，有樱桃、布里奶酪、烟熏三文鱼和海苔玉米圈圈脆，还倒了杯莫斯卡托甜白，翩翩回归客厅。

　　“好了小狗蛋虽然你说得对但是这不是重点！”方溏喝了口酒，摇晃着红酒杯，“重点是，当我给数据取名为‘一坨’时，你不觉得它会拥有顽强的生命力，比较容易显著吗？”

　　伊恩拿起桌上的激光笔，缓步走到幕布旁，“可以开始了吗？老师。”
　　唉呀，方溏想把脸埋进肘弯里，心情在犯花痴和大爆笑之间摇摆。好了好了，他还比这小子大四岁呢，得有点定力。

　　然后伊恩又切到了下一页：参考文献。

　　“Fang, T. (20XX). 茴震撼救命人生第一次我碰到Alpha的亚马逊森蚺了. 聊天记录, 13(6), 250.”
　　“……”
　　“谢谢评委，我的报告完毕。”
　　“……”
　　Omega低下头，捂住脸，像危房爆破般“轰”地倒在地毯上，希望这想象中的飞溅的尘土能把他活埋了。

　　方溏看那原木的路标，户外热水浴池，还有厚雪中钻出脑袋来的、铜澄澄的白尾鹿雕像，想，孩子，这不叫归隐山林，这叫纽约房产税顶格交3.9%。

　　“打个比方！比方！然后我们就要因为一些误解吵架但是在最后一秒大和解笑中含泪地奔向对方并在雪夜中分享一个歪歪扭扭的蛋糕和第一个冰凉的，唇瓣轻触的吻……”
　　“现在出去跑步我们会失温。”
　　还沉浸在失落中的方溏缓缓横倒在床上，手捂脸，脚蜷起来，过了会觉得有点冷，又默默地拉过被子一角盖在身上。
　　“我知道为什么那篇会议稿你能拖到最后一刻才交了，你浪费太多时间在无效幻想。”长大一岁的伊恩恶毒也一并在发育，“我不喜欢甜食。我们也亲过很多次了。”

　　他皱起眉头，“eww，甜的。”
　　“Alpha，不劳而获的人没资格抱怨。”方溏这样说，却发现了做人糖爹（消费降级版）的乐趣，他又拿了颗往对方嘴边送。

小房间像从千禧年的公路片走出来，竖条的木板墙，在灯下一排看去，从浅棕到鸡油黄，蛀着几个虫洞。被子和布窗帘远看是剥落的敦煌壁画的配色，近看是佩斯利花纹，藏青和砖红的藤蔓、花朵和眼泪。

　　“Awww——”Omega被萌到了，没忍住发出那种路人看见荷塘的小鸭子第一次入水扑腾的怪声怪叫。

　　伊恩的眼睛是蓝色的昆虫针，把他活生生钉死在这玻璃上，可是他愿意随他指使，受他的手指摆弄，分了触角，张开翅膀，做他美丽的蝴蝶标本。

　　“可是对我的审美是一种虐待啊！”
　　“……”
　　失去意志的最后一秒，昏昏沉沉的方溏流着快乐的眼泪想，他逃过了莫代尔内衣，逃过了拉舍尔被子，怎么还是做了抱对的青蛙。

　　//因为我产生了一个“大头”和“小头”的矛盾：作为大头的作者人格，这些剧情可以丰富故事，饱满结构。但是作为小头的读者人格，在小品文里看到这种东西我会有说不出的烦躁（仅代表珍自己），就像千禧年韩剧和言情网文，总是前轻后重，前几集嬉笑玩闹，后面要么原生家庭、要么女二男二由爱上升为争权夺利，给予我很大精神创伤。
　　所以伊恩的父亲们在这里也只是很“卡通”的父亲，我既不是让他们来当“原生家庭”（引发心理创伤），也不是做“摩登家庭”（表达家庭的童话开明）。写了纯粹就是想多一些恩溏对口相声契机，顺便引出下一部骗你们收藏。
　　我不想让这个故事变得“重”，不想升华也不想大思考，我只想要一个“像在二寸象牙上细细描绘的”，轻飘的、上扬的、在鼹鼠的洞穴或是秘密花园的花园里的二人转糖水小品。

====================================

水在镜中/苏小玲/兰映春泉这本异形攻设定还蛮新颖的，其它的ABO+星际设定承载短文略奢侈，赫尔威提政府对居民的控制简直写实。作者后半段卡文不知道是不是因为为难死意浓郁的受如何转向向生，这种ABO文被强制清水后真的很难说服读者cp之间羁绊是多深。

>>　他很早就意识到机甲或者星舰驾驶员中比较可能存在这样的人类。但那些人类中的完全体雌性-也就是人类性别中的omega
，稀有到了几近不存在的地步。并且这类雌性往往很敏锐，难以被控制。如果□□对象不够配合，卵还是会发育成孳生体……
　　成功的□□和繁殖必须基于对方自愿。这是森罗繁殖的铁律。
　　何况赫尔威提的政府一直在监控那些omega。一旦接触，暴露是必然的结局。暴露后他就会被人类杀死，孳生体还是会立刻降生……
　　无解。

这世上有角斗选手，也有娼妓。但如果一个omega掉进了角斗场，他就两者皆是。归根到底，落进这里，他们都是明码实价的商品。

　　“你看上去心情不好。”肖面对绯刃，开口时有种面对易碎品的小心。
　　“没人在这种地方会心情好。”绯刃不能理解他的小心。肖不是自己熟悉的那种alpha：“也许除了殡葬公司的人。”
　　“死亡是门好生意。”肖没有生气，只是诚实道。
　　绯刃停下了脚步：“你看起来总是很平静。”
　　“因为逝者是平静的。”肖回答道。
　　绯刃笑了一下，就像听到了一个笑话。

　　Alpha想要说什么，忽然目光一凝。绯刃也感受到了，本能的反应让他先于思考做出了动作。
　　他们几乎同时向对方冲去，并在抓住对方后用尽全力向外一跃。
　　下一秒，建筑物上方巨大的标识牌重重砸在了他们方才站立的地方。
　　绯刃回过神来，意识到他正和肖以一种古怪的姿势抱在一起。显然他们都第一时间意识到了危险的存在，想要把对方带离危险区域。但在“谁救谁”这个问题上出现了一点儿分歧。

　　这些念头在无边的漂浮里轻轻撞击着他，奇怪的是，它们并没有造成太多疼痛。也许是因为梦中的水波太过温柔。
　　他在轻缓的摇晃里睁开了眼睛，意识到自己有点头晕。
　　外头的雨已经停了，赫尔威提恢复了平常的天色，灰黄里透着恒星的淡红。晨间的喧嚣一如既往，机器与交通工具的轰鸣穿透薄薄的窗子，包围了他。
　　他一时竟留恋起那个空荡寂静的梦。

　　肖沉默了一下，像下定了决心似的抬起头：“你是我此生的唯一。”

　　alpha暗蓝色的眼睛在黑夜中清澈明亮得像两颗星星。绯刃在那其中看见了自己的倒影。他这辈子都没见过那样坚定热忱的眼神，真诚得像是要托付整个生命。
　　没有谁被那样一双眼睛眼睛看着能无动于衷，尤其是在濒临发情期的时候。绯刃意识到生理上的热度正在和那充满诱惑力的目光一起侵袭他，让他想要丢盔弃甲。

　　“不是礼仪。”肖望仰头望着他：“我只是在向你……求爱。”
　　“求爱……”绯刃恍惚道：“你要知道，在赫尔威提，你我现在这种关系充其量算个包养。”

　　而在温妮将一张“复原昆加法军事议员的遗体”的客单资料交到他手上时，汐冥觉得这个破班实在不能再上下去了。   
　　就算殡葬公司永远有新鲜或者不怎么新鲜的人类脑子供他吃，他也不想上这个班了。这个破班是非上不可么？他难道就不能弄个别的什么身份么？

　　汐冥的呼吸一下子就乱了。他已经无暇思考为什么母体能把自己的气息隐藏到森罗一时都无法识别的程度。卵在腹中不停颤动，他只想抱住对方，完成□□。
　　“啊……完蛋了。”他听见母体慵懒的声音：“现在是两个人在发情了。”

他看向汐冥：“可能你不信，但我也见过不少。那种糟透了的遗骸。哪怕过了许多年，你在心里觉得它们已经离自己挺远了，那些东西仍然会在某些时刻从脑子里跳出来，宣告它的存在。”他轻轻握了握汐冥的手，表达安慰。
　　Alpha的表情有一瞬间的困惑。但当绯刃的手与他相握时，他立刻小心地回握：“其实也还好……”他认真道：“习惯就好。它们只是物质转变了形态。”
　　绯刃摇摇头：“理性的认知不代表情感的接纳……那些毕竟曾经是生命啊。”镇痛药带走了疼痛，带来了迷惘。他有些失神地望着虚空：“我不知道……也许那样的死亡只是让人感受到了世界的残酷。”
　　“用残酷去评价世界或许不太准确。”汐冥慢慢道：“世界只是混沌。生命的诞生源于这种混沌，生命的逝去同样如此。”他握了握绯刃的手：“宇宙没有情感。物质永存，只是换了个样子。”

　　“不可笑。”汐冥在一旁把鸡骨剔掉，温柔地看着他狼吞虎咽，把维生素水向他推了推：“生命本来就是靠吞噬其他生命才得以延续的。你活着，那就是它们死去的价值。”

　　“我知道。”绯刃想起了角斗场的那些赞助人，似乎有钱人里一直很流行吃一些古怪的东西。从粘兽的内脏到马里纳虫的粪便，乃至轻羽沙雀的鸟窝。他知道甚至有赞助人吃被夏娃生命公司淘汰下来的活体畸胎，而食人更是城中一直都有的都市传说。相比之下，动物脏器好歹还是比较正常的食物。
　　不过这一切似乎也没什么值得震惊的。分解厂处理的人类尸体肯定也有相当一部分变成了廉价营养剂。只是大家都刻意无视了。
　　人吃人一直以来都是这个社会隐秘的规则。

　　绯刃静静站了一会儿，看着那越聚越多的人群。对于一个曾经参与过猎杀森罗幼体的战士来说，这场景当然很荒唐，但他觉得自己理解他们。
　　“他们只是在寻求一种寄托。”汐冥在他身边，轻轻道：“人类并不真正在意向之祈祷的存在到底是什么……你曾经的战斗并不是毫无意义的。”
　　“我知道。”绯刃平静道。
　　“可你看上去……”alpha担忧道。
　　“我并不憎恨森罗。”绯刃慢慢道：“那不过是另一种生命体。我也不憎恨我的敌人。我那会儿只是坚信，我在保护更多的人，我所遭受的痛苦能够换取其他人的平安和幸福……”他摇摇头：“都过去了。”

　　“不必担心。”汐冥安慰道：“我查了历年的记录。虫潮三天就会过去。”
　　“但混乱可未必。”绯刃摇摇头，低声道：“而且不只是混乱。一切美好的幻象在恐惧前都会破灭。你所相信的那些，你所维护的那些，都会破碎……你会见到人类最丑陋的那一面。”他沉默了一下，突然意识到了什么：“对不起，你一定比我经历得更多。”

　　“当生存资源有限时，总是要做出选择的。”汐冥的声音仍是那样温柔平和：“你选择了保护健康的母体和幼体，那正是为了保护整个种群的长久生存，也是为所有人保留了希望。在我看来，那是再正常不过的选择了。”
　　“你是学生物哲学专业的么？”绯刃苦涩道：“说的人类好像和虫群没什么分别了……”他摇摇头：“其实本质或许确实没什么分别……”

　　至于飞行摩托，他打算留给珍。这是辆好车，是他早年休假回约尔纳城的时候买的。那会儿他还年轻又热血，对星际航行充满热情，坚信自己可以守护住什么。其实现在的绯刃也不老，可许多事都好像是很久之前的事了。他有时从记忆中回望过去的自己，会忍不住露出微笑，而微笑过后永远是难以言喻的孤独。
　　他离那个很好的自己已经太远太远了。

　　这个人出现得太晚了。绯刃冷静地想。如果更早一些，或许自己真的会爱上他。然后像所有那些普通的omega一样，谈一段昏头的恋爱。那样也没什么不好。在这个尘霾笼罩的世界里，爱永远是光一样灿烂的东西。

　　“我给你发了消息。”绯刃在强烈的窒息感里冷静道：“你真的应该去医院看看，身体也是，精神……也是。”
　　“我没病。”alpha斩钉截铁道：“我只是绝对不能失去你。”
　　绯刃在骂人和叹气中选择了沉默。他的心脏那里又一次出现了怪异的扭曲感，那种又酸又软的感觉正向着四肢百骸蔓延。

　　绯刃感到自己刚刚压下去的火气又有复燃的迹象。
　　他知道自己根本没道理生气。一个好脾气的赞助人，放任自己予取予求。这在角斗场的交易关系里是不可想象的，因为在那里，通常一切都是反过来的。
　　可现在汐冥就站在那里，真诚得几乎让人心生怜悯。这不是一个赞助人的样子。这样的姿态属于求爱者。
　　一个危险的求爱者。

　　不远处的火光越来越亮，哭喊声传了过来。这就是他们所处的世界，死亡环伺，随时降临。
　　他不该想太多的。毕竟剩下的时间不多了。如果这个人想要点儿什么，而自己身上恰好有，那么何妨两个人一起做做美梦呢。
　　他没什么遗物能留给汐冥的，那么一点点回忆可能也不坏。毕竟这是alpha自己想要的。他残忍又释然地想。

　　欲望不是欢愉唯一的来处，因为这并非发情期。欲望也绝不是欢愉的归处，因为痛楚始终缠绕其间。
　　即便如此，当那些冰凉的吻伴随爱语落下，绯刃仍然强烈地感到自己荒芜的生命深处有什么被点燃了。

　　沉睡中的alpha很美。不只是外表，是他身上流露出的那种静谧感。比起人，或者说其他什么生物，这会儿他更让绯刃想起一些非人的，更大的存在。比如深池，湖泊，又或者夜空下的海。
　　当然在另一些时刻，比如在那双苍蓝色的眼睛里燃烧着情欲的时候，alpha看起来又是另一种样子——猎杀者的样子。
　　当这样的特质出现在同一个人身上，很容易引人迷恋。可是绯刃很清楚这不是自己选择放纵和沉沦的原因。
　　他从未在任何一个alpha身上感受到那样信仰般的赤诚的眷恋。那些东西好像无根之水，和这个男人一起，突如其来地出现在他行将湮灭的生命里，让他无法视而不见。

　　不过谁又能说得准呢。即便在这里工作的人类有谁在事故中死去，除却他们身边的亲近之人，外人也不会察觉。约尔纳城最不缺的就是人，几乎所有工作的可替代性都很强。一个员工消失了，立刻会有更多新员工涌上来顶替。人口数量决定了这一切。
　　人类总是把那些数量庞大，外形与自身差异巨大的社会性生物称为“虫”，而把他们的集群行动称为“虫潮”。其实按照这个标准来看，人类自身又何尝不是一种“虫”呢。

　　而如今，绯刃意识深处那种力量仍在，却是灰暗和混沌的，充满了尖锐与不确定，夹杂着忽虚忽实的毁灭。那是宇宙意识中关于死亡和寂灭的部分。当汐冥与绯刃的亲密行为结束时，那种力量仍以难以背负的沉重压在汐冥的意识之上，与不断被消耗的身体一同让他变得越来越饥饿，恐慌和虚弱。
　　假如他不曾真切地感受到过绯刃的爱，当那爱的质地发生改变时，他或许不会有这样强烈的毁灭感。绯刃的情感影响和改变了汐冥的意识和情感。汐冥的能量消耗模式也因此发生了改变。

　　“不。”汐冥想了想：“比起眼看着卵变成孳生体，让自己成为幼体的养料是更好的结局。”他的声音还是那样平静，甚至有一些安然：“繁殖就是这样，要有牺牲，这是我们作为雄性的使命，保护母体，为了幼体能平安降生。至于你问是否值得……延续生命，当然值得。”他握住绯刃的手，吻了一下：“所以你完全不必愧疚。”

　　子宫。即便是这样的处境之下，绯刃仍然忍不住觉得好笑。森罗的卵到底是什么鬼东西，难道为了生存还特意给自己造了一间房子么……

　　他有点搞不清自己了。也许是时不时发作的剧痛烧坏了脑子。总之他心里一半是责任，这责任心催促他快点去死，把异种对人类的威胁消灭在萌芽里。另一半毫无疑问是愤怒——天知道他到底是怎么积累起了这么多的愤怒，他一直觉的自己是个很能接受现实的人——这愤怒在怂恿他毁灭。

　　有形有质的水波穿过绯刃的身体。他感到自己在渐渐融化，就像汐冥一样。水波流动，水波旋转，水波像潮汐一样起落……直到他成为水波本身……
　　他在比漫长更长的寂静中摇晃。
　　不知何时，蔚蓝色的深处，毫无预兆地出现了闪烁的细小光点。
　　微小，时隐时现，却也轻盈，明亮耀眼。那光点越来越多，越来越有力。它们在水波中跃动，上升，把世界分成夜空与海……

It took me a long time to figure out how Irvin D. Yalom feels about the eponymous philosopher.

• //However, we continue our life with great interest and much solicitude as long as possible, just as we blow out a soap-bubble as long and as large as possible, although with the perfect certainty that it will burst.
• Epicurus, who reasoned, “Where I am, death is not and where death is, I am not. Hence why fear death?”
• It was code for potential melanoma, and now, in retrospect, Julius identified that phrase, that singular moment, as the point when carefree life ended and death, his heretofore invisible enemy, materialized in all its awful reality. Death had come to stay, it never again left his side, and all the horrors that followed were predictable postscripts.
• How startling it was to realize that suddenly he was no longer the supreme life form. Instead he was a host; he was nourishment, food for a fitter organism whose gobbling cells divided at a dizzying pace, an organism that blitzkrieged and annexed adjacent protoplasm and was now undoubtedly outfitting clusters of cells for cruises into the bloodstream and colonization of distant organs, perhaps the sweet friable feeding grounds of his liver or the spongy grassy meadows of his lungs.
• * his fellow humans who are victims of that freakish twist of evolution that grants self-awareness but not the requisite psychological equipment to deal with the pain of transient existence. And so throughout the years, the centuries, the millennia, we have relentlessly constructed makeshift denials of finiteness.
• Maybe it was simply imposed ritual he disliked. Perhaps a good word could be found for a little personal creative ceremony.
• * What else do we have? What else other than this miraculous blessed interval of being and self-awareness? If anything is to be honored and blessed, it should simply be this—the priceless gift of sheer existence. To live in despair because life is finite or because life has no higher purpose or embedded design is crass ingratitude. To dream up an omniscient creator and devote our life to endless genuflection seems pointless. And wasteful, too:... Better to embrace Spinoza’s and Einstein’s solution: simply bow one’s head, tip one’s hat to the elegant laws and mystery of nature, and go about the business of living.
• It was not that he had grown wiser: it was only that the removal of distractions—ambition, sexual passion, money, prestige, applause, popularity—offered a purer vision. Wasn’t such detachment the Buddha’s truth? Perhaps so, but he preferred the path of the Greeks: everything in moderation.
• * Nietzsche’s message to us was to live life in such a way that we would be willing to repeat the same life eternally.
• doubts from within: the extraordinary molecular neurobiological discoveries reported with ever-increasing frequency caused even the most experienced therapists to wonder about the relevance of their work.
• * Julius had known patients so competitive that they hid their improvement just because they didn’t want to give the therapist the satisfaction (and the power) of having helped them.
• Freud, Living and Dying, by Max Schur, Freud’s doctor—a graphic account of how Freud’s cigar-spawned cancer gradually devoured his palate, his jaw, and, finally, his life... when Freud finally told him that the pain was so great that it no longer made sense to continue, Schur proved a man of his word and injected a fatal dose of morphine.
• * For centuries Heinrich’s ancestors had guided the Schopenhauer business with great diligence and success. Heinrich’s grandfather once hosted Catherine the Great of Russia and, to ensure her comfort, ordered brandy to be poured over the floors of the guest quarters and then set afire to leave the rooms dry and aromatic.
• Danzig, that venerable Hanseatic city which had long dominated the Baltic trade. But bad times had come for the grand free city. With Prussia menacing in the west and Russia in the east, and with a weakened Poland no longer able to continue guaranteeing Danzig’s sovereignty, Heinrich Schopenhauer had no doubt that Danzig’s days of freedom and trading stability were coming to an end. All of Europe was awash in political and financial turmoil—save England.
• he abruptly left London, carting his protesting wife, now almost six months pregnant, back to Danzig during one of the century’s most severe winters. Years later Johanna described her feelings at being yanked from London: “No one helped me, I had to overcome my grief alone. The man dragged me, in order to cope with his anxiety, halfway across Europe.” <> This, then, was the stormy setting of the genius’s gestation: a loveless marriage, a frightened, protesting mother, an anxious, jealous father, and two arduous trips across a wintry Europe.
• Arthur’s love-bereft childhood had serious implications for his future. Children deprived of a maternal love bond fail to develop the basic trust necessary to love themselves, to believe that others will love them, or to love being alive.
• // If we look at life in its small details, how ridiculous it all seems. It is like a drop of water seen through a micro-scope, a single drop teeming with protozoa. How we laugh as they bustle about so eagerly and struggle with one another. Whether here, or in the little span of human life, this terrible activity produces a comic effect.
• the great German idealist philosophers who followed Kant in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries: Hegel, Schelling, and Fichte? Of these, Fichte’s life and his debut was the most remarkable for he began life as a poor uneducated goose shepherd in Rammenau, a small German village... The villager fetched Johann, who, indeed, repeated the entire lecture verbatim. So impressed was the baron by the gooseherd’s astoundingly retentive mind that he financed Johann’s education
• Fichte assumed he was refused entry because he had no letters of recommendation and decided to write his own in order to gain an audience with Kant. In an extraordinary burst of creative energy he wrote his first manuscript, the renowned Critique of All Revelation, which applied Kant’s views on ethics and duty to the interpretation of religion.
• Mann... wrote a magnificent essay which stated that Arthur Schopenhauer was the author of the volume. Mann then proceeds to describe how, at the age of twenty-three, he first experienced the great joy of reading Schopenhauer. He was not only entranced by the ring of Schopenhauer’s words, which he describes as “so perfectly consistently clear, so rounded, its presentation and language so powerful, so elegant, so unerringly apposite, so passionately brilliant, so magnificently and blithely severe—like never any other in the history of German philosophy,”
• * Johanna Schopenhauer: There she became the dear friend of Goethe and other outstanding men of letters, and authored a dozen best-selling romantic novels, many about women who were forced into unwanted marriages but refused to bear children and continued to long for love.
• // Could we foresee it, there are times when children might seem like innocent prisoners condemned not to death but to life and as yet all too unconscious of what their sentence means.
• // In endless space countless luminous spheres, round each of which some dozen smaller illuminated ones revolve, hot at the core and covered with a cold hard crust on which a mouldy film has produced living and knowing beings—this is…the real, the world.
• That election was the turning point of Julius’s life. So much reinforcement did he receive for his brazenness that he rebuilt his whole identity on the foundation of raw chutzpah.
• Julius, not happy with the pressure the group was applying (he had seen too many members drop out of too many therapy groups because they were ashamed of disappointing the group), made his first intervention, “Strong feedback you’re getting, Gill.
• Bonnie: “That’s fascinating, Philip. I know I keep yearning for my childhood, but I never understood it that way, that childhood feels free and golden because there’s no past to weigh you down.
• Imagine a fifteen-year-old facing such a life-altering decision. Perhaps the ever-pedantic Heinrich was offering existential instruction. Perhaps he was teaching his son that alternatives exclude, that for every yes there must be a no. (Indeed, years later Arthur was to write, “He who would be everything cannot be anything.”) <> Or was Heinrich exposing his son to a foretaste of renunciation, that is, if Arthur could not renounce the pleasure of the journey, how could he expect himself to renounce worldly pleasures and live the impecunious life of a scholar?
• Arthur recorded many impressions in his travel journals written, as his parents required, in the language of the country visited. His linguistic aptitude was prodigious;
• perhaps the verse was a grim reminder of how, all his life, he had embraced the wrong myth: namely, that everything about Julius Hertzfeld—his fortune, stature, glory—was spiraling upward, and that life would always get better and better. Of course, now he realized that the reverse was true—that the couplet had it right—that the golden age came first, that his innocent, kittenly beginnings,
• * The group was more than a clump of people; it had a life of its own, an enduring personality. Though none of the original members (except, of course, he himself) was still in the group, it had a stable persisting self, a core culture (in the jargon, a unique set of “norms”—unwritten rules) that seemed immortal.
• * Philip took that as his cue. “Spinoza was fond of using a Latin phrase, sub specie aeternitatis, meaning ‘from the aspect of eternity.’ He suggested that disturbing quotidian events become less unsettling if they are viewed from the aspect of eternity. I believe that concept may be an underappreciated tool in psychotherapy. ... “I can see you’re trying to offer me something, Philip, and I appreciate that. But right now the idea of taking a cosmic-eye view of life is the wrong flavor of medicine... I was bathing myself in nostalgia. What I’ve not done enough of is to treasure each moment, and that’s the problem with your solution of detachment. I think it faces life through the wrong end of the telescope.” <> “I gotta come in here, Julius,” said Gill, “with an observation: I don’t think there’s much chance you’re going to accept anything that Philip says.”
• * I might even have taken a strong stand against it and insisted that her search for another form of enlightenment was just resistance to change. I’ve changed. Now I feel I need all the help I can get. And I’ve found that participation in some other mode of growth, even flaky stuff, can often open up new areas for our therapeutic work. And I sure hope that will be true for Pam.” <> “It may have been not a flaky but an excellent choice for her,” said Philip. “Schopenhauer felt positive about Eastern meditative practice and its emphasis on mind clearing, on seeing through illusion, and its approach to relieving suffering by teaching the art of letting go of attachments. In fact, he was the first to introduce Eastern thought into Western philosophy.”
• “Remember my version of Boyle’s law,” said Julius. “A small amount of anxiety will expand to fill our whole anxiety cavity. Your anxiety feels just as awful as anxiety in others that comes from more obviously calamitous sources.”
• Others, Kierkegaard and Kafka, for example, were not so fortunate: all their lives they were oppressed by the weight of their fathers’ judgment.
• She was one of the first truly liberated women and was Germany’s first woman to earn her living as a writer. For the next decade Johanna Schopenhauer became a renowned novelist, the Danielle Steel of nineteenth-century Germany, and for decades Arthur Schopenhauer was known only as “Johanna Schopenhauer’s son.”
• Mother's letter: The serious and calm tone of your March 28th letter, flowing from your mind into my mind, woke me up and revealed that you might be on your way to totally missing your vocation! That is why I have to do each and every thing to save you, however possible; I know what it means to live a life repugnant to one’s soul;
• *  “Please note that every feature on Ganesha has a serious meaning, a life instruction. Consider the large elephant head: it tells us to think big. And the large ears? To listen more. The small eyes remind us to focus and to concentrate and the small mouth to talk less.
• Vijay meditated on the image of a flowing river and listened to his mind’s soundless words, anitya, anitya—impermanence. Everything is impermanent, he reminded himself; all of life and all experience glide by as surely and irrevocably as the passing landscape seen through the train window.
• Her letters to him following his expulsion are among the most shocking letters ever written by a mother to a son. <> …I am acquainted with your disposition…you are irritating and unbearable and I consider it most difficult to live with you. All your good qualities are darkened by your super-cleverness and thus rendered useless to the world…you find fault everywhere except in yourself…
• It first surfaced when Arthur, at nineteen, accused his mother of lavish spending, which imperiled the inheritance he was to receive at the age of twenty-one. Johanna bristled, insisted it was well known that she served only bread-and-butter sandwiches at her salons and then excoriated Arthur for living far beyond his means with expensive dining and horseback-riding lessons.
• _Go your way, I have nothing more to do with you…. Leave your address here, but do not write to me, I shall henceforth neither read nor answer any letter from you…. So this is the end…. You have hurt me too much. Live and be as happy as you can be. <> And the end it was. Johanna lived for another twenty-five years, but mother and son were never again to meet.
• // nature conceals the many evils [women] entail, such as endless expenses, the cares of children, refractoriness, obstinacy, growing old and ugly after a few years, deception, cuckolding, whims, crotchets, attacks of hysteria, hell, and the devil. I therefore call marriage a debt that is contracted in youth and paid in old age
• * Bonnie took a deep breath and said, “Preening. You preen. That’s the way it seems to me. I don’t know how many times in the last meeting you had your barrettes out, your hair down, flouncing your hair, running your fingers through it, but it was more times than I can ever remember before. It’s got to be related to Philip’s entrance into the group.”
• “No, not quite right, Stuart. Right facts, wrong tone. You’re making it sound flippant. Like I just want to tell a story for the fun of it. There are a lot of painful memories from my childhood that are now coming up and haunting me. Get the difference?”
• * “Then there was Tony’s feeling that we were using a more complex vocabulary in order to impress Philip. And then Tony commented that Philip was a show-off. And Philip’s sharp response to Tony. And then there was my comment to Gill that he avoided displeasing women so much that he lost his sense of self.
• Well, I wonder if that wasn’t recreated in the group today? She opened the meeting, and pretty quickly the group left her for Rebecca. In other words, the very issue she wanted to talk about may have been portrayed here in living color with all of us playing a part in the pageant.”
• Earl had been her gynecologist ... No man ever knew her so well, comforted her so much, was so exquisitely familiar with her every nook and cranny, nor afforded her more sexual pleasure.
• (No sofas were to be found in English professors’ offices; the department had been so racked by charges of professors preying on their female students that sofas had been banned.)
• * Of all the literary aphorisms that she and John shared and loved, one of her favorites was Nietzsche’s phrase from Zarathustra: “One must have chaos in oneself to give birth to a dancing star.”... Now she understood the source of her ambivalence about Vipassana. Goenka was true to his word. He delivered exactly what he had promised: equanimity, tranquility, or, as he often put it, equipoise. But at what price? If Shakespeare had taken up Vipassana, would Lear or Hamlet have been born?
• Chapman’s couplets: No pen can anything eternal write that is not steeped in the humour of the night
• Had the Buddha gotten it right? Was the price of the remedy not worse than the disease?.. Everywhere she looked, there was renunciation, sacrifice, limitation, and resignation. Whatever happened to life? To joy, expansion, passion, carpe diem? <> Was life so anguished that it should be sacrificed for the sake of equanimity? Perhaps the four noble truths were culture-bound. Perhaps they were truths for 2,500 years ago in a land with overwhelming poverty,
• * In his view the work in therapy consisted of two phases: first interaction, often emotional, and second, understanding that interaction. That’s the way therapy should proceed—an alternating sequence of evocation of emotions and then understanding. So he now attempted to switch the group into the second phase by saying, “Let’s back up and take a dispassionate look at what’s just transpired.”
• Tony said, “Yeah, I agree. Bonnie, you do get emotional when you get a lot of attention. Are you embarrassed by the spotlight?”
• “That’s an observation and an opinion, Stuart,” said Julius. “Can you go to the feelings?” <> “Well, I guess I have some envy about Rebecca’s interest in Philip. I felt that it was odd no one asked Philip how he felt about that—well, that’s not quite a feeling, is it?”
• * “I believe your point, “said Philip with eyes closed in deep concentration, “is that my motivation in voicing observations is not what it seems to be: that it is instead self-serving, a form of preening in which, if I understand you, I attempt to evoke Rebecca’s and others’ interest and admiration. Is that correct?” <> Julius felt on edge. No matter what he did, the focus kept going back to Philip. At least three conflicting desires fought for his attention: first, to protect Philip against too much confrontation, second, to prevent Philip’s impersonality from derailing the intimate discourse, and, third, to cheer Tony on in his efforts to knock Philip on his ass.
• Of a Jewish service: “Two little boys standing next to me made me lose my countenance because at the wide-mouthed roulade with their heads flung back, they always seemed to be yelling at me.” A group of English aristocrats “looked like peasant wenches in disguise.” .. This mocking, irreverent young lad would develop into the bitter, angry man who habitually referred to all humans as “bipeds,” and would agree with Thomas à Kempis, “Every time I went out among men I came back less human.”
• Certain that Caroline Marquet was an opportunistic malingerer, he fought her lawsuit with all his might, employing every possible legal appeal. The bitter court proceedings continued for the next six years before the court ruled against him and ordered him to pay Caroline Marquet sixty talers a year for as long as her injury persisted. (In that era a house servant or cook would have been paid twenty talers annually plus food and board.)
• * Arthur’s answer to his question anticipates by 150 years much of what is to follow in the fields of evolutionary psychology and psychoanalysis. He states that what is really guiding us is not our need but the need of our species. “The true end of the whole love story, though the parties concerned are unaware of it, is that a particular child may be begotten,”
• “An important Nazi, too,” Pam interjected. <> Philip ignored Pam’s comment. “Heidegger spoke of confronting the limiting of possibility. In fact he linked it to the fear of death. Death, he suggested, was the impossibility of further possibility.”
• “Good,” said Stuart. “You know, Philip, I’m beginning to change my mind—I used to think of you as arrogant, but now I’m beginning to think that you’re just not house-broken or people-broken. And that does not require an answer—it’s optional.”
• But Philip? What can one say about a man who models himself after Heidegger and Schopenhauer? Of all philosophers who ever lived, those were the two who were the most abject failures as human beings. What Philip did was unforgivable, predatory, without remorse—”
  Bonnie interrupted, “Hold on, Pam, did you notice that when Julius tried to stop Philip, he absolutely insisted on one more sentence about sex robbing the person of conscience and destroying relationships. I wonder, wasn’t that something about remorse? And wasn’t that directed to you?”
  “He has something to say? Let him say it to me. I don’t want to hear it from Schopenhauer.”
• Thus, one aspect of the porcupine parable is that men of true worth, particularly men of genius, do not require warmth from others. But there is another, darker aspect to the porcupine parable: that our fellow creatures are unpleasant and repulsive and, hence, to be avoided. This misanthropic stance is to be found everywhere in Schopenhauer’s writings
• // “To forget at any time the bad traits of a man’s character is like throwing away hard-earned money. We must protect ourselves from foolish familiarity and foolish friendship.”
• // “The only way to attain superiority in dealing with men is to let it be seen you are independent of them.”
• // “If we really think highly of a person we should conceal it from him like a crime.”
• Pam said, “I’ve got a response, Gill. Maybe not what you’re expecting but something I’ve been holding back, something I wanted to say to you even before I left on my trip. I don’t know how to put it tactfully, Gill, so I’m not going to try—just going to cut loose. Bottom line is that your story doesn’t move me one bit, and, in most ways, you just don’t move me. Even though you say you’re revealing yourself like Rebecca and Stuart did, I don’t experience you as being personal... It’s a trick because it’s not your story, it’s your Aunt Val’s story, and of course everyone is going to jump in and say, ‘But you were just a child, you were thirteen, you were the victim.’.. I hate to say this, but I just didn’t think about you.
• * “If I were to ratchet up a notch or two,” Gill replied without hesitation, “I’d tell the group I was an alcoholic and that I drink myself to unconsciousness every night.”... He was one of those optimistic souls who was greatly destabilized by duplicity; he felt wobbly and needed time to formulate a new vision of Gill. As he mused silently about his own naïveté and the tenuousness of reality, the mood of the group darkened and progressed from incredulousness to stridency.
• Julius always taught students the difference between vertical and horizontal self-disclosure. The group was pressing, as expected, for vertical disclosure—details about the past, including such queries as the scope and duration of his drinking—whereas horizontal disclosure, that is, disclosure about the disclosure, was always far more productive.
• * Philip:  I work very differently from you: I don’t offer an emotional relationship—I’m not there to love my client. Instead I am an intellectual guide. I offer my clients instruction in thinking more clearly and living in accord with reason. Now, perhaps belatedly, I’m beginning to understand what you’re aiming for—a Buber-like I-thou encounter…”
• * Pam jumped in: “Buber’s a German Jewish philosopher, died about fifty years ago, whose work explores the true encounter between two beings—the ‘I-thou,’ fully present, caring relationship—as opposed to the ‘I-it’ encounter that neglects the ‘I-ness’ of the other and uses rather than relates. The idea has come up a lot here—what Philip did to me years ago was to use me as an it.”
• Schopenhauer cites a poem of Lucretius”—“first century B.C. Roman poet,” Philip said in an aside to Tony—“in which one takes pleasure from standing on the seashore and watching others at sea struggle with a terrible storm. ‘It is a joy for us,’ he says, ‘to observe evils from which we are free.’ Is this not one of the powerful forces taking place in a therapy group?”
• You supply all the answers. You’re a counselor yourself, ... “So here comes good ole Pam back, and what does she do? Pulls your cover! Turns out you’ve got a messy past. Real messy. You’re not Mister Clean after all...  You come in here today and say to Julius: what’s your secret life? You want to knock him off his pedestal, level the playing ground.
• Furthermore, we cannot “see” past our processed version of what’s out there; we have no way of knowing what is “really” there—that is, the entity that exists prior to our perceptual and intellectual processing. That primary entity, which Kant called ding an sich (the thing in itself), will and must remain forever unknowable to us.
  Though Schopenhauer agreed that we can never know the “thing in itself,” he believed we can get closer to it than Kant had thought. In his opinion, Kant had overlooked a major source of available information about the perceived (the phenomenal) world: our own bodies! Bodies are material objects... rich knowledge of our bodies—knowledge stemming not from our perceptual and conceptual apparatus but direct knowledge from inside, knowledge stemming from feelings.
  From our bodies we gain knowledge that we cannot conceptualize and communicate because the greater part of our inner lives is unknown to us. It is repressed and not permitted to break into consciousness, because knowing our deeper natures (our cruelty, fear, envy, sexual lust, aggression, self-seeking) would cause us more disturbance than we could bear.
  Sound familiar? Sound like that old Freudian stuff—the unconscious, primitive process, the id, repression, self-deception? Are these not the vital germs, the primordial origins, of the psychoanalytic endeavor?
• And sex? He left no doubt about his belief that sexual feelings played a crucial role in human behavior. Here, again, he was an intrepid pioneer:... And religion? Schopenhauer was the first major philosopher to construct his thought upon an atheistic foundation. He explicitly and vehemently denied the supernatural
• Was it his unhappiness that caused him to conclude that human life was a sorry affair best not to have arisen in the first place? Aware of this conundrum, Arthur often reminded us (and himself) that emotion has the power to obscure and falsify knowledge:
• It’s not easy for me to come up with a revelation as raw and pristine and right out there on the edge as those some of you have shared recently.
• Since then I’ve seen many people in grief become suffused with sexual energy. I’ve spoken with men who’ve had catastrophic coronaries and tell me that they groped female attendants while careening to the ER in an ambulance.
• * “I am so tired of your pseudodementia game here!” Pam, slapping her thigh in exasperation, spit out her words to Philip. “And I’m pissed at your refusing to give me a name! This referring to me as ‘someone in the group’ is insulting and imbecilic.”... “Let’s try gratitude for taking you and your thoughtless and insensitive question seriously. Let’s try respect for keeping his I-thou promise to you. Or how about sorrow for what he went through in the past. Or fascination or even identification with his unruly sexual feelings. Or admiration for his willingness to work with you, with all of us, despite his cancer. And that’s just for starters.” Pam raised her voice: “How could you not have feelings?”
• Julius waited and wondered in which direction to guide the group. There were many possibilities. Pam’s rage and judgmentalism were on the table. And what about the other men, Tony and Stuart? Where were they? And the competitiveness between Pam and Rebecca was still on the table. Or should the group deal with the unfinished business with Bonnie and her mocking statement? Or perhaps focus more on the outburst from Pam to Philip? He knew it was best to be patient; it would be a mistake to push too fast.
• * // Life can be compared to a piece of embroidered material of which, everyone in the first half of his time, comes to see the top side, but in the second half, the reverse side. The latter is not so beautiful, but is more instructive because it enables one to see how the threads are connected together.
• He had no particular purpose other than simply to bask for a few minutes more in the embers of the group session.
• Two hundred eager students crammed into Hegel’s course, whereas only five came to hear Schopenhauer describe himself as an avenger who had come to liberate post-Kantian philosophy from the empty paradoxes and the corrupting and obscure language of contemporary philosophy. It was no secret that Schopenhauer’s target was Hegel and Hegel’s predecessor, Fichte
• * “that it falls into place better if you think of the ship and the journey not as representing death but what we might call the authentic life. In other words, we live more authentically if we keep focused on the fundamental fact of sheer being, the miracle of existence itself. If we focus on “being,” then we won’t get so caught up in the diversions of life, that is, the material objects on the island, that we lose sight of existence itself.”... Heidegger called it falling or being absorbed in the everydayness of life... “Like Pam,” Philip continued, “I believe the parable warns us against attachment and urges us to stay attuned to the miracle of being—not to worry about how things are but to be in a state of wonderment that things are—that things exist at all.”
• Julius turned to face Philip. “Your mode of offering me counsel in the course of a lecture was off-putting—so indirect and so public. And so unexpected because we had just spent an hour in private face-to-face talk in which you seemed utterly indifferent to my condition.
• * Pam. “I had a bellyful of talk about the relinquishment of all attachments including the inane idea that we can sever our attachment to our personal ego. I ended up with strong feelings that it was all so life-negating. And that parable Philip handed out—what’s the message? I mean, what kind of voyage, what kind of life, is it if you are so focused on the departure that you can’t enjoy your surroundings and can’t enjoy other people? And that’s what I see in you, Philip.” Pam turned to address him directly. “Your solution to your problems is a pseudosolution; it’s no solution at all—it’s something else—it’s a relinquishment of life.
• * The 1848 rebellion, which swept over Germany as well as the rest of Europe, terrified him. When soldiers entered his building to gain a vantage point from which to fire on the rebellious populace in the street, he offered them his opera glasses to increase the accuracy of their rifle fire.
• a competition sponsored by the Royal Danish Society for Learning met a different fate. Though the argument of his essay was excellent and though it was the only essay submitted, the judges refused to award him the prize because of his intemperate remarks about Hegel. The judges commented, “We cannot pass over in silence the fact that several outstanding philosophers of the modern age are referred to in so improper a manner as to cause serious and just offense.”
• Sometimes when thinking about Pam and Philip, he was visited by the Talmudic phrase “to redeem one person is to save the whole world.” The importance of redeeming their relationship soon loomed large.
• he was the first philosopher to look at impulses and feelings from the inside, and for the rest of his career he wrote extensively about interior human concerns: sex, love, death, dreams, suffering, religion, suicide, relations with others, vanity, self-esteem. More than any other philosopher, he addressed those dark impulses deep within that we cannot bear to know and, hence, must repress.”
• Schopenhauer two centuries ago understood the underlying reality: the sheer awesome power of the sex drive. It’s the most fundamental force within us—the will to live, to reproduce
• Schopenhauer made me aware that we are doomed to turn endlessly on the wheel of will: we desire something, we acquire it, we enjoy a brief moment of satiation, which rapidly fades into boredom, which then, without fail, is followed by the next ‘I want.’ There is no exit by way of appeasing desire—one has to leap off the wheel completely.
• And Philip’s comment that when he read Schopenhauer he felt entirely understood for the first time felt like a slap in the face. What am I, thought Julius, chopped liver?
• Schopenhauer’s belief in his genius served also to provide him with a perduring sense of life meaning: throughout his life he regarded himself as a missionary of truth to the human race.
• He urged us to live and experience life now rather than live for the “hope” of some future good. Two generations later Nietzsche would take up this call. He considered hope our greatest scourge and pilloried Plato, Socrates, and Christianity for focusing our attention away from the only life that we have and toward some future illusory world.
• “Groups,” said Julius, “are like people: they don’t want to die. Perhaps your relationship with Tony was a convoluted way to keep it alive. All therapy groups try to continue, to have regular reunions—but they rarely do so. Like I’ve said many times here, the group is not life; it’s a dress rehearsal for life. We’ve all got to find a way to transfer what we learn here to our life in the real world.
  Philip, showing uncharacteristic signs of agitation. “You honor them when it suits you. When I discuss honoring my past social contract with you, you revile me. Yet you break the rules of the group, you play secret games, you use Tony capriciously.” <> “Who are you to speak of contracts?” Pam shot back loudly. “What about the contract between teacher and student?”
• “Unforgivable,” said Philip, “keeps the responsibility outside of oneself, whereas unforgiving places the responsibility on one’s own refusal to forgive.”
  Tony nodded. “The difference between taking the responsibility for what you do or blaming it on someone else?”
  “Precisely,” said Philip, “and, as I’ve heard Julius say, therapy begins when blame ends and responsibility emerges.”
• Gill persisted, “There’s something else, though: do you forgive yourself for using Tony?”
  “Using Tony?” said Pam. “I used Tony? What are you talking about?”
  “Seems like your whole relationship was one thing—and a far more important thing—to him than to you. Seems like you weren’t relating so much to Tony but to others, perhaps even to Philip, through Tony.”
• //The really proper address between one man and another should be, instead of Sir, Monsieur,…my fellow sufferer. However strange this may sound, it accords with the facts, puts the other man in the most correct light, and reminds us of that most necessary thing, tolerance, patience, forbearance, and love of one’s neighbor, which everyone needs and each of us therefore owes to another... We should not be indignant with others for these vices simply because they do not appear in us at the moment.
• After Parerga and Paralipomena: townspeople greeted him on his walks, and pet stores had a run on poodles similar to Schopenhauer’s.
• *  When the eminent sculptress Elisabeth Ney visited Frankfurt for four weeks to do a bust of him, Arthur purred, “She works all day at my place.
• “Good stuff,” said Tony. “They were really duking it out. But with padded gloves.” <> “Right, better than silent glares and hidden daggers,” said Gill.
• “I mean,” said Tony, “you said that insulting Pam was the last thing in the world you wanted to do. Yet that was exactly what you did, wasn’t it?”... “So,” Tony continued, sounding like a triumphant attorney in cross-examination, “you need to get your intentions and your behavior on the same page. You need to get them congruent—do I have the word right?” Tony looked at Julius who nodded his head. “And that’s why you should be in therapy. Congruence is what therapy is all about.”
• you’ve been in seclusion for years, and I toss you into this high-powered group. Of course that’s going to feel uncomfortable. But what I’m really referring to is the overt problem, the sexual compulsion—and perhaps that’s gone. You’re older, been through a lot, maybe you’ve entered the land of gonadal tranquillity. Nice place, good sunny climate. I’ve dwelled there comfortably for many years.” <> “I would say,” Tony added, “that Schopenhauer has cured you, but now you need to be saved from the Schopenhauer cure.”
• an amazing passage in Erik Erikson’s biography of Martin Luther. It goes something like this: ‘Luther elevated his own neurosis to that of a universal patient-hood and then tried to solve for the world what he could not solve for himself.’ I believe that Schopenhauer, like Luther, seriously fell into this error and that you’ve followed his lead.” <> “Perhaps,” responded Philip in a conciliatory fashion, “neurosis is a social construct, and we may need a different kind of therapy and a different kind of philosophy for different temperaments—one approach for those who are replenished by closeness to others and another approach for those who choose the life of the mind.
• “I think your view of Buddhism misses something. I’ve attended Buddhist retreats where the focus has been directed outwards—on loving kindness and connectivity—not on solitude. A good Buddhist can be active, in the world, even politically active—all in the service of loving others.” <> “So it’s becoming clearer,” said Julius, “that your selectivity error involves human relationships.
• Philip’s voice grew deadly serious. “Remember what I did for a job when we first met? I was an exterminator—a clever chemist who invented ways to kill insects, or to render them infertile, by using their own hormones. How’s that for irony? The killer with the hormone gun.”
• “I’m a philosopher,” said Philip, “with a doctorate from Columbia, and Tony, my coleader, is a counseling student.”
  “A student? I don’t get it. How will you two operate here?” shot back Jason.
  “Well,” answered Tony, “Philip will bring in helpful ideas from his knowledge of philosophy, and me, well, I’m here to learn and to pitch in any way I can—I’m more of an expert in emotional accessibility. Right, partner?”

Barbara Comyns

It never rained, yet everything remained fresh and green, even in London. The summers used to be like that when I was a child, and in the winters there was always deep snow or hard frost. The weather has grown all half-hearted now; soon we won’t be able to tell the change in the seasons except by the fall of the leaf, like it says in the Holy Bible
* we went there to ask the priest to put the banns up. We dared not ring the bell at first, we felt too shy. Charles said they would ask us in and give us a glass of sherry and some funeral biscuits.
how we would spend the ten pounds Charles had just received for painting a screen with Victorian women creeping about. He painted it for one of his Aunt Emma’s friends, and he was offended afterwards because it was put in the maid’s bedroom
We thought she was dying, but her sister explained she was a medium and governed by a Chinese spirit called Mr Hi Wu. Then Mr Hi Wu spoke to us in very broken English and told us we were so lucky to be offered such a beautiful flat for only twenty-five shillings a week
Because the room was rather dark we painted the walls a kind of stippled yellow; lots of black hairs from the brush got mixed with the paint, but they looked as if they were meant to be there almost... I had hoped they would give us a set of real silver teaspoons when we bought the wedding-ring, but the jeweller we went to wouldn’t, so our spoons came from Woolworths, too.
* She even liked my newts, and sometimes when we went to dinner there I took Great Warty in my pocket; he didn’t mind being carried about, and while I had dinner I gave him a swim in the water jug. On this visit I had no newts in my pocket and had the feeling I was going to be most unpopular,
* Her name was Eva. She was like a hard, shiny, rather pretty but horrid beetle, a spoilt, nagging kind of beetle... I felt if only we could wait until the morning, but Eva was the kind of woman who would never wait till the morning.
Great Warty looked at me from his glass house, so I took him out and let him walk up my arm until he fell in the bed, then I made tunnels out of the bedclothes for him to walk slowly through and he looked extra prehistoric.
* The church was next door to my house, so I ran in and perched a beret on my head, because there is another law about that; I put Great Warty in my pocket as a kind of page and ran out of the house... Paul said he would give me away. We had arranged for rather a handsome actor we knew to do this, but as he seemed to be enjoying himself so much we let him do the giving away
There was the man who owned the studio where I worked, and some women I sometimes did typing for, also the place was quite stiff with old landladies; some had big hats all covered in feathers. Charles owed rent to quite a lot of them.
* Then I forgot all about the people in the church because lovely little noises came, kind of singing, chirping noises. I saw all up in the roof there were masses of little birds, all singing and chirping in the most delightful manner. I felt so glad we hadn’t paid extra for the beastly organ and hoped so much we would make a success of our marriage after the birds being so nice about it.
It was quite a lot of money they wanted — about seventeen-and-six, I believe, but we borrowed it from James. Of course, we need not have paid, because they couldn’t unmarry us if we hadn’t. I expect people do that sometimes, but it would be rather unpleasant.
I was so thrilled by my wedding-ring I didn’t notice the guests much. I found a quiet corner where I could look at my left hand in all sorts of positions.
* In the middle of washing the supper things, Charles would say ‘Don’t move’, and I would have to keep quite still, with my hands in the water, until he finished drawing me, or I might be preparing the supper and everything would get all held up. He painted me in the bath once and I have never been so clean before or since.
also she had heard poor people ate heaps of sheep’s heads and she went on to ask if I ever cooked them. I said I would rather be dead than cook or eat a sheep’s head; I’d seen them in butchers’ shops with awful eyes and bits of wool sticking to their skulls. After that helpful hints for the poor were forgotten, because Charles told her about our visit to Paul.
I had a kind of idea if you controlled your mind and said ‘I won’t have any babies’ very hard, they most likely wouldn’t come. I thought that was what was meant by birth-control, but by this time I knew that idea was quite wrong.
I was fortunate and managed to escape being examined by the students, but on later visits I had quite a lot of this. I noticed the women students were not so gentle as the men and usually hurt rather, but perhaps this is not general.
Charles hated the idea of moving and suggested we kept the baby in the cupboard, but after reading all those magazines I knew it wasn’t a good idea, and made the reluctant Charles go flat-hunting.
the other the landlady had said, ‘I never allow pets. Take the creature away at once.’ He did get Great Warty in by pretending he was a goldfish, but she insisted on him taking Ambassador away at once
* James was teaching me how to knit baby clothes, but I didn’t get on very well when he wasn’t there, but I did manage two vests that resembled badly made porridge.
She was quite a generous woman really, and kept wanting to give me things for the baby, nice things, but Charles said I wasn’t to accept them, because Eva would not approve. He had always been brought up to hate his father’s second wife

This book does not seem to be growing very large although I have got to Chapter Nine. I think this is partly because there isn’t any conversation. I could just fill pages like this:
‘I am sure it is true,’ said Phyllida.
‘I cannot agree with you,’ answered Norman...
I know this will never be a real book that business men in trains will read, the kind of business men that wear stiff hats with curly brims and little breathing holes let in the side.

* As soon as Charles started to paint he forgot about the cold and money worries. That is how artists should be, but I was only a commercial artist, so I went on worrying. In any case, there was no time for me to paint, because there was all the work of the flat, and shopping and cooking to do when I returned home in the evening.
By this time I was growing rather large, not only in the tummy, but behind as well. This made me extremely sad when I saw myself in shop windows — luckily we had not got any long mirrors at home.
She had always had so much herself, she just couldn’t understand how difficult it is to be poor and how the merest necessity becomes a luxury. She thought the lack of essentials in the flat was due to the fact that I was a bad housekeeper and did not know how civilised people lived.
I quickly washed and dressed before another pain could get me, but my clothes became all messy and I had to dress all over again because I didn’t want to be disgraced at the hospital. In spite of several attacks of pain I managed to dress, do my hair and even make up my face, but it was rather smudged because my hands shook so much.
* Charles said he had borrowed some money to send telegrams to his relations saying we had a boy of six ounces. I told him it was six pounds not ounces, but he said a few pounds either way wouldn’t make any difference. But Charles’s telegrams caused a huge sensation, and his family was most disappointed when in due course they discovered we had had quite a normal baby.
The day started at five, when they used to bring the babies in for their first feed, and ended at eleven, for their last meal. Although that sounds a long day, it really passed very quickly.
I noticed when he opened the food cupboard there was a pink blancmange I had made before I went away, but it had gone green now. I tried not to notice any of these things, because I didn’t want Charles to think I was all womanly and fussy and how peaceful it was without me. <> During the next few days people kept calling to see the baby. I think they must have thought I had had a mermaid instead of a baby — the smell of fish was so strong.
Charles still disliked him, but in spite of this made some drawings of us together, so I hoped eventually he would get used to him. At the moment I felt I had most unreasonably brought some awful animal home, and that I was in disgrace for not taking it back to the shop where it came from.
All the same I did not apply for the free milk, because I was afraid they would take the baby away and put it in a home on the grounds of its parents having no visible means of support.
John was one of these nervy people who hate knowing the truth. Sometimes when he returned in the evening he would say to his wife, ‘Has anything awful happened while I’ve been away? If it has, please don’t tell me about it.’
* The aunt wrote me a long letter saying she would gladly see to all the arrangements and I must give up my baby for Charles’s sake. I could earn much more if I was not tied to a baby and I must not get lazy. It was not fair to expect Charles at his age to support a wife and child. The letter was such a shock. I’d saved it up till I’d finished breakfast, because I so seldom received a letter and thought it might be something nice.
Then the autumn came and I got quite a lot of employment in Art Schools and Sandro had grown so pretty some advertising studios photographed him for advertisements for patent foods which he had never had.
* He was eating something, and when I looked closer it was the birthday cake; it was all cut and spoilt and Sandro had never seen it. The painting was of the beautiful church in Church Row, Old Hampstead. I’d always loved that church, but now I felt I hated it, and for months every time I passed that way, I wouldn’t look at it. <> After the birthday disappointment I became more and more discontented with our way of living.
Charles had got in such a rut he hardly knew he was alive. He never sold any paintings, because no one ever saw them. A few weeks after they were painted he reversed the canvas and painted on the other side, then if there was no money to buy a new canvas, he would scrape the last painting off and start a new one. All this seemed to have no beginning or end.
For poor people the most difficult thing to provide is floor covering. Everything is so expensive, even lino. I have often wished people could put rushes or sand on their floor in these days.
* But the room Charles was using for a studio seemed wonderful after the pokey little attics we had been living in, and having a large room to paint in seemed to improve his pictures, and they did improve almost straight away. Perhaps it was because he had never been able to walk back from his work and see it from a distance before.
This sculptor (he was called Bumble Blunderbore) was an enormous man, rather like Chesterton to look at,
We went back to Abbey Road to pick up Sandro and a few clothes, and headed for Maidenhead.
His wife was away and he was the kind of man who thinks he can cook. Men are often like that. They say they can cook and it turns out to be an omelette, scrambled egg or sausages. They never can cook jam or Christmas pudding and proper things like that (I don’t, of course, include chefs when I say this, I mean real men).
Kuanyin, I believe they are called. That is how he lived — selling Chinese works of art to art dealers. They were most impressive, all those calm figures, but one couldn’t breathe very well, there were so many.
but now I know from experience a lot of men listen like that, and it doesn’t mean a thing; they are most likely thinking up a new way of getting out of paying their income-tax.
* I went home and told Charles all she had said, and he looked quite terrified and said he wouldn’t give up his painting for beastly babies and ran out of the house. I felt all frightened, as if I’d done something wicked. I did wish it was the men sometimes that had babies. I would be awfully kind to Charles if he had one, although I would hate to see him looking all fat.
I forgot about being shy and kissed him back. Then I knew I had never loved Charles. I felt I was being carried away in a great, fierce, misty flood. <> Some time later, when I realised I had been unfaithful, I didn’t feel guilty or sad; I just felt awfully happy I had had this experience, which if I had remained a ‘good wife’ I would have missed, although, of course, I wouldn’t have known what I was missing.
I gathered Charles had mentioned how frightful Sandro’s hair was, all tattered and torn like that, and his uncle had said, ‘There are enough long-haired people in your family,’ and had given him a shilling to get his hair cut.
a Great-Aunt Nelly had died and left the little money she had to her nieces. It was years since I’d been in touch with her; in fact, I had forgotten she existed. Now she didn’t exist any more.
I could tell he was a little annoyed. Just coming on him unexpectedly, I couldn’t help noticing how old he looked and rather yellow, too. I suddenly thought perhaps it was just as well we hadn’t gone to Jamaica; he would have got older and more yellow there, maybe.
I was feeling scared to death, because I was going to have another baby and it was Peregrine’s. It had been inside me for about two months now. At first, in all the excitement of the money and everything, I hadn’t noticed anything wrong. I’d forgotten all about periods, but when another month passed I realised what had happened. Why should all these babies pick on me, and always at the most inconvenient times?
We had had some unhappy times together in our present flat and thought it would be best to start again somewhere. I couldn’t help feeling, ‘If I’m going to leave Charles in about seven months, it’s hardly worth moving now,’ but I was getting rather cowardly and kept hoping something would happen, some miracle, and Charles and I wouldn’t have to part at all.
who really was a great woman. She was quite six feet tall and very beautiful in a totem-pole kind of way, with huge staring eyes, like head-lamps.
* When he noticed me he jumped off the dustbin and picked up a large pole, and before I could stop him, he said, ‘See stars, Mummy,’ and gave me a great crack on the head with it. I almost fainted with the shock, and when he saw how much he had hurt me, he was most distressed. When I had recovered a little he pointed, with a dirty, trembling finger, to a picture in his comic paper of a monkey hitting a man on the head and large stars shooting out.
After all, I did not tell Charles that I’d a feeling the baby was coming that night, because he never seemed to believe babies were coming until they were practically there
Sandro was most interested in the new baby. He used to ask if she was a princess. He was rather jealous of Charles drawing her, but when he painted her he stood sadly by and eventually said, ‘I tell you what’s wrong with this house, no one paints me.’
I told Peregrine all my money had gone, but he said ‘What a pity!’ and nothing else. Perhaps he hadn’t got any himself. I began to feel frightened and depressed, and thought, ‘This is my punishment for being an adulteress.’ Then I remembered I was even poorer before I was one, so perhaps it was a punishment for something I had forgotten.
I don’t feel like a father and have never wanted to be one. I may be inhuman and selfish, but I must be, life is so short, and the young part of our lives is going so quickly. I must be free to enjoy it and not be weighted down by all these responsibilities.’ <> I said, ‘Did you often go to Peter Pan when you were a child?’
so I said, ‘All right, Charles. I see how you feel. I’m not the waddy, suffocating kind of woman you think me, and, of course, we will part. I’ll make my plans.
God must have heard, because two days later I had a relapse and was put in a kind of cage, which they put in my bed and filled with electric light bulbs all burning away. It was so hot. I lay all burning and waiting to die. I took no notice of the kind nurse, or Charles when he came. I couldn’t bear to see him, because he belonged to the frightening life I couldn’t face any more.
Then I thought, ‘Now I’m getting dead and I’ll have to meet God and see Him every day for ever, ever more.’ I could imagine Him a slightly dense, angry old man, with woolly hair, wearing a striped blanket, and I seemed to remember reading in the Bible He had feet made of brass, and I thought of heaven as a comfortless kind of place, where you had no bed or fire, no sun, books, or food; you’d never see the leaves blowing about on the trees, everything would be still
* I dreaded going to the farm, but when I arrived there it was very much better than I expected. Things one dreads usually are: it’s only the things we look forward to that go all wrong.
I longed to be queen of my own home with all my treasures around me. I would look out of the window at all the beauty, but it wasn’t what I wanted.
* Her husband, who was in the Air Force, was being sent there. Sometimes he would fly low over the house and make a dreadful din, and when we ran outside to see what was happening, he would drop a message tied to a stone for Rose. People in the village complained a lot about this, and eventually Mr Redhead put a stop to it because the noise made one of the cows slip a calf before her time.
Rose had retired to her room, but soon she caused great consternation by coming downstairs wearing a ski-ing suit and a large sun hat covered by a thick veil. She said she was going to inspect the bees to see if they had survived the winter, and if they had, tell them about her wedding. Everyone followed her and tried to make her leave the bees alone, but she took no notice and went down the garden to the hives.
I never thought I could learn to do a thing like that, and I loved it so much. I think the afternoons skating must have been the happiest I had ever had. The feel of the cold air on my face as I glided round and the exciting sound of our skates cutting the ice — suddenly a startled blackbird would fly in a great hurry from a bush, scattering hoar-frost and giving little cries. In the distance there was always someone chopping wood, which made us feel warmer somehow.
* This morning it was so friendly and pleased to see me and ran after a ball of paper I threw for it. When I went outside to feed the baby chickens that lived on the lawn I found one dead, so I gave it to Foxy to eat and he crunched it up in a minute. I was usually most distressed when the chickens died, but now I was quite glad and hoped some more would die soon. <> We kept the secret of our fox for about a week,
That evening as I was cooking a rabbit-pie, Mr Redhead came into the kitchen. I pushed it back into the oven with great damage to the pastry and slammed the oven door, which is a thing good cooks never do even when they are just about to get the sack.
He painted me lying on the grass in the sun, which suited me very well, because I loved to be in the sun and hoped the village people couldn’t see me unless they came and peered right over the hedge, but forgot they could see Rollo standing in front of his easel, and after a time there was quite a row of heads wearing various frightful hats bobbing over the hedge.
May bought some baby wool and tried to interest her in knitting small garments, but she said as she had all the bother of making the baby someone else could make the clothes. <> There was one thing that cast rather a blight on my marriage. Rollo didn’t want Foxy to live with us for some reason.
When we came to the place where they reared pheasants I put him down, and I put a large piece of the Redheads’ joint beside him, but he wasn’t interested; he kept skipping about and sniffing the birds and quite forgot me, so I went away and felt too sad to cry. I felt guilty like the father in Hansel and Gretel.
I said it would be nice to have a goldfish pond, and Rollo went into the house quite suddenly, and I felt lonely and worried in case I’d said something to distress him. Perhaps his mother had been drowned in a goldfish pond at some time. When he returned he told me he had been telephoning a landscape gardener, and when we came home there would be a goldfish pond complete with fish,
It was the first time we had been parted and I missed him so much. The house and all my treasures seemed nothing without him, and in our bedroom in the wardrobe all his suits were waiting for him. Everything seemed to be still and waiting for his return; even the bathwater seemed to come out of the taps all hushed.

Daniel Kehlmann's historical novel as translated by Ross Benjamin does deserve to be on everyone's Best of the Year list.

• All the buildings in Vienna are gray now, except for a few that are dark brown. The whole city seems covered with dirt. In winter the sky is stony and low, in summer yellowishly damp. Even that was different once. If you’re old enough, you know that in this city of garbage, coal smoke, and dog shit, even the weather is no longer what it was.
• reads from his card: “Franz Wilzek became a director only late in life. Before that he was the assistant of G. W. Pabst.” <> Why is he suddenly talking about me in the third person?
• “He had his own theory of film editing. That a cut must always be based on a movement, creating an unbroken flow from the first shot to the last.
• I look at the screen. See myself looking off somewhere—of course, the monitor isn’t the camera, you have to look into the camera to see yourself looking out from the monitor, except then you obviously can’t see yourself because you’re looking into the camera, not at the monitor.
• * I still see them: black-and-white people in a concert hall. From high above I’m looking down on them, as if I were flying, a crystal chandelier is shining brightly, I’m sitting next to the camera on the arm of a long crane. They’re all facing forward, because they’re not allowed to look up.
• “He was an extra. In the concert hall… In hall seven, in the studio in Barrandov, when you were shooting The Molander Case.”... “My father survived,” he says. “In case you want to know.”
• “Great,” said Pabst. He knew you could never go wrong using this word with Americans, just as it was always safe to compliment their shoes.
• It was a terrible script, he protested, a completely dreadful melodrama. He couldn’t do it.
  The two men looked at him for a few seconds with expressionless faces.
  “But there’s a circus in the movie,” Jake then said.
  “And immigrants,” said Bob.
• Back when he had filmed The Joyless Street, everyone had told him that you couldn’t make a movie out of mere everyday life. German films were about dragons and vampires and ghosts and romantic shadows, not about girls driven by hunger to sell their bodies, not about inflation, not about desperate people on a Vienna street
• * Here there was no such thing as no, Lubitsch had explained to him; even if you wanted to tell someone he wasn’t right, you first had to tell him how right he was.
• Garbo: her memory had never been good; usually while filming, someone stood next to the camera holding a card with her lines written in large letters. That was why she had developed a certain restlessly searching gaze, which appeared very mysterious on-screen.
• Excessive beauty was hard to bear, it burned something in the people around it, it was like a curse. Sometimes it seemed to her that she would soon have to hide from the world. Then she would do nothing but sit by the window and look at her birds.
• * even worse than the cold had been her stage fright, her nerves, her discomfort with her thin, freezing body. And that was when he came up with the idea of having the cameraman crank faster whenever her face was in view. It was a real magic trick: each of those slow-motion close-ups showed a play of expressions so enigmatic and impenetrably ambiguous that you couldn’t look away. She had it done the same way in her subsequent films.
• Once life has broken you, you’ll give up, but things haven’t reached that point. He had explained this to her with a seriousness she had never known people making moving pictures could possess. Movies—until recently that had been spectacle and eye-rolling, cowboys with pistols, duels between knights, ghosts in the night, and clowns fleeing from policemen. But when he spoke, it suddenly sounded like theater, like a novel, like true art.
• In the past, situations like this had agitated her greatly. She could imagine what it must be like to be God or an archangel and constantly feel the prayers rising from the depths. Each one by itself could be fulfilled, but precisely because there were so many, there was nothing to do but ignore them all.
• “That life here is very good if you learn the game. We escaped hell, we ought to be rejoicing all day long. But instead we feel sorry for ourselves because we have to make westerns, even though we’re allergic to horses.”... Hollywood isn’t them anymore, it’s us! Siodmak, Preminger, Lubitsch, Joe May, me.
• “She’s trying to get a visa to England. No chance. Only Nobel Prize winners and trained butlers get one. And Sigmund Freud.”
• Pabst seemed even more agitated than he was. Krämer turned away and quickly walked off. He heard Pabst saying something else, but he didn’t stop. The message had been delivered, the mission fulfilled.
• She began to scold him—though in the way Americans did, that is, softly, with a fixed smile and clenched jaw,
• Louise Brooks: “Sure, she’s the biggest star in the world, and I’m just your last hope. If anything else had worked, you wouldn’t have called me, Mr. Pabst.
• Then they usually say, ‘What am I rich for anyway? I don’t have to put up with this!’ Soon only well-off men came along, but they found me too expensive; to live in the way to which I’ve grown accustomed, you have to be really rich. And then came men who not only had no money, but also wanted my money. What was I supposed to do? They were the best looking and were funny, and I had the most splendid time, and then my money was gone too!”
• * secondly, I have no interest in the great man and his great art. I’m not a muse. I’m Lulu. That’s why you gave me the role. You understood me completely, and then you wanted me to be someone else?”
• It’s always hard for men to bear when it only happens once. The first time is the confirmation. The first time, that’s: ‘It’s happening, she’s really saying yes, I’m not dreaming, it’s happening.’ But then it’s over before you believe it yourself. That’s why it has to happen again. Only the second time is really the first.
• Do learn some English. Your beautiful French is no help to you here.” She leaned forward and took his right hand between both of hers. “Just look at you, with the face of a lovesick horse... That’s what I mean, how can anyone live with a man who stares at you like that? Also, you’re on the fat side. You should see what the others look like, I can’t help it, I just… need men to be more attractive.”
• * he would never make a film on a glacier again... Then he was back there, tied to the steep slope, wind whipping his face while Fräulein Riefenstahl attempted to be an actress. At least he had managed to teach her a little. Listen inward, keep your hands steady; the bigger the emotion, the less you do.
• * Lang was preparing the most expensive film of all time. He had given Pabst a personal tour through the artificial city: huge buildings towered over them and were enlarged even further by mirrors. With his somewhat silly monocle clenched in his eye, Lang had spoken of effects such as no one had ever seen, cars of the future, trains on absurdly high bridges, crowd scenes with thousands of people, a machine-person who turned into a woman... it would be a long time before anyone could rival him. <> Except for mountains. No matter how high Lang built, he would not achieve anything higher than the Alps. So Pabst had no choice but to go to the glacier.
• “It will be a great success,” said Lang. “I saw the actors hanging there, on their ropes in the rock face, and I thought: God, am I glad I didn’t have to shoot that. Unlike you, I’m not immune to vertigo! Outside the studio I’m completely useless.”
  “Metropolis is the best film ever made,” said Pabst.
  “I know,” said Lang.
  Both were silent.
• Director was, all in all, a strange profession. One was an artist, but created nothing, instead directing those who created something, arranging the work of others who, viewed in the cold light of day, were more capable than oneself. That was why so much was required before one could even start to work: writers, artists, composers needed only paper, at most paint, sculptors needed marble and a few tools, but a director needed a hundred people and a studio and machines and a great deal of electricity. All this had to be paid for, so he always also needed someone to entrust him with a lot of money.
• As he fled, the camera followed him down the street, so that while watching you had to hold on to something to avoid being swept away and losing your balance.
• while his wife played the accordion and images they had recorded on their homemade cameras jerked overhead. It had made a deep impression on Pabst, he never forgot the fighting kangaroos, never the men with their twirling canes and never the name Molander.
• Back then, almost everyone who wasn’t in service themselves had servants, because the country was so large and the poverty even greater; they were paid almost nothing. His mother suffered from having only one maid.
• He had been surprised amid the bellowing of the French soldiers, who stood lined up with their rifles upright, as he went from one ship to the other, surprised as he spent the next weeks huddled below deck without seeing the sun, surprised as he disembarked in chains on a prison island near Brest, and still utterly bewildered as he moved into his camp barracks. <> Only later did he realize how lucky he had been. While the bone mills were grinding at the front, while his schoolmates were being slaughtered by a killing machinery the likes of which the world had never seen, for him it was all already over.
• * The best thing about a lost world war: afterward there were few people and many opportunities. Wherever you looked, someone was missing, and wherever you wanted to go, there was room.
• * the close-ups had astonished Pabst: you saw faces from a proximity that at first seemed preposterous. Only people you kissed did you usually see so close. And the painted backgrounds looked real and unreal at the same time, like something out of the strangest dreams.
• * It was actually the camera operator who determined everything. Operators came alone and kept their secrets, each had his own camera, and among themselves they were enemies, who didn’t help each other or exchange ideas. The actors, on the other hand, didn’t take filming seriously, they came from theater rehearsal
• * Some rules evolved: if someone went off to the right, he had to enter from the left in the next shot, or else he appeared to be going back, and if two people were talking to each other, neither of them should look into the camera, but one to the right and the other to the left past it; if they did it differently, it didn’t seem like they were looking at each other. And if something happened, and then immediately something else, the first event always seemed to cause the second: show a dog barking, followed immediately by a man falling down dead, and the dog killed the man with its yapping.
• The film, assembled in this way, was copied four or five times in a small workshop on the outskirts of the city, no copy looking like the other because each had a different color, brightness, and contrast... Film was a new and disorderly medium, but that didn’t bother anyone—after all, the whole world lay in pieces. Only the future was bright.
• All three were in transit and looked around with the typically absent-minded glances of refugees: you are never quite where you happen to find yourself; all that surrounds you seems like a sloppily constructed set, not worth remembering.
• The conversation came to a halt. It was one of those moments when everything seems to have been said, when it suddenly feels like the present has been used up and nothing is left but a threatening future... And they knew that they, who barely knew each other and whom chance had thrown together, would never again come together in this group; some of them would be lucky, and the others would perish. <> And so it came to pass.
• on the train: they become empty. The words lose their meaning. <> And the landscape does something similar. The hills and forests and castles and clouds and donkey carts are there, but everything seems flat, translucent to the yellowish-gray boredom of the train
• When Papa is asked about his films, he usually mentions The Joyless Street and Pandora’s Box. Sometimes also The Threepenny Opera. But never, really never has Jakob heard him mention The Mistress of Atlantis.
• Papa is silent for a moment, then he says: “You can see that I’m coming back.” <> Apparently that was the right answer. The policeman gives the passports back. “Heil Hitler,” he says, pulling the door shut and moving on.
• but one form was missing a stamp,” he says. “The border guard said he could turn a blind eye, but not for free; how much money did I have on me? So I pulled out the five hundred reichsmarks I had hidden behind my belt, and the border guard said carrying cash was forbidden and he had to confiscate it. Then he said that unfortunately the stamp was still missing, so what could be done about that? And when I told him that now I had nothing left, he laughed and said: ‘Then please get off!’ ” <> The man with the mustache keeps wiping his face and shaking his head as if he himself were more surprised than horrified... “after all the humiliations and persecutions, even after they took my house away from me and beat me up in the street and threw my two children out of school—after all that I still didn’t expect something like this!”
• even the story of this man, whose presence bothers Jakob greatly because it just isn’t right for adults to be so confused and upset, becomes monotonous over the rattling and rattling and rattling of the wheels.
• he thinks about the many schools he has attended in recent years. There’s the Paris school with the serious teacher, Mademoiselle Grecque, in her strangely becoming sorrow.
• the windows, whose panes were so old that they had flowed downward under the pressure of the years and were now several centimeters thick along the bottom edge and thin as fingernails along the top.
• Since the previous year, when Austria had ceased to exist, Erika Pabst’s meals were only rarely warm... When they had sent the telegram to Erika’s son—COME QUICKLY STOP SERIOUS ILLNESS STOP HELP NEEDED STOP—and Erika had said that she wasn’t ill at all, Liesl had replied that it wasn’t about that; it was about finally getting her son to come back.
• And what a joy it was, a dialect-heavy voice said from the doorway, that the gracious master and mistress were here, such a great, great joy! Jerzabek was wearing his party uniform again.
• What a joy, repeated Jerzabek, and if one had only heard his voice and not seen his face and his smile made up of yellow teeth, one might have believed he really meant it... “Coming back and playing the great lord as if nothing has happened. But a lot has happened, and you don’t take that tone with Local Group Leader Jerzabek, or you’ll quickly find yourself somewhere else.”
• Trude shot up, turned around, and opened the door. There, smiling rosy-cheeked under her headscarf, in the smock apron she always wore, stood Liesl Jerzabek. <> She had, she said, been listening to the master and mistress.
• * And again his mind played a trick on him. Because when he saw Karl Jerzabek looking up at him, it seemed to him, quite naturally and out of old habit, as if he were at work and filming. It was a perfect shot: straight down with a short focal length and side lighting, so that the perspective shrunk the figure and seemingly increased the height at which Pabst was standing.
• And then, as he stared down in horror, he suddenly felt like he was in a film after all. Because what was happening couldn’t really be happening: Jerzabek bent down and raised the lever that locked the wheels. Then he grabbed the ladder and began to rock it back and forth.
• * drawing: The trick is to look at a thing as if it weren’t a thing and as if you didn’t know what it was. Then it turns into a collection of surfaces, some dark, others light, a pattern of shadow and light, or actually not even that, but just white and black, and when you put that on the sheet of paper, the thing appears there again as if by magic: a jug, a leaf, a hand, a dog’s head. <> The same goes for colors: Look closely, and the world recedes, becoming a mixture in which nothing is clean and everything runs together.
• * If you really look, you will notice that shadows have not only the colors of the background on which they fall, but at the same time those of the body that casts them. Or you will notice that the world is full of reflections: almost every object holds the world that surrounds it on its surface, points of light, outlines, and glimmers—all images contain other images. To recognize this, you must in a sense become stupid. You must stop thinking.
• the vast blue with patches of white that once, before you forgot all names to be able to paint, was the sky.
• “Farmhouses are the citadels of our people” is the assignment. Their art teacher is Herr Kail, he wears a party uniform
• he has to hurry—this morning, for example, the boy on his left just took his history notebook and copied from it, then threw it back on his desk without even saying thank you; and as if that weren’t bad enough, Herr Reib praised him in Latin class for a good translation, a very unfortunate combination of circumstances. He really has to do something.
• He also knows that Krauber will stand up for little red-haired Frummel whenever someone says something disparaging about his village of Altenberg, because these farm kids are predictable. What he doesn’t know, however, is how he can hurt the big, broad Hans Krauber in a quick, effective manner that is safe for himself.
• In reality, however, he does it to make the stone disappear inconspicuously into his pants pocket. He doesn’t drop it on the ground, because that would be seen, but no one pays attention when your hand slips into your pocket—that looks perfectly natural. The magician Dai Vernon, a kind and elegant gentleman, once explained it to him...: The oldest rule of the art of deception: a large movement makes a small movement invisible.
• So he puts his arm around Krauber, exactly as he has observed in the schoolyard. He pats him appreciatively on the chest. The gesture feels idiotic to him, but if it works for others, why not for him? Softly he asks whether this will stay between them. Whether he can count on it. Because only cowards go out and snitch.
• The girls are more dangerous than his classmates, because they’re not bound by the snares of fairness. But lately they’ve been leaving him alone. They no longer ambush him, they now only rarely lock him in the closet, they no longer beat him up, and thankfully, they’ve now stopped hiding needles in his food. He has managed to become boring to them.
• The Jerzabeks are now up in the living quarters, and the Pabsts are downstairs in the caretaker’s apartment, which Papa hardly ever leaves... And so Mama has to take care of everything. She washes the clothes in a tub of hot water on the stove, and not only theirs but also the Jerzabeks’.
• I certainly understand the wish to live inconspicuously, lathe biosas, the beautiful ideal of Epicurus,
• * “But Shakespeare is English.”
  “On paper. He’s German at heart. All our theaters put on his plays. If you weren’t hiding from the world like a mole, you would have noticed that by now. Our best actors embody his characters so truthfully, so… profoundly that it should make England blush with shame.”
  “Can a country blush?”
  Krämer’s throat tightened. He felt hot. Once again he had said something that wouldn’t pass muster among educated people, once again the wrong word, the wrong nuance, the wrong allusion. Once again he had proved that he didn’t belong.
• “You’re not under arrest,” Krämer repeated, looking Pabst in the face and smiling. Unless, of course, he thought, Hungermann had joined the party in the meantime. Then he would be powerless, then he could do nothing.
  * “It’s bad,” Käutner said softly as they sat in his living room, “and then again not so bad. Ufa has remained surprisingly apolitical, they let everyone do their work, even banned screenwriters continue to write under pseudonyms. Of course, you have to be extremely careful not to say anything wrong, even more so since the beginning of the war. But once you get used to it and know the rules, you feel almost free.”
• I then found her a fake husband myself: Rolf, a Swedish colleague. I wire them money every month; Göring approved the arrangement. So everyone benefits: I can shoot, Maria is safe, Rolf earns well.”
  Pabst asked where she was living, Maria.
  “Well, with Rolf,” said Rühmann. “Where else? He’s her husband, after all!”
• * It didn’t help that he knew Berlin well, the streets seemed to have been treacherously rearranged; something about the way they met, formed corners, and curved was now so different and new that Pabst wondered whether he had somehow ended up in a distorted mirror world. Over in America he had so often dreamed of suddenly finding himself in this Berlin ruled by brutes, and now that he was there, it simply refused to seem real... while the street down below rolled away very straight into an endless distance, a chimney up above thrust itself into an oversize moon. This was how films had looked fifteen years earlier, and strangely enough this thought soothed him so much that he was able to walk on
• * When the corridor finally ended and another corridor turned off at a right angle, not to the left, but now to the right, which made no geometric sense, Pabst was suddenly almost certain that they had at some point turned around and gone back and were in the first corridor again—a trick he himself had used repeatedly in long tracking shots.
• He reached the desk, where the Minister stood up to make room, and in a blur the two men became one man, who sat down and said, “I’m really delighted.” <> “Likewise,” said Pabst. Since he had already said it, it came more easily to him now. It didn’t matter anymore.
• “You misjudge the situation. I’m not arguing. If you had just the slightest idea what could be in store for you, you wouldn’t even try. It is what it is, and I say what it is, and all you say here is: I’m sorry! And you say: Now I know better! And: I have recognized my mistakes. And I want to do my part to build a new Germany. Well?”
• Do you know how to reach me?”
  Pabst stopped. “How?”
  “You could call the ministry. You could write a letter. You could stand on the street, any street, and speak. Or you switch on the light at night and say out loud whatever you have to say. That works too. I’ll find out.”
• Maybe the war would be over by then, and if not, sooner or later there would be an opportunity to flee to Switzerland. And Mama would go to a sanatorium. All he’d had to do was make a hand gesture and say a few words. It wasn’t just producers who could delay a film forever.
• Of course Trude hadn’t wanted to come there. But these were the wives of influential men, it could be vitally important to know them. “I asked Henny to invite you to her book club,” Wilhelm had said, “I asked her very emphatically!”
• So this was what she had become—a jealous wife. The reliable butt of the joke in hundreds of comedies. She, who had once seemed capable of anything, who had written plays... —she, who had turned heads on the street.. she, who at nineteen had married a rich and kind man, who had left that man only a few years later because he had become too boring for her—she, of all people
• * “Absolutely,” said Henny Porten. “But is that all, Trude?”
  “I like how the music critic writes his hymn to the violinist… his name is Fritz, isn’t it? Well, how when he writes the hymn while still at the concert, Fritz’s mother happens to be sitting next to him. The old lady looks over his shoulder and sees that her son is going to be famous and is so happy. That’s… a bit silly. But if you will, it’s also moving.”
  “Yes, it’s moving,” said Heidrun Hippler. “And it’s truthful too, and powerful. And not silly at all.”
  “Alfred Karrasch,” said Else Buchholz, “is Heidrun’s favorite author.”
• “You must know, dear Gertrude,” said Heidrun Hippler, “when the novel was published, book reviews hadn’t been banned yet.
• “I still stand by it,” Maria Lotropf said softly. “I prefer Wave, Colorful Pennant. Perhaps the most beautiful literary work the Curonian Spit has produced.” <> “You’re just an apolitical sort.”
• “Where did you get these beautiful porcelain cups?” asked Gritt Borger. “If I’m not mistaken, they weren’t here last time.” <> “An antique shop on Feldmochinger Strasse,” said Else Buchholz. “A whole set. Eighty-five reichsmarks.”
• “But what do you think of the last sentence?” asked Gritt Borger. <> Trude leaned forward, took a piece of cake, shoved it into her mouth, and gesticulated helplessly to show that she couldn’t speak at the moment.


• “A circle like this is based on agreement,” said Else Buchholz. “On harmony. Where that is not the case… Dear Gritt, with all due respect, maybe we’ll carry on without you for a while.”
• nod in agreement when he remarked that under the emperor of India there had still been good dumplings on the moon. Dumplings made of clouds, he added, just like the cotton candy in the Prater, and she didn’t contradict him. This is how we all talk here, thought the professor; having already discarded the world and its reason, we dream and fabricate and ramble and chat as if nothing concerned us anymore.
• sanitorium: “Accept that you are here,” he then said. “Believe me, it’s a great mercy. I had to do a great deal to be allowed here. Outside they would have come for me long ago. But no one is looking here.
• Griffith and Lang could compose images better than he could, and without a doubt Reinhardt was superior in working with actors, but no one could edit better. Ideally, a film was a single uninterrupted movement; every shot had to be connected with the next.
• * The greatest director in the Reich doesn’t need any help, but she is prepared to listen to consultants when it comes to the question of what it is the actors should do with their faces. That’s a difference between feature films and sports or party rallies—the faces count!”
  “Yes, faces,” said Pabst. “Film would be so much easier without them. Or hands, hands are tricky too…”
  “Unless you’re saluting!”
• There was only one solution, he thought. You had to move the camera, following the dancer’s steps in short tracking shots, pointing it at the spectators as if seeing them from her perspective, and then you had to cut it in such a way that viewers mainly saw this very audience and details of the dancer only for seconds at a time: her hair flying back, her hand with the castanets, sometimes very briefly her face. If you set this exactly to the rhythm of the music, each cut a tenth of a second after the beat—never right on it!—it could work.
• So he spoke about the nature of music and the nature of dance. He quoted Schopenhauer. He made a few jokes and told an anecdote about an argument between two lighting technicians that had happened during the filming of Don Quixote in France, but he claimed it had been during the filming of Westfront.
  “Look at the camera. Energy emanates from it. Warmth. Power. You’re missing something and can feel it, there’s an emptiness inside you. What you see is not just a beautiful woman. You see everything you don’t have. Everything that makes life inadequate. You feel everything that is missing in life as you look at the camera—not into it, look just past it. The camera stands for everything you lack.”
• “When we made Palu,” he heard her telling the group, “he showed me everything. Listen inward, he said. Be completely still, Leni, be silent, listen to your soul. And only then, not before, not before, not before, do you speak! I’ve never forgotten.”
• I also know how much we directors depend on good actors.”
  “Sarah Bernhardt,” said Benitz, “supposedly once said to a director—”
  “Benitz, I don’t like it when people interrupt me. We depend, I was about to say, on actors who don’t need everything explained to them. For whom one word is enough, or even”—she looked Pabst in the face with a skull-like smile—“a glance?”
  Benitz had turned ashen.
  “But it’s important to remember,” said Pabst, “that acting, as we understand it today—”
  “Is it because I’m a woman? That no one is letting me finish today?”
• “To make him look evil!”
  “I know… a few evil people. And they’re not usually sharply lit from below so you can tell.”
  “You don’t say. What kind of evil people do you know, Georg?”
  Let it go, he thought, remember that she can put you in a camp. And this time it worked, and he listened to himself and simply said: “If there’s
  a light source down there, that is, if you spotlight him from below, then you have to do the same to yourself. You’re in the same room.”
  “I don’t have to do anything. Don’t forget why you’re here.”
  “And why is that?”
  “Dialogue direction. Pronunciation. Speech tempo.”
• Pabst rubbed his aching temples. “I think it’s fine as is.”
  “Are you sure we shouldn’t do another take?”
  “Well, all right, then let’s do another one.”
  “But what would you like me to do differently, Georg?”
  “Nothing. All very good.” He hesitated. “Maybe a little slower with: ‘It’s true, sir.’ ”
  “Why is that?”
  “No?”
  “I think it was perfect.”
• her voice never sounded natural, she never emphasized a word differently, and not a single strand of her full, shiny black hair ever fell differently than before.
  “One more time?” she asked. Pabst couldn’t remember how many takes it had been. He shrugged and shouted “Roll film!” and he saw that the clapperboard already had the number 11 on it. And then the number 16. And now a 21.
  “But that’s enough for now,” she said.
• “When you imagine,” said Wilzek. “On top of everything else. That they then also have to stand there and stare at the boss. Lustfully. That they’re ordered to do that. On top of everything else.”
  “Everything else?”
  “Poor bastards.”
  Pabst put the glass down on the floor, but his hand was suddenly shaking so badly that it fell over.
  “Where did you think we got the extras? You’ve never heard of Maxglan?”...
  “There’s nothing we can do. We didn’t make it happen. We can’t keep it from happening. It has nothing to do with us.”
• * When you can’t do something and at the same time have no choice but to do it, there’s only one solution: have someone else do it. Someone who looks like you and who uses your body, but who has no difficulty shooting two bullets into the head of a small screaming deer. Someone who can raise the rifle, squint one eye, breathe out fully, then hold his breath, and who doesn’t care at all that the moaning thing in front of him is breathing and suffering terrible pain and is so terrified that its fear is visible—it looks like a dark cloud, the fear.
• Jakob realized that killing has something in common with painting—both work best when you forget that things are more than just color and shadow. Both are best done when you think away the inside.
• Jakob considers for a moment whether he has to hit him now, but he decides that it’s not strictly necessary: it’s common among Hitler Youth members to speak disdainfully about parents. <> “Maybe she wasn’t completely sober either,” Jakob says, to be safe, because if he mocks his mother himself, he doesn’t have to start a fight just because someone else does. “We have to find the caretaker.”
• “What’s a Saint Vitus dance?” asks Jakob.
  “Dancing like you’re possessed by the devil,” says Papa. “First people watch, then they join in. They can’t help themselves.”
  “That could be seen as an allusion,” says Wilzek.
  “I didn’t hear that,” says Krämer.
• There we had an English writer, very famous over there, huge print runs, very superficial writing of course, no depth, far from true art, but a clever man... ‘But what am I supposed to do?’ he asks me. ‘I can’t write German books about weight lifters and horses.’
• “And you’re paying for his stay at the Adlon all this time?” asks Heuser. <> “No, that’s the best part! He’s earned so much with his plays! We froze the royalties immediately in thirty-three, and since then they’ve been yielding good interest at the Berliner Volksbank. The whole thing pays for itself.” Krämer flushes with pride and pleasure.
• Krauss. He closes his eyes, listening within, and says in a suddenly changed voice: “Only once did love soften the Ruler of Shadows, and still at the threshold, sternly, he called back his gift.” He falls silent and makes small swinging motions with his right hand, apparently following verses that he doesn’t speak but only thinks. <> And then something strange happens: Jakob feels as if he too hears the verses—not as words, but as soft, sad music. But how is it possible for a person who can’t form a thought or finish a sentence to achieve such a thing solely with his facial expression and a movement of his hand? You can’t look anywhere else but at his soundlessly murmuring lips.  (Friedrich Schiller's poem "Nänie,")
• * Gestapo: Jakob watches them intently. He wants to remember them so that he can draw them, they’re both so lean and tall and healthy, and their faces are so blank, as if nothing at all were looking out of their eyes. He feels furtive envy. To be free of thoughts, while healthy and very strong. How wonderful that must feel.
• “Lottery win for Kurt Heuser,” says Basler. <> Jakob sees Papa breathe a sigh of relief. Tension also falls away from Krauss, and Wilzek’s hunched shoulders sink back down.
• And just like that the two of them are gone, having taken Heuser with them. Jakob rubs his eyes. He feels something strange happening: even now, although he usually never forgets a face, he can no longer remember what they looked like. He can no longer recall their voices either,
• “I don’t know anything about this man,” says Jakob. “But there must be a reason. Otherwise they wouldn’t have come.”
  His father silently folds his glasses and puts them into his breast pocket.
  “They’re the best men in the Reich. They know what they’re doing.”
• * “You’re right,” he finally said. “But only half right. Because all this will pass. But art remains.”
  “Even if that’s the case. Even if it remains, the… art. Doesn’t it remain soiled? Doesn’t it remain bloody and dirty?”
  Yes, this once her words struck him deeply. He looked hurt, battered, downright wounded.


• “Maybe it’s not so important what one wants. The important thing is to make art under the circumstances one finds oneself in. These are my circumstances now. And you know, they’re not that bad! I have good scripts and high budgets and the best actors. The Comedians is my best film in a long time, Paracelsus will be better than anything Lang is making over there.

------

• The honor would be all mine, I assured him, but nevertheless, etc.
  For its part the ministry, in the person of Krämer, gave me to understand that it would consider the entire evening less than a success if I were not among the attendees, etc., etc.
  Things grew rather desperately polite before Krämer saw fit to remind me, in an apologetic tone, “But you are a prisoner of war.”
• though the language barrier constituted, in our case, a sort of no-man’s-land where pleasantries went to die, and yet his courtesy was never anything but elaborate.
  One detested the Germans, their thuggery, their pogroms, their murderous lust for power, yet one could not fail to admire their attention to detail.
• “Ah, Sparta, yes—but we have seen such improvements in equipment.”
  “To make the pictures move, I suppose, one had to turn the amphora.”
  “By hand.”
  “And every one a peplum!”
  Feeble jokes, but we were joking, and she smiled.
• “We always have film premieres here. Or in Prague. No blackouts, no bombs.” <> “But, my dear fellow, sooner or later, as any writer or director can tell you, everybody bombs.”
• * “Critics? We have no critics! Criticism is a Jewish genre that no one needs. Instead we have art appreciation! Look.” He stopped a tall, bespectacled man and said: “May I introduce you? Guido Merwetz. Once a feared critic. Now one of our subtlest describers.”
• In fact, I should dearly have loved to storm out of the place, with great strides and billowing coattails, and vanished into the vast, black night. But that would have required me to squeeze past all the knees of the gentlemen and ladies in my row, considerably diminishing the effect of my tempestuous exit. And then, where in that vast, black night would I have gone?
• He reached for her hand, apparently to deliver a kiss upon it, but she had already raised this very hand in a German salute, to which he instantly responded in kind, except that by then she had already lowered her arm again to receive his kiss; but the tomfoolery ceased when she left her hand down, he lowered his, grasped hers, and with a smile of deathly self-control, brought his lips to hover just above her alabaster skin.
• It’s always a pleasure to see professionals at work. No matter the setting or circumstances, be it plumbers, bus drivers, waiters, or a director—when people excel at their craft, it gives one the feeling that the world isn’t such a vale of tears after all.
• There was nothing joyful about it, neither mirth nor freedom: forward and back, to the right and to the left they jumped, their bodies twitching and writhing, seemingly unleashed, yet in perfect unison and with desperate faces. No one deviated in the slightest. <> Paracelsus entered, a large sword in his hand. He watched them dance, with a diagnostic eye, then he gave a mighty shout.
• * “Indeed, I do!” She held her cigarette to the small, trembling flame shielded by my hand. “Only, I have seen enough of masterpieces. If there were one less in the world, I shouldn’t miss a thing.”
• “ ‘Nuns fret not at their pensive citadels, and hermits are contented with their rooms,’ ” I said, smiling weakly. “ ‘And bumblebees inside their foxglove bells.’ And… that’s not exactly it, but—you know what I mean.”... “ ‘The prison into which we doom Ourselves no prison is.’ https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/52299/nuns-fret-not-at-their-convents-narrow-room
• The camera rose weightlessly, looking down on the crowd—this is precisely what all art speaks of: the world is longing. Human life is unfulfilled. The deepest expression of this is music... The music knew all this, and the camera knew it too, as it circled the characters in constant motion; it was a gaze from nowhere, from beyond time, on all this helpless, desperate striving... in reality it spoke of how nothing was ever enough, how everything always fell short. How so much would never be ours.
• “Only if the hall isn’t big enough! One-third too big looks like a mistake, five times too big, that’s style!”
• Had they stayed in France, they would now be just as much under German rule! If he were in the United States, Jakob would now be in the American army and equally in danger, perhaps in Europe, perhaps in the Pacific. The time was out of joint, everywhere, and you had to find a way to do your work.
• * Pabst had the walls put at a slant and the paintings redone:... He had the shadows of the family seated at the table painted: sharp, elongated, and with thin limbs, they stretched across the floor and up the slanted wall. “If the actors sit still and only move their mouths, no one will see that the shadows are painted on!
• * “But don’t you find it strange, Pabst, that we’re making a movie like this in the middle of the apocalypse? ... “Times are always strange. Art is always out of place. Always unnecessary when it’s made. And later, when you look back, it’s the only thing that mattered.”
• He believes every word was written on Wegener’s note. In the next shot, after the lighting had been reset and the camera repositioned, her note read: She’s telling the truth, and his: He believes nothing.
• “The special fund is for morale-boosting films!” <> “If there ever was one, The Molander Case is a morale-boosting film!”
• Extras: There they were, motionless because they had been ordered to be, silent because they were not allowed to speak, row after row, some there in the room and some beyond the mirrors, trying to sit upright because they had to, but many could not, and some were coughing, which they were not allowed to do but could not suppress either. The smell was terrible.
• “No one,” he said softly. “Not a single person. Will be harmed because of us. No one has been… The film must be finished.” <> Franz shook his head. He wanted to reply, explain, say something, but all he could muster was the word: “No!” And again: “No!” And: “Not this.”
• next to him a woman of indeterminate age wearing a silk headscarf, probably to cover a shaved head. Here too the costume people had done what was necessary; ... There was no time for a lunch break. This pace was possible only because everything had been meticulously planned, because Pabst had mastered his craft so well, and because none of the extras ever went outside or asked for water or food.
• Dr. Sämann turned his head. He had recognized Franz long ago. He smiled as he had once done when he stood by Franz’s bed and placed his cool hand on his forehead. With feigned bafflement he shrugged.
• “If we don’t finish editing Molander, it was all for nothing.” Pabst stopped and looked at Franz through his reflective glasses. “Everything!”
  “You mean, the extras? Even that was for nothing?”
  “Those weren’t extras, those were soldiers.”
• So now Franz sat at the rewinder, in front of him the counter, with large film reels to his right and left, cranking meter by meter, cutting, splicing. No wrong cut could be made on the negative; each mistake would have cost a frame, making for a jerky transition.
• * Pabst had become so attuned to film editing that it seemed to him he could continue out here, as if everything he saw were up for manipulation. It struck him as odd that he couldn’t simply shorten the long way along the river on that street... then already the moment when they triumphantly crossed the bridge into the city; so much useless time, so much empty trudging, it could be done better!
• Where the man was pointing, there was a staircase. It seemed to Pabst as if it hadn’t been there just before, but that was impossible; such major continuity errors didn’t occur.
• * At first he did not understand the meaning of what he saw. He did not understand that the decision about the kind of story had been made; he also did not yet understand that he was now condemned to that future he had just thought he could escape, a future of narrow limits and meager circumstances, a future of small and dispensable movies. He understood only that the two army rucksacks, which looked exactly the same and exactly like all other army rucksacks, had been switched
• a young lead actor of preposterously oily professionalism.
• “They’re all polite again now,” said David Bass. “And why not! You must have seen Pabst’s Trial, his big statement against anti-Semitism.
• Then he had practically stopped speaking. He had sat for hours in the library, in his old armchair, not smoking because there was no more tobacco, holding the empty cigarette case with Griffith’s initials, and replaying that film, which he could still see before him, frame by frame, scene by scene.
• As long as Pabst was in the room, she could negotiate on his behalf, could accept or decline things; no one minded if he didn’t talk.
• He still knew The Molander Case by heart, but individual scenes were already fading, and he could recall the faces of some supporting characters only with difficulty.
• As she did every time she descended, Trude had to push back an attack of cold panic. When writing, she had imagined the cave as a deep, symbolically rich place, but not as something that felt so oppressively real. Walking on the muddy floor, through the smell of mold and moss, and seeing the mineral formations sprouting from the walls like a stony premonition of life, while at the same time realizing that the mountain above consisted of a hundred million tons of heavy stone, she found it all far from symbolic.
• the assistant director, Ilse Schrewitz: The small, gray-haired woman had been treated with a strange awkwardness by everyone ever since it had become known that she had hidden a Jewish family in her cellar throughout the entire war. It wasn’t that anyone held it against her. It was just that no one knew what to make of the fact that she was a completely different person than anyone had suspected.
• Buffalo, drawn with only a few strokes, their legs and horns clearly recognizable. Among them ran little men with spears. Closer inspection revealed how artfully each of them was executed; one threw his spear, another held an ax over his head. From above, where the sky must have been, yellowish lines fell, snow or rain or falling stars... And there, in front of the charging animals, surrounded by other men bowing before him, falling to their knees, holding out offerings to him, stood a twisted creature. Its back was crooked, one shoulder higher than the other. Where its head should have been were a few red spots, above which hovered two staring eyes. Whatever it was, it didn’t seem to belong among these people; it looked as if it came from far away or an even more ancient time. A being from eons past, a brutal and evil creature they tried to appease with offerings.
  “Do you recognize him?” asked Pabst.
  “Of course.”
  “Did he speak such a strong dialect even back then?”
  “He’s still in prison, isn’t he?”
  “He’ll be out soon. ..
  “Well then,” said Trude. With mild horror she looked at the small picture, painted so many thousands of years ago, that mockingly returned her gaze. “It wasn’t really Hitler who ruled. Not Goebbels or Göring or any of them. It was always him.”
• “Our tanks had an average lifespan of four days.”
• It’s all in his films. The anger and the ambition and the cunning and the violence. When he was directing, he always knew what people had to do. But he himself never really knew what he was supposed to do.”
• Jakob not painting anymore: “A soul is quite sensitive. Today I couldn’t act as… freely and lightly in movies as I used to, because of the things that happened to me. Life bends everyone, but it breaks some brutally and early. You and me, for example.”
• “My father got it from Griffith.”... “Griffith. I knew him well. Take it back, I don’t want it.” She fills the glass again and pushes it toward him... does he realize that he has left the cigarette case with her after all.

Chloe Dalton's quiet and watchful book is just right for her beloved subject matter.

• The trees were frosted white with windblown snowflakes, while icy cobwebs hung in the hedgerows like frozen cat’s cradles. A lone kestrel brooded on the garden fence, spectral in the dim light. Lean foxes patrolled the landscape, stalking gully and thicket, their boldness heightened by hunger. A patch of bloody, clotted down was all that remained of a plump wood pigeon, as if a bag of feathers had been upended upon the ground.
• Its fur was dark brown, thick and choppy, and grew in delicate curls along its spine. Long, pale guard hairs and whiskers stood out from its body and glowed in the weak sun, creating a corona of light around its rump and muzzle... Its forepaws were pressed tightly together, fringed in fur the colour of bone and overlapping as if for comfort. Its jet-black eyes were encircled with a thick, uneven band of creamy fur. High on its forehead was a distinct white mark that stood out like a minute dribble of paint.
• * Its mouth was a tiny sooty line, situated on the underside of its rounded little head and curved down at both corners as if the leveret were already slightly disappointed by life. Its ebony eyes had the faintly milky, purple sheen of many newborn creatures.
• When the centrifugal forces of the pandemic flung me home to the countryside and pinned me there, relief and awareness of my good fortune warred inside me with a deep restlessness and anxiety about the future.
• I, on the other hand, am squeamish about blood and unsettled by illness and life’s other raw moments, preferring – or hoping – to keep such pain at a distance.
• The sky is low, the wind forceful. Water runs underground, surfacing with spouts and gurgles into narrow streams that wind through low-hanging stands of alder, willow and birch; urgent in winter, unhurried in summer.
• * each strand of its fur seemed to be marked in alternating shades of dark and light. This baffled me until I learnt that so-called agouti colouring – varying bands of pigmentation on an individual hair – is an essential feature of camouflage in hares and many other wild animals
• Unlike a dog’s, the soles of the leveret’s paws were furry: soft and warm to the touch and always immaculate. One ancient Greek name for a hare translates as ‘shaggy foot’,
• Perhaps to compensate for hours spent immobile in this way, and to loosen its joints and muscles, the leveret stretched itself carefully and comprehensively... For four or five seconds at a time the leveret’s body would be as straight as an arrow – with its ears held erect and alert – while it lengthened every muscle from its neck to its ankles.
• The leveret’s eyes also began to change colour, from their original inky black. Hares, it seemed, weren’t born with the amber eyes they are known for. Over the course of a month, a pale outer ring developed around the black pupil, turning gradually into a striking, glowing iris.
• In his poem ‘Epitaph on a Hare’, written in mourning after Tiney’s death, I finally came across what I was looking for: On twigs of hawthorn he regaled, / On pippins’ russet peel; / And, when his juicy salads failed, / Sliced carrot pleased him well.
• * it loved an occasional raspberry. The sticky, squishy sound of a hare eating a raspberry has to be heard to be believed. Since hares don’t use their paws to help them eat, in the way that dogs or parrots grip their food at times to gain a better purchase, it would pick up the thimble-shaped cone in its mouth by one edge and slowly mash its jaws, drawing it in bead by bead while the raspberry bobbed up and down in front of its nose.
• Hares, I learnt, are ‘crepuscular’ animals – creatures of the twilight. In other words, they are most active during dawn and dusk as well as the nocturnal hours, which help to mask them from predators.
• * Rabbits and hares belong to the same ‘order’ of animals, Lagomorpha. They share certain characteristics, such as perforated latticework structures in their skulls designed to protect their brains against the jarring effects of jumping. But hares are generally twice the size of rabbits – in fact, the Greek name for rabbit translates into English as ‘half hare’.
• ‘jackass rabbit’, the name apparently bestowed upon hares in America by early European settlers. Mark Twain was at least partly responsible for popularising this unflattering designation... "He is just like any other rabbit, except that he is from one third to twice as large, has longer legs in proportion to his size, and has the most preposterous ears that ever were mounted on any creature but a jackass."
• It would jump in the air from a standing start: springing up on its back legs, then stretching out at full length so that its head and haunches were higher than its stomach – its body concave – and its ears upright and exuberant. In mid-flight, it would invert the position, drawing its hind legs up around its ears with its forepaws pointed down to the earth, like a frog jumping, but seemingly hanging in the air. It would land, spin off in a different direction and repeat the leap again and again
• The hare can move at thirty-seven of its own body lengths a second, more than the twenty-three body lengths per second achieved by a vigorous cheetah.
• Hares, like other prey animals, can suffer capture myopathy – a form of fatal trauma in wild animals as a result of being caught and handled. They have been known to hurl themselves at cage bars and break their limbs or necks, dying in their desperate desire to escape unnatural confinement.
• * Hares, I learnt, engage in ‘cryptic behaviour’, an ecological strategy to avoid predators by means of disguise and camouflage. It has been suggested that the word ‘camouflage’ comes from the French camouflet, referring to an ancient type of smoke-producing military mine used to disorient an enemy, an apt metaphor for the purpose of the leveret’s intriguing colouring. Its stomach – the part of its body closest to the ground – was white, while its back was brown. This ‘counter-shading’, designed to confuse the eye of a predator and buy the hare time to flee if necessary, is a tactic used by sharks for the opposite purpose: to conceal their approach from a victim until it is too late. It distorts the shadow, rendering dark the part of the body that would normally be illuminated by the sun
• * taboos against eating the meat of hares, going back to the Old Testament, in which the hare is deemed ‘unclean’ for its habit of eating its droppings, known as ‘refection’, which struck me as a little unfair, since both rabbits and hares have to reabsorb their first, soft green pellets in order to extract fully the nourishment within the grass
• More than 2,000 years ago, Herodotus described how the hare ‘alone of all creatures . . . conceives in pregnancy’, so that while some of a hare’s young ‘are still forming in the womb others are already being chased and killed’. Aristotle... What both authors were recording is a process known as ‘superfetation’, by which hares are capable of carrying two litters of leverets simultaneously.
• As it ate, its ears would swivel across different angles, monitoring sounds as its jaws moved continuously. When lying flat on its stomach in the sun, it would often hold them upright as if to compensate for its lowered defences. As the light shone through the firm but tender flesh, a web of three main veins could be clearly seen running down the length of each ear, joined by a filigree of finer capillaries.
• * On wet days it would take time for the leveret to lick itself dry before it could lounge. Arriving in the house after a rain shower, it would spin on its back legs and leap away, flicking drops of water from its paws. If it was really soaking wet, it would balance on its back feet and spin to left and right, around 180 degrees, so fast it was reduced to a blur, spraying muddy water across the room to spatter on the pale walls, which were soon uniformly pocked with dark flecks to the height of a standing hare.
• * washing: It would then attend to its ears, pulling each one down firmly with a forepaw, one at a time, to trap and press it to its mouth, so it could clean inside the ear with its tongue. When the ear was released, it did not automatically spring upright, but would dangle down until the leveret chose to flick it skywards again. ... It would then drop to all fours and use a hind paw to scratch vigorously inside each ear – half closing each eye protectively as its claws came perilously close – before sitting back on its haunches, spreading the furry toes on its back paws like a catcher’s mitt, and cleaning between them. When the toes were fully splayed, the arch created on the sole of the paw was so broad that the whole of the leveret’s wide muzzle fit snugly into it.
• I discovered that far from resenting these inconveniences, I loved having a reason to change my habits. <> The leveret’s preoccupations influenced me in other, more subtle ways. As its gaze travelled further, so did mine, drawing my mind, and increasingly my feet, outdoors.
• I felt a new spirit of attentiveness to nature, no less wonderful for being entirely unoriginal, for as old as it is as a human experience, it was new to me.
• * the amount of space they use and need in which to search for food, to mate, rear young and find safety – not unlike humans. <> A hare’s home range averages between 21 and 190 hectares – or between roughly 30 and 300 football pitches in size, a huge area relative to the size of the animal. Many hares cover as much as fifteen to twenty kilometres (9–12 miles) of ground at night to forage.
• It dawned on me that by raising the leveret in my home, the building was part – if not the centre – of its home range, and that it was possible that it associated the house with food and refuge. It might also explain the leveret’s sensitivity to changes in the house.
• Whereas I had been impervious to well-intentioned advice from friends, the leveret worked upon my character soundlessly and wordlessly, easing some of the nervous tension and impatience that I realised I had been living with as a result of a life constantly on the move and on call for others.
• * Maintained over years, this steady, watchful, guarded attitude had become a way of life for me – one in which I constantly looked out for pitfalls, anticipated threats coming over the horizon, and readied myself to move and adapt at a moment’s notice and melt from the picture, not unlike the hare. Was it possible, I considered, that I had blended too much into the background of my own life, like a hare in the hedgerow, blurring my own identity in the process, without the benefit of the hare’s serenity?
• The seasons changed, February returned, and at one year old the leveret passed imperceptibly into adulthood.
• It is now believed to usually involve a female fending off a male. There are two types of fights: ‘distance fights’, in which only the paws of each hare touch, and ‘breast fights’, in which the hares will strike at one another’s chest and face... Courtship fights can last several days, and it is the male hare’s repeated touching of the body of the female that stimulates ovulation. The leveret’s early athleticism in the garden took on a new significance, as a form of preparation for this type of demand upon its body.
• I set up cameras at discreet points, taping over any lights they had in order to avoid interfering with the hare’s eyesight, and used these to alert my mother to the hare’s arrival, since I couldn’t expect her to constantly check them as I did. I found myself monitoring the house on my phone in the back of taxis as I travelled around a Middle Eastern city in the weeks that followed
• Pausing at a traffic light in the baking sun, I saw birds building a nest in the middle of a roundabout amid a tangle of concrete flyovers, persisting in their struggle to survive and reproduce despite the heat and choking fumes, and felt new respect for their tenacity and dignity.
• Part of the reason that so many hedges had been cut back so sharply – or demolished altogether – is because of the related practice of ploughing the field right up to the very edge, to make the most of every inch of land. This has the effect of removing the uncultivated grass or wildflower corridors which hares use as thoroughfares, and which are an important source of plant diversity.
• Every six metres or so we planted a taller specimen that, unlike the rest of the hedge, would be left to grow over time into a tall, spreading tree. And in the battered existing hedgerows I planted oak and spindle and maple, relishing making these incremental improvements to the habitat that, were it not for the hare, would perhaps never have occurred to me. <> In the process I learnt more about the land, including the existence of a deep shallow declivity nearby that, in the past, would have been a pond for the watering of plough horses or livestock.
• * in all other respects they were copies of their mother. The floor around them appeared to be bone dry, without a trace of blood or afterbirth to stain the pale carpet, and they were immaculately clean, their fur standing out in a thick protective haze around their sturdy little bodies. I dropped the curtain back with a prickle in my throat.
• I was grateful for the hare’s door, since leaving it open night and day meant that she could always reach her leverets. I noticed that my perception of ‘indoors’ and ‘outdoors’ had dissolved since leaving part of the house permanently open to the elements and to the passage of the mother hare. Gusts of wind blew in and stole around my legs. Sounds that I had noticed only intermittently before now reached me every night and were linked in my mind with the hare’s movements: the harsh cacophony of jackdaws settling in the tops of the wood at nightfall; the reverberation of nameless wings; fragments of whistling birdsong; and the piercing call of pheasants, all growing louder as the colours of the landscape merged into one. This nocturnal medley – wild, chaotic, and disconcerting to my ears – heralded the hours where the hare would be at her most alert and active.
• Groomed to her satisfaction, she moved a short distance away before tucking her paws under her on the carpet, lying by the cooling embers of the fire. Her leverets dozed – or sat lost in reverie – just metres away, in the other room. The house smelled faintly like digestive biscuits: the scent of hares.
• * The stoat scanned the ground and then poured out of the gap in a single, sinuous movement, like honey over the lip of a glass, its paws gripping the stone as it flowed down the wall. I felt a chill, as if the sight had awoken some deep ancestral memory of other, larger predators deadly to man.
• One of the older leverets – still a permanent presence in the house and garden – appeared by the flower bed but came no closer, and did not attempt to intrude upon the ritual. It took a further half an hour for the twilight to deepen to the hare’s satisfaction, but finally I watched as she covered her leveret with her body and let it feed, confirming beyond a doubt that it was hers.
• She had been born a winter leveret and her early pale colouring was designed to blend into the spring landscape. They were late-spring leverets, and their fur had quickly acquired all the rich, shiny, silky browns, foxy-red hues, and fine-grained texture of a hare’s summer disguise, blending into earth and stone and burnt grass alike.
• An exercise ball in the corner of the room was a favourite prop, the leverets appearing to relish the rubbery recoil and hollow noise as they rattled their paws against its surface. The male leveret had the shock of his life when he sprang up onto the ball early one morning, paddling furiously to stay aloft before its rotation deposited him unceremoniously on the carpet.
• The next day, as I gathered up my favourite pillow, blanket and clothes and eased my way out of the room past the sleeping leverets, I realised I too was moving my form, and doing so with far less ease than my animal companions.
• Throughout these summer weeks the mother hare arrived in the house at just before eight every morning, and then stayed until nightfall. She often spent twelve hours in a row on her bench, her eyes squeezed tightly shut. Sometimes she stayed later still, and we passed the evening together with her resting on the bench while I read or worked or made calls on the sofa, the clouds outside rimmed in light. Every now and then she would rub her forehead on the mat I’d laid on her bench for her to rest on, using its rough fibres as we might a brush. At intervals, the leverets came in to eat. If the wind was low, I could hear the haunting calls of white barn owls coming out to hunt. From nine o’clock in the morning, when they took to their hiding places, was my time to go out and live in the space we now shared.
• * She died as she had lived, without a sound. <> Her front paws were curled down towards her back legs as if she were in flight, her spirit running even now across the fields she had not lived to explore. Every detail of her body remained perfect, from her soft grey mouth to the moulding of her head, her long pliant ears and her unsullied fur with its indescribable textures and hues. No brush could be fine enough to capture the richness and subtlety of her beauty.
• The potatoes and surrounding soil were gouged out of the ground, sucked into the maw of the machine and passed over a web that separated out the tubers and dropped them, via a conveyor belt, into the trailer, while the discarded earth was cast into ridges and furrows in the wake of their passage. The sight compounded my sense of helplessness after the death of the leveret. My emotions, still raw, were pulped as thoroughly as the earth.
• I saw an adult hare close by, in the field verge. I followed the little leveret no further, not wishing to drive it deeper into the field where it would be more visible to crows and hawks, or to preclude the chance of its mother finding it. <> I stood at the edge of the fourteen-acre field and wondered with a sinking heart how many other leverets, or indeed ground-nesting birds, had been crushed beneath those implacable wheels and now lay within the ridges or lost to sight against the rutted brown earth.
• * We have forgotten our dependence on the natural world, along with our appreciation for those who grow our food, who are in many ways the custodians of the land and who face relentless economic pressures. Our wider value system is distorted and the price is paid by the powerless, be they human or animal. As in so many areas of human endeavour, if we are not attentive, there is blood in the harvest.
• There is no reason why we could not decide to give a little more space to hares and other creatures and to take a little less ourselves – following the example of the hare itself – while ensuring sufficient sustainable food production to meet human needs.
• I realised how limited a vocabulary I had for colour, and how quickly it ran dry when confronted by the nuances of the landscape. I read about the German mineralogist Abraham Gottlob Werner, who classified colours according to an animal, vegetable or mineral equivalent. His work was so influential that Charles Darwin carried a book of colour samples based on Werner’s system on the HMS Beagle. I was intrigued by reproductions of Werner’s colours: the ‘bluish green’ of ‘egg of thrush’, the ‘straw yellow’ of ‘the polar bear’,
• Despite this sad thought, I found a paradoxical happiness in realising how little I knew of the realm of grasses and trees, and what pleasure could lie in acquiring even a slender store of knowledge. Starting anew brings a sense of renewal and possibility.
• The clouds hid the stars from sight, including the constellation named Lepus by early astrologers because it lies at the feet of Orion, the celestial hunter. I recalled reading about a Germanic goddess who was said to be accompanied by a train of torch-bearing hares, and thought how handy such a retinue would have been in this moment. Around me – unseen – stalked, loped, hopped, flitted, crawled and swooped a nocturnal society of creatures whose ranks I could not join. I could no more see with a hare’s eyes than I could shapeshift into a hare’s body. Perhaps the witch-hare’s true magic, I thought, is the wish she inspires, just for a moment, to step out of the human form. To race across the ground with the speed and power of a hare, without tiring; to inhabit its senses and revel in a world of sound, scent and sensation far greater than our own; and to move through the night as effortlessly as if through sunlight.
• For the first time in my life, I have had cause to study animals rather than people, and to see that we are not diminished by making way for them. Coexistence gives our own existence greater poignancy, and perhaps even grandeur. My wish now is for an environment that is safer for hares and other creatures of the land, wherever they may live: not at the expense of humans, but in balance with our priorities.
• * The grass in the centre of the field reached my waist in places, and I startled hares that ran and leapt, cresting the tops of the grass with a smooth flowing motion, dolphins of the meadow.
• The spruce trees were rich in sticky pendulous fir cones, the holly gaudy with scarlet drupes, clustered as thickly as ripe grapes. In the shadow of the wood, legions of thistles stood decaying into otherworldly desiccated shapes, their dried seed heads hanging sorrowfully amid tussocks of tangled clover.
• Moments later, rounding the corner of the wood and stepping out from shade into the late afternoon sunshine that illuminated a cloud of insects dancing like fireflies above the tall grass
• I turned away from the sight of fresh blood beading on its fur, the words _arterial blood red, head of the cock gold-finch rising unbidden to my mind. I did not think it was the mother hare, although she could have easily ranged this far, but I was reminded of the mortality bearing down on her, and on all living things, myself included.
• * Whereas before I sought out exceptional experiences and set myself against the crowd, I take comfort in the fact that this process of self-discovery has been felt by millions before me, and that there is nothing original in finding consolation and inspiration in nature. It is there for all of us, perhaps our one true shared heritage and source of hope for regeneration in our own, hard-pressed lives. As we jostle for space on this planet, for position and place and name, and agonise about missteps and paths lost, and feel the fragility of our hopes and all that we hold dear, I think of the hare, stepping lightly on the earth, taking cover if the wind blows. We are not so dissimilar. If we do not achieve all upon which we have set our hearts, or are beaten back by headwinds stronger than our desires, we too can lay up a while, watch the glitter on the grass, and renew our strength.
• * Despite having spent thousands of hours asleep in the house, the only traces the hare has left are a shallow, almost imperceptible indentation in the carpet across the doorway to my office, where her warm, long body has worn the surface smooth with its minute daily adjustments; six of her whiskers, scattered over the years; and a few weightless tufts of fur. The damp footprints she leaves on the floor on wet or dewy mornings evaporate within minutes. The emotional impact she has left, by contrast, is immense.
  She has taught me patience. And as someone who has made their living through words, she has made me consider the dignity and persuasiveness of silence. She showed me a different life, and the richness of it. She made me perceive animals in a new light, in relation to her and to each other. She made me re-evaluate my life, and the question of what constitutes a good one. I have learnt to savour beautiful experiences while they last – however small and domestic they may be in scope – to find the peace to live in a particular state of feeling, and to try to find a simplicity of self. The sensation of wonder she ignited in me continues to burn, showing me that aspects of my life I thought were set in stone are in fact as malleable as wax, and may be shaped or reshaped. She did not change, I did. I have not tamed the hare, but in many ways the hare has stilled me.

第一部

◆ 宫廷吃闲饭的官僚们，照例是在一旁呐喊助威。但是平静的、奢侈的、只操心生活中的一些幻影的彼得堡生活，依然如故；透过这种生活，要费很大的气力才能意识到俄国人民处境的危险和艰难。皇帝早朝依然如故，跳舞晚会依然如故，法国剧院依然如故，对宫廷的兴趣依然如故，钻营差事和互相倾轧依然如故。只有最高当局才努力记起当前形势的困难。

◆ 以朗诵闻名的瓦西里公爵将亲自读这封信（他经常给皇后朗读）。他的朗诵艺术就在于声音高亢，好听，绝望的哀号和温柔的低诉交替出现，可以完全不顾字句的意义，忽而在一个字句上发出哀号，忽而在另一个字句上发出低诉。

◆ ‘和撒纳，将来的人幸福了！’”瓦西里公爵用哭声朗读最后这句话。
比利宾仔细察看自己的指甲，很多人都露出胆怯的样子，好像在问自己犯了什么罪过。安娜·帕夫洛夫娜像老太婆念祷词似的，预先低声说出下面的词句：“让他胆大妄为的歌利亚……”

◆ 2026/01/27发表想法
英文版多了一个嘲讽拉满的括号，‘(it was excusable for him in his grief to forget what he had said), （他在哀恸中忘记了自己以前说的，也是情有可原） ’

原文：库图佐夫是叛徒，瓦西里公爵的女儿死后，在人们前来吊唁的时候，他谈起先前他所赞扬的库图佐夫，他说，对一个腐化堕落的瞎眼老头子，还能指望他什么。

◆ 米绍听了这番话，见到皇帝这个身为外国人而灵魂深处是俄国人的人的眼神斩钉截铁的坚决的表情，觉得在这庄严的时刻，对他所听到的话极为钦佩（正如他后来所说的），于是用下面的话来表达他自己的感情，同时也是俄国人民（他认为他是俄国人民的全权代表）的感情。

◆ 禁吃智慧树的果子这个戒条 ，在历史事件中表现得最为明显。只有不自觉的行动才能带来结果，而在历史事件中扮演角色的人，永远不懂得历史事件的意义。如果他企图去理解它，也是毫无结果。

◆ 尼古拉本人对他那天晚上的跳舞风度也有些惊奇。他在莫斯科从来没有这样跳过，他甚至认为这种过于随便的舞姿是失礼的，粗俗的；在这儿，他觉得必须弄点新鲜花样使大家吃惊，他们一定会认为那在京城不过是平常的东西，而外省还不知道罢了。

◆ 如果玛丽亚公爵小姐此刻能够思索一下的话，她对自己所发生的变化比布里安小姐更感到惊奇。自从她看见这张可亲可爱的面孔那一刻起，一种新的生命力就占有了她，使得她一言一行都不是通过自己的意志。罗斯托夫一进来，她的脸就突然变了样儿。就像一只精雕细绘的灯笼突然点亮了，灯笼四壁那些复杂的精致的艺术晶，原先看来似乎是粗糙、灰暗、毫无意义的，这时却显出意外的惊人的美：玛丽亚公爵小姐就是突然起了这样的变化。

◆ 尼古拉注意到这一点，以他从来没有的那种洞察力察觉玛丽亚公爵小姐每一种细微的性格，这更证实了他的看法：她是一个与众不同的非凡的人。尼古拉也和玛丽亚公爵小姐一样，别人一向他提起公爵小姐，甚至他一想到她，就脸红，就露出窘态，但是在她面前时，却觉得十分自如，说一些完全不是事先准备好的话，而是临时忽然想到的话。

◆ 主要的——她那满脸深深的、柔情的哀愁，打动了他，博得了他的同情。罗斯托夫最看不惯男人中间那种高级的精神生活（所以他不喜欢安德烈公爵），他鄙夷地称那为哲学，幻想；但是在玛丽亚公爵小姐身上，正是这种尼古拉感到陌生的精神世界所表露的极度深刻的哀伤，他觉得对他有着不可抗拒的吸引力。

◆ 答应对她所要求的，她下不了决心。为了养育她的家庭的幸福，她应当牺牲自己。为了别人的幸福牺牲自己已成为索尼娅的习惯。她在这家的地位就是这样：只有通过牺牲的途径才能显示自己的高尚品格，所以她已经习惯而且也喜欢自我牺牲。但是，在以前所做的一切牺牲行为中，她欣慰地意识到，她自我牺牲，以此在自己和在别人的心目中提高自己的身价，从而更配得上她平生最爱的尼古拉；而现在所要求她的牺牲，是要她放弃她过去所做出的一切牺牲的代价，放弃生活的全部意义。

◆ “他闭着眼，盖的也是粉红色的被子，两手也是交叉着。”索尼娅说，随着她描述刚才看见的细节，她就愈加相信她当时看见过这些细节。其实当时她什么也没看见，她是在讲她以为看见的东西；但是，她觉得她当时心想的东西，就像别的一切回忆同样地真实。

◆ “索尼娅，你不给尼古连卡写信吗？”伯爵夫人说话的声音轻柔，颤抖，从她那疲倦的、隔着眼镜看人的眼睛里，索尼娅看出伯爵夫人这句话的全部含义。那眼神流露出恳求、怕被拒绝、为求人而感到羞愧，以及万一被拒绝就会结下深仇大恨。

◆ 这些问题，以及在法庭上提出的一切问题，都是撇开主要事情的实质，而且排除揭开这个实质的可能性，其目的只有一个，那就是要布置一条沟渠，审讯人员希望被告的回答顺着这条渠道流下去，把被告引到预期的道上，也就是引到可以判他罪的道上。只要他一说不合乎定罪目的话，他们就把沟渠移动一下，让水白流。

◆ 究竟是谁处决、杀死、夺走那满怀回忆、志愿、希望的他皮埃尔的生命呢？这是谁干的呢？皮埃尔觉得并没有人这样干。
这是制度，是各种情况的汇合。
是一种制度在杀害他皮埃尔，剥夺他的生命，剥夺一切，把他消灭掉。

◆ 2026/01/27发表想法
金爱烂《水中的歌利亚》里有写女孩父亲坠亡前在高处做广播体操

原文：这第五个似乎很平静：他掩上衣襟，用一只光脚搔搔另一只光脚。
给他蒙上眼睛，他整了整脑后勒得太紧的结子；然后，让他靠到血渍斑斑的柱子上，他往后倒了一下，他觉得站的姿势不舒服，调整一下，摆齐两脚，靠稳了。

◆ “怎么样，不错吧？”那个士兵笑着说，他拿起一块土豆，在手掌上切成两半，从破布里捏点盐撒上，递给皮埃尔。
“烧土豆可真美！”他重复说，“你尝尝这个。”
皮埃尔觉得，他从来没吃过这么好吃的东西。
“我嘛，怎么都无所谓，”皮埃尔说，“但是，他们凭什么杀那些可怜的人呢！

◆ “哪里有法庭，哪里就有伤天害理的事。”那个小个子插了一句。

◆ 莫斯科，莫斯科是众城之母。眼前的景况怎能不叫人烦恼。蛀虫钻进圆白菜，早晚得完蛋，老年人常常这样说。”他很快补充说。

◆ “以为是灾，其实是福！我要是不犯罪，我弟弟就得去当兵。弟弟有五个孩子，

◆ 2026/01/27发表想法  这样的睡眠质量肯定好
原文：“主啊，把我像石头一样放下，像面包一样举起。”

◆ 你念弗洛拉和拉夫拉，是怎么回事？”
“当然得念啦，”普拉东很快地回答，“他们是马神。对牲畜也要怜悯，”

◆ 皮埃尔很久睡不着，睁着眼在黑暗中躺着，倾听他身旁普拉东均匀的鼾声，他觉得，原先那个被破坏了的世界，现在又以新的美，在新的不可动摇的基础上，在他的灵魂中活动起来。

◆ 他什么事都会做，做得不好也不坏。他烤面包，做饭，缝衣服，刨木头，补靴子。他总是在忙，只有在夜间才谈话（他爱聊天）和唱歌。他不像歌手那样唱歌，歌手知道有人在听他们唱，但他像鸟儿那样唱歌，显然他觉得他必须发出这些声音，就像必须常常伸伸懒腰和散散步一样；

◆ 但是在皮埃尔看来，第一夜对他的印象——一个不可思议的、圆满的、永恒的朴素和真理的精神化身，永远也忘不了。

◆ 玛丽亚公爵小姐明白娜塔莎说的“两天之前他发生这种变化”是什么意思。她明白，这意思是说他突然变得温和了，而这种温和，容易感动，是临死的迹象。

◆ 但是娜塔莎关心的并不是医生说的话：她看出可怕的、使她更确信无疑的、精神上的特征。
自那天开始，安德烈公爵在睡醒的同时，也从人的一生中醒来。他觉得人生的觉醒对人的一生来说，并不比一觉醒来对睡梦来说，来得更漫长。


第三部

◆ 忽然交手的一方感觉他受了伤——他知道这非同小可，是性命交关的事，于是扔掉剑，顺手抄起棍子挥舞起来。但是可以想象，这个为了达到目的明智地使用最好、最简单的工具，同时为骑士精神所鼓舞的人，想要隐瞒事情的真相，硬说他是按照剑术的全部规则打赢的。可以想象，如果这样描述决斗的经过，会引起多么大的混乱和含糊不清。
要求按照击剑规则决斗的剑术家是法国人；他的对手，扔掉剑拿起棍子的人，是俄国人；极力按照击剑规则说明一切的是论述这场战争的史学家。

◆ 但是人民战争的棍子仍然以其可怕而威严的力量举了起来，不管合不合某人的口味和规则，以近乎愚鲁的纯朴，然而却以明确的目标，不问三七二十一地举起和落下人民战争的棍子，直把法国人的侵略打退为止。

◆ 军队的士气这个因子乘数量，就得出力量的积数。确定和阐明这个未知因子——士气的价值，是科学的任务。

◆ 一八一二年法国人退却时，按照战术，本应分散进行防御，但是却缩成一团，因为军队的士气已经低落到只有抱在一起才能把军队维系着。俄国人则相反，按战术本应当集结军队大举进攻，而实际上却分成小股，因为士气已经高涨到个别的人不待命令就去打法国人

◆ 彼佳一路上都在琢磨，他应当怎样才像一个大人和军官的样子，应当用什么态度见杰尼索夫，同时不露出过去曾经相识。但是杰尼索夫对他一露出微笑，彼佳立刻容光焕发，高兴得脸通红，忘了已经准备好的军官架子，

◆ 吉洪是队里最有用、最勇敢的人。谁也没有他找到的袭击机会那么多，谁也没有他捉到的和打死的法国人那么多；正是由于这个缘故，他成为全体哥萨克和骠骑兵寻开心的人物，他也情愿当这个角色。

◆ 小鼓手进到屋里，彼佳离他远一点坐下来，他觉得对他太注意是有失身份的。他只是手插进衣袋里摸着钱，犹豫不决地想，给小鼓手钱是不是怪害臊的事。

◆ “啊，我这是在做梦，”彼佳向前晃了一下，自言自语说，“这是我耳朵里的声音。也许，这就是我的音乐。好，再来一次。奏吧，我的音乐！奏啊！……”

◆ 杰尼索夫没有答话；他来到彼佳身旁，下了马，用颤抖的双手托起被血和泥染污了的、已经发白的彼佳的脸。
“我爱吃甜东西。上好的葡萄干，全拿去吧。”他想起彼佳的话。哥萨克们都惊愕地回头看：杰尼索夫像犬吠似的号哭，他转身走到篱笆跟前，紧紧抓住篱笆。
杰尼索夫和多洛霍夫救出的俄国俘虏中间，有皮埃尔·别祖霍夫。

◆ 皮埃尔被关在棚子里当俘虏的时候，懂得了一个道理，不是从理智上，而是用他整个身心，全副生命懂得了人被创造出来是为了幸福，幸福就在他本身，就在满足人的自然需要，

◆ 他认识到，世上没有哪个环境是人在其中过得幸福和完全自由的，也没有哪个环境人在其中过得不幸福和不自由的。他认识到，痛苦有一个界限，自由也有一个界限，而且这个界限非常接近

◆ 那个无辜受罪的老头在哪儿？沙皇的批示下来了。开始找来找去。”卡拉塔耶夫的下巴颏在打颤，“上帝已经饶恕了他——他死了。你看就是这样，亲爱的。”卡拉塔耶夫结束说，他望着前方默默地微笑着，待了很久。

◆ 卡拉塔耶夫睁着他那和善的、这时蒙着一层泪水的圆圆的眼睛望着皮埃尔，显然是在呼唤他，他有话要对他说。皮埃尔怕自己会感受过于可怕的情景。他装作没有看见他的目光，赶快走开了。

◆ 2026/01/29发表想法  也是一种轮回
原文：“上帝在那中间，每个点子都在扩大，以便最大限度地反映上帝。它生长，汇合，紧缩，从表面上消失，向深处沉下去，然后又浮上来。这就是他，就是卡拉塔耶夫，你看他扩散开来，又消失了。——你懂得了，我的孩子。”教师说。

◆ 这些人一个劲儿往前走，谁也不知道到哪儿去，也不知道为什么走。天才拿破仑比别人知道得更少，因为没有人给他下命令。但是，他和他周围的人仍然保持着一向的习惯：拟命令，发公函，写报告，做每日报表；彼此称呼“陛下、贤弟、埃克木尔王、那不勒斯王”等等。

◆ 还描述了他在克拉斯诺耶的英雄行为，说他在那儿好像准备打一仗，并且亲自指挥，他提着一根桦木棍，说：
“我当皇帝已经当够了，现在该当一当将军了。”虽是这么说了，但说了后就立刻逃走，撇下后面溃不成军的队伍任凭命运摆布。

◆ 每当历史论评这条富有弹性的线伸得不能再伸的时候，每当那种行动明显地违反人类称作善、甚至称作正义的时候，史学家就乞灵于“伟大”这个概念。好像“伟大”可以排除善和恶的标准似的。“伟人”无恶行。“伟人”无受责之虑。

◆ 人民的目的只有一个：把侵略者从自己的国土上清除出去。这个目的达到了，第一，它是自然而然达到的，因为法国人在逃跑，只要不阻挡这个运动就行了。第二，这个目的的达到，是靠消灭敌人的人民战争，第三，一支庞大的俄国军队在后面追赶法国人，只要法国人一停止运动，就使用这支力量。
俄国军队的作用，应该像赶跑着的牲口的鞭子。有经验的赶牲口的人知道，最好是扬起鞭子吓唬奔跑的牲口，而不是迎头抽打它。


第四部

◆ 她们觉得，任何用语言提及他的生活细节，都是破坏那在她们眼前完成的奥秘的伟大和神圣。
不断地缄默不语，经常地努力回避可能引起谈他的话头：这样从各方面设下的禁忌，使她们所感到的一切，在她们的想象中更加纯净和鲜明了。
不过，纯净而完全的悲哀正如纯净而完全的欢乐一样，都是不可能的。

◆ 她没有睡觉，也没有离开母亲。娜塔莎的爱，顽强的、无限耐心的爱——它不是劝解，也不是安慰，而是对生的召唤，娜塔莎这种爱无往不在的时时刻刻包围着伯爵夫人。

◆ 但是治好精神创伤和肉体创伤都要依靠发自内在的生命力。
娜塔莎的创伤就是这样好起来的。她以为她的生命完结了。但是，对母亲的爱忽然向她证明，生命的本质——爱——依然活在她的心中。爱复苏了，生命也复苏了。

◆ 玛莎，亲爱的。我是多么爱你啊。咱们做真正、真正的好朋友吧。”
娜塔莎拥抱玛丽亚公爵小姐，亲吻她的手和脸。玛丽亚公爵小姐对娜塔莎的这种感情流露又羞又喜。

◆ 她们俩在一起比分开独自一人感到和谐。她们之间建立的感情比友谊更强烈：这是一种只有在一起才能活下去的独特感情。

◆ 只要弄清楚以下事实的意义，就可以了解俄军消耗的程度：在塔鲁丁诺作战的全部时间，俄军的伤亡不超过五千名，被俘的不到一百名，但是十万人从塔鲁丁诺出发，到达克拉斯诺耶只剩下五万人了。
俄国人追击法国人的急行军，如同法国人的仓惶窜逃，都给自己带来破坏性的作用，

◆ 仅仅语言还证明不了他当时对事件意义的理解。他的行动始终不变地朝着一个目标，从来不曾有丝毫的偏离，这目标包括三个方面：一、竭尽全力打法国人，二、打败他们，三、把他们赶出俄国，尽可能减轻人民和军队的痛苦。

◆ “瞧天上的星星，多亮！你看，老娘们展她织的布了。”一个士兵欣赏银河说。

◆ “他们也是人，”一个士兵用军大衣把身子裹紧，说，“苦艾也是在根上生长的。”
“噢哟！主啊，主啊！满天的星，密密麻麻！严寒就要来了……”周围寂静了。
星星仿佛知道这时没有人在看它们，在黑暗的天空中玩得更欢了。它们忽明忽灭，忽而颤动，它们互相之间正忙于说些又快乐又神秘的悄悄话呢。

◆ 先前使他苦恼的、他经常寻找的那件事情——人生的目的，现在对于他不存在了。这个未知的人生目的，在他并不是现在偶然不存在了，也不是此时此刻才不存在，但是他觉得，它是没有的，也不可能有。正是这目的的不存在，给了他完全的、可喜的自由的感觉，他的幸福此时就在于这个自由的感觉。
他不能有目的，因为他现在有了信仰

◆ 有一种新的特点博得人们对他的好感：这就是承认每个人都能以各自的观点思想、感觉和观察事物；承认不能用语言改变一个人的想法。每个人这种合乎情理的特点以前使皮埃尔激动和恼怒，而现在却成为他在待人接物时激发兴趣和同情心的基础。

◆ 但是当我们观看在被捣毁的洞穴周围爬满了蚂蚁的时候，洞穴虽然彻底破坏了，但是从挖洞的昆虫那股子坚韧不拔的劲头和数量的众多可以看出，除了被毁掉的一切，那构成蚁穴力量的坚不可摧的、非物质的东西依然存在，——莫斯科也是这样，

◆ 法国人的抢劫继续得越久，莫斯科的财富遭到的破坏就越厉害，抢劫者的力量也就消耗得越多。而俄国人占领首都初期开始的俄国人的抢劫，越是继续下去，参加抢劫的人越多，莫斯科的财富和城市的正常生活恢复得就越快。

◆ 不知由于疼痛还是由于悲哀，她呻吟着跑出了房间。
皮埃尔望着她跑出去的那扇门，他不明白为什么忽然觉得在这个世界上只剩下他一个人了。

◆ 而现在所享受的快乐，却是真正的女人所给予的，这种女人善于采撷和吸收那只有男人才有的一切美好的东西。娜塔莎自己全然不觉得，她是那样全神贯注：她不漏过皮埃尔的每个字，他的声音每一颤动，目光每一瞬，脸上肌肉每一颤动，以及他的每个姿势。她在揣度皮埃尔内心活动的秘密意义时，还顺手捕捉到对方没有说出的话，即刻收进她那开阔的胸怀。

◆ 娜塔莎说，突然从她脸上露出玛丽亚公爵小姐好久没看见的顽皮的笑容，“他变得是那么干净，光彩，新鲜，就好像刚从浴室出来似的，你明白我的意思吗？”
“对，”玛丽亚公爵小姐说，“他变得好多了。”
“那短短的常礼服，那剪短了的头发，真像刚从浴室出来……爸爸常常……”


第一部

◆ 如果设想人类的生活是受理性支配的，那么，现实生活存在的可能性也就被取消了。

◆ 同事们的无知、反对者的懦弱和渺小，以及这个人的撒谎本领和他那华而不实、自以为是的低能智力，把他擢升为军队的首脑。意大利军队的士兵们的优秀素质、敌人的缺乏斗志、孩子般的卤莽和刚愎自用，使他获得了军事声望。无数的所谓偶然处处伴随着他。

◆ 只有他这个人——因为他有在意大利和非洲养成的对光荣和伟大的理想，有疯狂的自我崇拜，有犯罪的胆量以及撒谎的本领，只有他这个人才能为正在发生的事辩护。

◆ 索尼娅料理家务，侍奉姑母，念书给她听，忍受她的任性和藏在内心对她的嫌恶，帮助尼古拉向老公爵夫人隐瞒他们的窘迫。尼古拉觉得，他对索尼娅为他母亲所做的一切的感激之情，是报答不尽的。他赞赏她的耐性和忠诚，但极力躲避着她。
他心里好像为了她太完美，为了她无可指责而责怪她。她有一切为人们所珍贵的品质；可是就缺少使他爱她的东西。他甚至觉得，他对她的评价越高，对她的爱就越少。

◆ “我还以为您会让我对您说这些话的，”她说，“我和您……和您全家都是这么亲近，所以我以为您不会认为我的同情用的不是地方；但是我想错了。”她说。她的声音突然颤抖了。“我不知道为什么，”她镇定一下，继续说，“您从前不是这样的……”
“为什么——有上千种原因（他特别加重说‘为什么’这个词）。谢谢您，公爵小姐，”他低声说，“有时好难过啊。”
“原本就是为了这个！就是为了这个！”公爵小姐内心的声音说，“不，我爱他，不光爱他那快活的、善良的和坦然的眼神，不光爱他漂亮的外表；我看出他那一颗高尚的、坚强的、自我牺牲的心，

◆ “我的生活很少有幸福，任何损失都使我难过……原谅我，再见。”她突然哭起来，走出屋去。
“公爵小姐！看在上帝的分上，等一等！”他喊道，极力拦阻她，“公爵小姐！”
她回头看了看。他们无言地相视了几秒钟，于是，那遥远的、不可能的东西，突然成为眼前的、可能的和不可避免的东西了……

◆ 他赞助农民的家庭保持最大的规模，不赞成分家。他对懒汉、浪子和无用的人，决不宽贷，尽可能把他们从集体中驱逐出去。

◆ 她有时想尽力了解他，对他谈起他的劳绩就在于他给农奴做了好事，他一听就恼了，他回答说：“完全不是：我从来没有想这个；我所做的不是为他们谋福利。所有为他人谋幸福，全是胡诌的诗和老娘儿们的瞎扯。我是为了我们的子孙不致去讨饭；我活着一天，就要把我们的家业安排好；如此而已。为了做到这一点，必须立个规矩，办事必须严格……就是这么回事！”他紧握着激动的拳头，说。“当然也要公平合理，”他又说，“因为如果农民缺吃少穿，只有一匹瘦马，不论是为他自己和为我，都做不成事了。”

◆ 玛丽亚伯爵夫人并不漂亮，可每次一哭就变得好看了。她从来没有因为痛苦和烦恼哭过，却总因为忧伤和怜悯落泪。她一哭，那对明亮的眼睛就有一种迷人的魅力。
尼古拉刚握起她的手，她就忍不住哭起来。

◆ “‘凡有的，还要加给他，没有的，连他所有的，也要夺过来。’ 你记得吗？她是那个没有的；为什么？我不知道；也许因为她没有私心，所以她所有的，全被夺走了。我有时候非常可怜她；早先我很希望尼古拉跟她结婚。可我总有一种预感，认为不可能实现。她就像草莓上开的一朵谎花，不结果子，你知道吗？我有时候可怜她，可有时候又觉得她不会像我们一样感觉到。”

◆ 我爱我的妻子吗？不爱，我也不知道该怎么对你说。没有你，或是我们之间有什么不愉快的事，我就六神无主，什么事也做不下去。你说，我爱自己的手指吗？不爱，可你把手指割掉试试……”

◆ 已经很难找到当初那个苗条活泼的娜塔莎来了。她的面部轮廓分明了，露出一种宁静、温柔、开朗的表情。她脸上再也没有先前那种赋予她魅力的熊熊燃烧的青春活力了。现在只能看到她的躯体，再也看不到她的灵魂了。看到的是一个健壮、美丽、多产的女人。

◆ 但她接二连三地怀孕，生孩子，喂奶，时时刻刻参与丈夫的生活，她只好谢绝社交活动，才能完成这些事。所有娜塔莎婚前就认识的人，看到她这种变化，无不像看到一件新奇事那样感到吃惊。只有老伯爵夫人凭着母性的本能看出娜塔莎的全部热情都起源于她对家庭和丈夫的需要。

◆ 娜塔莎所专心致志的，就是她的家庭，也就是她的丈夫，她必须使他完全属于她，属于这个家，还有孩子们，她要养育他们。
她不仅从思想上，而且全身心投入到她所关心的这件事上，她陷得越深，这件事就不断扩大，使她越发显得势单力薄，难于胜任，似乎她投入全副精力，还是做不完她该做的事。

◆ 一次，皮埃尔把他信奉的卢梭思想讲给她听，说乳母哺乳不仅是反常的事，而且有害。于是在生第二个孩子的时候，娜塔莎不顾母亲、医生和丈夫极力反对她自己哺乳，因为这在当时不仅闻所未闻，而且他们认为这样有害，可是娜塔莎从那时起就坚持自己哺乳所有的孩子。

◆ 不满现状的退役军官杰尼索夫正好在这两星期中来了，他一见娜塔莎就像看到一幅完全不像他过去爱过的人的画像一样，心里又吃惊，又难过。她先前是那么可爱，可现在她的眼神是那么忧郁、空虚，答非所问。

◆ 正如她需要发泄肝火一样，她有时也需要动一动她变得迟钝的脑筋，这时她的借口就是玩牌。如果她需要哭，那么去世的伯爵就成了她的借口。她需要大惊小怪，尼古拉和他的健康状况就成了借口。她需要说刻毒话，她就找玛丽亚伯爵夫人的事。她需要运动发声器官（大多在晚饭后六七点钟，在幽暗的房间里休息时），她就对早就听过多少遍的人反复讲同一个故事。

◆ “两只，两只！”孩子们喊道。
他们说的是两只袜子。安娜·玛卡罗夫娜有一个绝招，能用一副针一次织出一双袜子。每次织好以后，她总是得意洋洋地当着孩子们的面，从一只袜子里抽出另一只袜子来。

◆ 2026/01/31发表想法
英译文里是the harsher your steward was，更明确是派用酷吏

原文：那么你的管家越厉害，

◆ 我们是为了公众的利益，为了大家的安全这一目的才携起手来的。”
“是的；不过是一个秘密组织自然也就是敌对的、有害的，只能产生恶果。”尼古拉说。

◆ 你我是至交，这你也知道，可是如果你们组织一个秘密团体反对政府，不管是什么样的政府吧，我的职责是拥护政府。如果阿拉克切耶夫现在下命令，要我率一个骑兵连讨伐你们，我将毫不犹豫，立即出发。至于你爱怎么说，就怎么说吧。”

◆ 娜塔莎太可笑了，管他管得那么严，可一争论，她就没话说了，只会重复他的话。”尼古拉又说，控制不住要议论自己的亲属。他没想到他说娜塔莎的这番话可以原封不动地用到他们自己的夫妻关系上。

◆ 我一看，他把我桌上的东西都弄坏了，而且马上向我承认错误。我从来没见他说过一句谎话。真是个好孩子！”尼古拉又说，他从来不喜欢尼古连卡，但承认他是个好孩子。

◆ 我的想法非常简单明了。要知道，我不说我们应当反对这，反对那，那样会出差错的。我说：好善者都携起手来，我们的旗帜是——积极行善。

◆ 娜塔莎毫不怀疑皮埃尔的思想是伟大的，不过有一点使她忐忑不安。那就是，他是她的丈夫。“这么一个重要的，对社会有用的人，难道也能同时做我的丈夫吗？这怎么可能呢？”她想把自己的顾虑告诉他。“谁能肯定他真比其他人都聪明呢？”

===========================
Leo Tolstoy, Aylmer Maude, and Louise Maude

Berg with tender smiles was saying to Vera that love is not an earthly but a heavenly feeling.

The enemy ceased firing, and that stern, threatening, inaccessible, and intangible line which separates two hostile armies was all the more clearly felt. "One step beyond that boundary line which resembles the line dividing the living from the dead lies uncertainty, suffering, and death. And what is there? Who is there?—there beyond that field, that tree, that roof lit up by the sun? No one knows, but one wants to know. You fear and yet long to cross that line, and know that sooner or later it must be crossed and you will have to find out what is there, just as you will inevitably have to learn what lies the other side of death. But you are strong, healthy, cheerful, and excited, and are surrounded by other such excitedly animated and healthy men." So thinks, or at any rate feels, anyone who comes in sight of the enemy, and that feeling gives a particular glamour and glad keenness of impression to everything that takes place at such moments.

Rostov on the left flank, mounted on his Rook—a handsome horse despite its game leg—had the happy air of a schoolboy called up before a large audience for an examination in which he feels sure he will distinguish himself. He was glancing at everyone with a clear, bright expression, as if asking them to notice how calmly he sat under fire. But

At that instant the sun began to hide behind the clouds, and other stretchers came into view before Rostov. And the fear of death and of the stretchers, and love of the sun and of life, all merged into one feeling of sickening agitation.

His conversation was always sprinkled with wittily original, finished phrases of general interest. These sayings were prepared in the inner laboratory of his mind in a portable form as if intentionally, so that insignificant society people might carry them from drawing room to drawing room. And, in fact, Bilibin's witticisms were hawked about in the Viennese drawing rooms and often had an influence on matters considered important.

The one general whom we all loved, Schmidt, you expose to a bullet, and then you congratulate us on the victory! Admit that more irritating news than yours could not have been conceived. It's as if it had been done on purpose, on purpose. Besides, suppose you did gain a brilliant victory, if even the Archduke Karl gained a victory, what effect would that have on the general course of events?

"Oh, I must give you a treat," Bilibin whispered to Bolkonski. "Kuragin is exquisite when he discusses politics—you should see his gravity!"

They spin him a thousand gasconades, saying that the war is over, that the Emperor Francis is arranging a meeting with Bonaparte,

In a word, those gentlemen, Gascons indeed, so bewildered him with fine words, and he is so flattered by his rapidly established intimacy with the French marshals, and so dazzled by the sight of Murat's mantle and ostrich plumes, qu'il n'y voit que du feu, et oublie celui qu'il devait faire faire sur l'ennemi!" *(2)

He had that moment been wounded and his face showed fear rather than suffering. Crossing

But although Alpatych, frightened at his own temerity in avoiding the stroke, came up to the prince, bowing his bald head resignedly before him, or perhaps for that very reason, the prince, though he continued to shout: "Blackguards!... Throw the snow back on the road!" did not lift his stick again but hurried into the house.

The little princess, like an old war horse that hears the trumpet, unconsciously and quite forgetting her condition, prepared for the familiar gallop of coquetry, without any ulterior motive or any struggle, but with naive and lighthearted gaiety.

Prince Andrew began to reply and to state his own plan, which might have been as good as Weyrother's, but for the disadvantage that Weyrother's had already been approved. As soon as Prince Andrew began to demonstrate the defects of the latter and the merits of his own plan, Prince Dolgorukov ceased to listen to him and gazed absent-mindedly not at the map, but at Prince Andrew's face.

"Whether tomorrow brings victory or defeat, the glory of our Russian arms is secure. Except your Kutuzov, there is not a single Russian in command of a column! The commanders are: Herr General Wimpfen, le Comte de Langeron, le Prince de Lichtenstein, le Prince, de Hohenlohe, and finally Prishprish, and so on like all those Polish names."

So insignificant at that moment seemed to him all the interests that engrossed Napoleon, so mean did his hero himself with his paltry vanity and joy in victory appear, compared to the lofty, equitable, and kindly sky which he had seen and understood, that he could not answer him.

The faces of these young people, especially those who were military men, bore that expression of condescending respect for their elders which

the honor to choose me to be their marshal; it was all I could do to get out of it. They could not understand that I have not the necessary qualifications for it—the kind of good-natured, fussy shallowness necessary for the position.

"Well, that's it then! You know that there is a there and there is a Someone? There is the future life. The Someone is—God."

The sun had sunk half below the horizon and an evening frost was starring the puddles near the ferry, but

the old prince went on, addressing his son and patting Pierre on the shoulder. "A fine fellow—your friend—I like him! He stirs me up. Another says clever things and one doesn't care to listen, but this one talks rubbish yet stirs an old fellow up. Well,

His eyes, looking serenely and steadily at Rostov, seemed to be veiled by something, as if screened by blue spectacles of conventionality. So it seemed to Rostov.

the young firs dotted about in the forest did not jar on the general beauty but, lending themselves to the mood around, were delicately green with fluffy young shoots.

The old oak, quite transfigured, spreading out a canopy of sappy dark-green foliage, stood rapt and slightly trembling in the rays of the evening sun. Neither gnarled fingers nor old scars nor old doubts and sorrows were any of them in evidence now. Through the hard century-old bark, even where there were no twigs, leaves had sprouted such as one could hardly believe the old veteran could have produced.

Speranski went on to say that honor, l'honneur, cannot be upheld by privileges harmful to the service; that honor, l'honneur, is either a negative concept of not doing what is blameworthy or it is a source of emulation in pursuit of commendation and rewards, which recognize it. His arguments were concise, simple, and clear. "An institution upholding honor, the source of emulation, is one similar to the Legion d'honneur of the great Emperor Napoleon, not harmful but helpful to the success of the service, but not a class or court privilege."

Human sciences dissect everything to comprehend it, and kill everything to examine it. In the holy science of our order all is one, all is known in its entirety and life. The Trinity—the three elements of matter—are sulphur, mercury, and salt. Sulphur is of an oily and fiery nature; in combination with salt by its fiery nature it arouses a desire in the latter by means of which it attracts mercury, seizes it, holds it, and in combination produces other bodies. Mercury

He looked at Natasha as she sang, and something new and joyful stirred in his soul. He felt happy and at the same time sad. He had absolutely nothing to weep about yet he was ready to weep. What about? His former love? The little princess? His disillusionments?... His hopes for the future?... Yes and no. The chief reason was a sudden, vivid sense of the terrible contrast between something infinitely great and illimitable within him and that limited and material something that he, and even she, was. This contrast weighed on and yet cheered him while she sang.

they all struggled and suffered and tormented one another and injured their souls, their eternal souls, for the attainment of benefits which endure but for an instant. Not only do we know this ourselves, but Christ, the Son of God, came down to earth and told us that this life is but for a moment and is a probation; yet we cling to it and think to find happiness in it. "How

it was an unsurpassable morning for hunting: it was as if the sky were melting and sinking to the earth without any wind. The only motion in the air was that of the dripping, microscopic particles of drizzling mist.

field. "No, it can't be!" thought Rostov, taking a deep breath, as a man does at the coming of something long hoped for. The height of happiness was reached—and so simply, without warning, or noise, or display, that Rostov could not believe his eyes and remained in doubt for over a second. The wolf ran forward and jumped heavily over a gully that lay in her path.

"Uncle" rose, and it was as if there were two men in him: one of them smiled seriously at the merry fellow, while the merry fellow struck a naive and precise attitude preparatory to a folk dance.

Pierre considered. "I think not," he said, "and yet—yes. She does not deign to be clever.... Oh no, she is simply enchanting, and that is all."

Boris smiled almost imperceptibly while listening to his mother. He laughed blandly at her naive diplomacy but listened to what she had to say, and sometimes questioned her carefully about the Penza and Nizhegorod estates.

'Husbands' sisters bring up blisters,' but

Countess Bezukhova quite deserved her reputation of being a fascinating woman. She could say what she did not think—especially what was flattering—quite simply and naturally.

"Well and when the money's gone, what then?" "What then? Eh?" repeated Anatole, sincerely perplexed by a thought of the future. "What then?... Then, I don't know.... But why talk nonsense!" He

this bright comet which, having traveled in its orbit with inconceivable velocity through immeasurable space, seemed suddenly—like an arrow piercing the earth—to remain fixed in a chosen spot, vigorously holding its tail erect, shining and displaying its white light amid countless other scintillating stars. It seemed to Pierre that this comet fully responded to what was passing in his own softened and uplifted soul, now blossoming into a new life.

though there was nothing for him to do at Bald Hills, Prince Andrew with a characteristic desire to foment his own grief decided that he must ride there.

did not cause the least embarrassment to Countess Bezukhova, who evidently deserved her reputation of being a very clever woman. Had she attempted concealment, or tried to extricate herself from her awkward position by cunning, she would have spoiled her case by acknowledging herself guilty. But Helene, like a really great man who can do whatever he pleases, at once assumed her own position to be correct, as she sincerely believed it to be, and that everyone else was to blame.

In her view the aim of every religion was merely to preserve certain proprieties while affording satisfaction to human desires. And

The brightness of the morning was magical. Moscow seen from the Poklonny Hill lay spaciously spread out with her river, her gardens, and her churches, and she seemed to be living her usual life, her cupolas glittering like stars in the sunlight.

Every Russian looking at Moscow feels her to be a mother; every foreigner who sees her, even if ignorant of her significance as the mother city, must feel her feminine character, and Napoleon felt it.

L'amour which the Frenchman worshiped consisted principally in the unnaturalness of his relation to the woman and in a combination of incongruities giving the chief charm to the feeling. Thus the captain touchingly recounted the story of his love for a fascinating marquise of thirty-five and at the same time for a charming, innocent child of seventeen, daughter of the bewitching marquise.

The art of his reading was supposed to lie in rolling out the words, quite independently of their meaning, in a loud and singsong voice alternating between a despairing wail and a tender murmur, so that the wail fell quite at random on one word and the murmur on another. This

(it was excusable for him in his grief to forget what he had said),

Karataev. "I say things happen not as we plan but as God judges,"

Prince Andrew had thought and said that happiness could only be negative, but

reservation. The absence of suffering, the satisfaction of one's needs and consequent freedom in the choice of one's occupation, that is, of one's way of life,

saw the cupolas and crosses of the New Convent of the Virgin still dark at first, the hoarfrost on the dusty grass, the Sparrow Hills, and the wooded banks above the winding river vanishing in the purple distance, when he felt the contact of the fresh air and heard the noise of the crows flying from Moscow across the field, and when afterwards light gleamed from the east and the sun's rim appeared solemnly from behind a cloud, and the cupolas and crosses, the hoarfrost, the distance and the river, all began to sparkle in the glad light—Pierre felt a new joy and strength in life such as he had never before known.

But they did not cut off or overthrow anybody and the French army, closing up more firmly at the danger, continued, while steadily melting away, to pursue its fatal path to Smolensk.

He had learned that as there is no condition in which man can be happy and entirely free, so there is no condition in which he need be unhappy and lack freedom. He learned that suffering and freedom have their limits and that those limits are very near together; that the person in a bed of roses with one crumpled petal suffered as keenly as he now, sleeping on the bare damp earth with one side growing chilled while the other was warming;

"They are men too," said one of them as he wrapped himself up in his coat. "Even wormwood grows on its own root." "O Lord, O Lord! How starry it is! Tremendous! That means a hard frost...." They all grew silent. The stars, as if knowing that no one was looking at them, began to disport themselves in the dark sky: now flaring up, now vanishing, now trembling, they were busy whispering something gladsome and mysterious to one another.

have been nothing. If we admit that human life can be ruled by reason, the possibility of life is destroyed.

Besides that, four times a year, on the name days and birthdays of the hosts, as many as a hundred visitors would gather there for a day or two. The rest of the year life pursued its unbroken routine with its ordinary occupations, and its breakfasts, lunches, dinners, and suppers, provided out of the produce of the estate.

These questions, then as now, existed only for those who see nothing in marriage but the pleasure married people get from one another, that is, only the beginnings of marriage and not its whole significance, which lies in the family. Discussions and questions of that kind, which are like the question of how to get the greatest gratification from one's dinner, did not then and do not now exist for those for whom the purpose of a dinner is the nourishment it affords; and the purpose of marriage is the family.

You will agree that if you did not look after your estates yourself but only wanted a quiet life, the harsher your steward was the more readily your object might be attained," he

How she rules over him! And yet there need only be a discussion and she has no words of her own but only repeats his sayings..." added Nicholas, yielding to that irresistible inclination which tempts us to judge those nearest and dearest to us. He forgot that what he was saying about Natasha could have been applied word for word to himself in relation to his wife.

I looked and he had broken everything on my table to bits, and he told me of it himself at once! I never knew him to tell an untruth. A fine lad, a fine lad!" repeated Nicholas, who at heart was not fond of Nicholas Bolkonski but was always anxious to recognize that he was a fine lad.

but one thing disconcerted her. "Can a man so important and necessary to society be also my husband? How did this happen?" She wished to express this doubt to him. "

最美好的几个章节是罗斯托夫家打猎、做客跳舞、化装，发生时都让人知道回想起来会惘然。

第一部
◆ 他认出了少爷，喊了一声，“这怎么啦？我的亲爱的！”普罗科菲激动得抖抖索索，向客厅的门奔去，大概是想去禀报，但显然又改变了主意，走回来偎靠在少爷的肩头上。

◆ 罗斯托夫受到人们对他的爱抚而感到幸福；见面的最初时刻是那么愉快，但现在他觉得幸福还不够，他老是期待着更多、更多、更多的什么东西。

◆ 她卷起薄纱的袖筒，露出纤瘦柔嫩的小胳膊，在肩膀下，离肘弯还老高的地方，也就是舞衣能盖住的地方，有一块红印。
“这是我为了证明我爱她才烧伤的。就是把铁尺在火上烧红，往这儿一按。”

◆ 2026/01/12发表想法    书里经常点出人们在日常和战争中行为的类似
原文：使罗斯托夫惊奇的是，杰尼索夫身着新制服，搽上发油，洒上香水，就像他临阵时那样，衣貌堂堂的在客厅里出现，

◆ “真是的，爸爸，我看巴格拉季翁公爵准备申格拉本战役还没有你们现在这么忙乎呢。”儿子微笑着说。

◆ “玛丽亚·伊万诺夫娜的儿子多洛霍夫，”她神秘地低声说，“据说，完全使她的名誉扫地。他救了他，请他到彼得堡家里住，可是……她来这儿，这个亡命徒也追随着她来了。”

◆ 但是过了一些时候，就像陪审官走出了议事厅，那些俱乐部的舆论权威人士又出现了，于是谈话又变得明确而且肯定。俄国人打了败仗，这么一件难以相信、骇人听闻、不可能的事情，其原因已经找到了，于是一切都弄清楚了，莫斯科各个角落都在讲着同样的话。这些原因就是：奥地利人的背信弃义，军粮供应太差，波兰人普热贝舍夫斯基和法国人朗热隆的背叛，库图佐夫的无能，以及（小声地谈论）皇上由于年轻缺乏经验而信任卑鄙小人。

◆ 巴格拉季翁之所以被选为英雄，还由于他在莫斯科没有人事关系，是一个陌生人。欢迎他，也就是欢迎战斗的、普通的、没有人事关系和阴谋诡计的、引起人们回忆苏沃洛夫远征意大利的俄国军人。此外，给他这样的荣誉，是对库图佐夫表示不欢迎和不赞成的最好办法。
“如果没有巴格拉季翁，也要捏造一个出来。”滑稽家申申摹仿伏尔泰的话，说。

◆ 斯托普钦的话：对待法国兵，须要用大话鼓舞士气；对待德国兵，要给他们说明道理，使他们相信逃跑比前进更危险；而对待俄国兵，非得劝阻他们：“慢一点！”

◆ 和另一个委员进来，托着一个大银盘递给巴格拉季翁公爵。银盘里放着一首为欢迎英雄编写的、并且印好的诗篇。巴格拉季翁一看见银盘，就惊愕地环顾左右，仿佛在求救似的。但是四面八方的目光都要求他接下银盘。巴格拉季翁感到自己在众人的权势之下，于是断然用两手接过银盘，悻悻地、责备地看了看送来银盘的伯爵。

◆ 为他奔走过，供养过他，帮衬过他，正因为如此，才使得他觉得败坏我的名誉，讥笑我，是一桩特别有趣的事。我知道而且了解，如果这是真的，在他看来这就会在他的欺骗上更增添一层趣味。是的，如果这是真的话；但是我不相信

◆ 斯托夫对皮埃尔侧目而视，这是因为，第一，在他那骠骑兵的眼光看来，皮埃尔是一个没有军籍的富翁，美人的丈夫，总之，是一个懦夫；

◆ “我母亲。我母亲。我的天使，我所崇拜的天使，母亲。”多洛霍夫握住罗斯托夫的手，哭了。等他稍微安静一些，他告诉罗斯托夫，他和母亲住在一起，如果母亲看见他行将死去，她是受不了的。他央求罗斯托夫先到她那里，使她有所准备。
罗斯托夫先去执行他的嘱托，使他大为惊异的是，多洛霍夫，这个暴徒，专好找人决斗的多洛霍夫，在莫斯科跟老母亲和一个驼背的姐姐住在一起，竟是一个十分柔顺的儿子和弟弟。

◆ 我为什么对她说：‘我爱您’？”他反反复复地对自己说。这个问题重复了十次，他忽然想起莫里哀的一句台词：“为什么要上那条船呢？” 于是他嘲笑起自己来了。

◆ “啊！玛丽亚公爵小姐！”他突然声音不自然地说，扔下凿子。轮子由于惯性仍在转动，玛丽亚公爵小姐后来长久地记得逐渐消失的轮子尖叫声，同接着发生的事在她记忆中融合起来。

◆ 乳娘说，“你看，我把公爵结婚的蜡烛拿来供在圣徒面前，我的天使。”

◆ 2026/01/13发表想法 对大家非常方便的迷信
原文：家中每个角落，每个人都满怀着公爵小姐在自己卧室里所感受的那种情绪。按照迷信的说法，知道产妇痛苦的人越少，她受的痛苦就越少，所以大家都极力装作不知道

◆ 她死了，仍然像五分钟前他看她的时候那样躺着，虽然眼珠凝然不动，双颊苍白，但是那可爱的孩童般的脸盘和盖一丛黑色茸毛的嘴唇，仍然是那么一副表情。
“我爱你们所有的人，对谁也没有做过坏事，你们怎么这样对待我啊？唉，你们怎么这样对待我啊？”她那秀丽的、可怜的僵冷面孔仿佛这么说。

◆ 保姆对他说，粘着孩子头发的蜡片在圣水里没有沉下去， 他赞许地点点头。

◆ 2026/01/13发表想法    联系下文他这话好讽刺
原文：我有一个值得崇拜的无价之宝的母亲、两三个朋友，你是其中的一个，至于别人，就只看他对我是有益还是有害了。

◆ 只有那些怀着初次穿上长舞衣的十三四岁小姑娘的心情，想来跳跳舞、寻欢作乐的人才来参加这个舞会。所有的人，绝少例外，都是漂亮的，或者好像是漂亮的：她们都是那么兴高采烈，目光都是那么神采飞扬。有时优秀的学生甚至跳披巾舞，娜塔莎舞姿优美，是她们之中最好的一个。但是，在这最后一次舞会中，只跳苏格兰舞、英格兰舞和刚刚流行的玛祖卡舞

◆ 娜塔莎从进入舞会那一刻起，就陷入恋爱状态。她不是爱上某一个特定的人，而是爱所有的人。不论她看见什么人，在她看他的那一刹那，她就爱上他一刹那。

◆ 他在等待音乐节拍，他得意地、诙谐地从侧面望了他的舞伴一眼，突然，一只脚轻轻一点，他就像皮球似的从地板上弹起来，飞也似地带着舞伴沿着圆圈旋舞。他用一只脚无声地飞过半个大厅，好像他没有看见他前面有椅子似的，一直向前冲去；可是忽然两支马刺碰了一下，两脚叉开，用脚跟站着，停了一秒钟，在原地跺了跺脚，飞快地转了几转，然后左脚碰击着右脚，又沿着圆圈滑走了。娜塔莎猜到了他要怎样做，连她自己也不知道为什么，总是不由自主地顺从他，跟着他走。

◆ 此刻，他的家庭生活——跟彼佳的玩笑，跟索尼娅的谈话，跟娜塔莎的二重唱，跟父亲的玩牌，甚至波瓦尔大街家里那张舒适的床铺——在他想象中都是那么生动有力、清晰迷人，就仿佛这一切已经成为久已过去、再也得不到的、异常宝贵的幸福。他不能设想愚弄人的运气竟然不得不把红桃七放在右边，而不是放在左边 ，以致使得他坠入从未体验过的不可知的灾难深渊。

◆ 多洛霍夫已经不听也不讲故事了，他注视着罗斯托夫的手的每一个动作，偶尔瞟一下他的欠账。他决定继续赌下去，直到罗斯托夫欠四万三千卢布为止。他所以要选这个数目，是因为这个数目是他和索尼娅两人年龄的总和。

◆ 可是在这个呼吸不正确、换气吃力的没有素养的歌喉正在歌唱的时候，甚至连那些专门鉴赏家也一声不响，只是聚精会神地欣赏这个没有素养的歌喉，只是渴望再听一次。在她的嗓音中那种处子的纯真，对自己的魅力的不自觉，以及未经琢磨的柔和声调，再加上歌唱技巧的缺陷，使人觉得，所有这一切的任何改变，都会把这个歌喉毁掉。

◆ “很多，”尼古拉红着脸、满不在乎地微笑着说，他对自己这种愚蠢的微笑，后来过了很久都不能原谅，“我输了一点钱，就是说，输了很多，四万三千卢布。”

◆ “有什么办法！谁都会碰到这种事。”儿子大胆放肆地说，而他内心却认为自己是个无赖和坏蛋，一生也赎不回自己的罪。他本想跪下来吻父亲的手求饶，可是他竟用满不在乎、甚至粗鲁的口气说谁都会碰到这种事。

◆ 在父子之间正进行这场谈话的时候，母女那边也发生了一场同样重要的谈话。神情激动的娜塔莎跑到母亲跟前。

第二部
◆ 不管他想什么，总要回到那些他不能解决也不能停止向自己提出的问题。仿佛他的头脑中有一颗支持他整个生命的螺丝钉拧坏了。它既拧不进也拔不出，老是在同一个刻槽里悬空打转，而且想停止它旋转也不可能。

◆ 2026/01/13发表想法 《指匠》里有一句几乎一样的话
原文：“她既然爱那个引诱她的人，为什么又要和他斗争？”他想，“上帝不会把违反他的旨意的欲望赋予她的灵魂的。我的前妻就不斗争，也许她是对的。

◆ “我从来不敢夸口说我知道真理，”共济会员说，他那言词的明确和坚定，越来越使皮埃尔惊讶，“任何人都不能独自得到真理；只有在所有的人参加下，经过千秋万代，经过始祖亚当直到当代，一块石头一块石头地积累，才能建成一座配得上伟大天主居住的宫殿。”

◆ 人要想把这种科学据为己有，必须洗清和革新他的内心，因此，首先不是要知道，而是要皈依和进行自我修养。为了达到这些目的，我们灵魂中有上帝的光，即所谓良心。”

◆ 2026/01/13发表想法    这里好登…
原文：后来您结了婚，先生，负起管好年轻夫人的责任，可是您做了什么呢？您没有帮助她走向一条通往真理的道路，先生，而是把她推入流言蜚语和不幸的深渊。

◆ 维拉尔斯基从柜子里取出一条手绢蒙上皮埃尔的眼睛，在他脑后打个结子，头发怪疼地夹进结子里

◆ “我……希望……指导……帮助我……新生。”皮埃尔说，由于激动和不习惯用俄语讲抽象的东西，

◆ 7）爱死亡。
“第七条，”训导师说，“要时刻想着死亡，努力做到使自己觉得死亡不再是可怕的敌人，而是朋友……它能把因修德而疲倦的灵魂从灾难的现世生活解脱出来，把它引入幸福和安宁的境界。”

◆ 他忽然怀疑起来：“我在什么地方？我在干什么？人家会不会笑话我？以后回忆起这些事的时候，我会不会觉得羞愧？”但怀疑只持续一瞬间。皮埃尔看了看他周围人的严肃面孔，想起他已经做过的一切，于是他理解到他不能半途而废。他对自己的怀疑吓了一跳，努力在内心唤起先前那种感动的心情，向圣殿的大门躺下来。

◆ 要想官运亨通，可以不需要努力和劳心，不需要勇敢，也不需要忠实不渝，只要善于同掌握升降大权的人搞好关系就行了，因此他常常为自己的迅速成功而感到惊奇，同时也为别人竟然不了解这个道理而感到惊奇。

◆ 比利宾当时是以外交官的身份待在军部里，他的信虽然是用法语写的，而且是用法国式的俏皮话和法语的特别表达方法，但是他在自责和自嘲方面，却以俄国式的大无畏精神描述了整个战役。

◆ 我的免职，只不过是一个瞎子离开军队，不会引起丝毫的波动，像我这样的人，在俄国何止成千上万。”
元帅生皇上的气，因而惩罚我们每个人，这完全合乎逻辑！

◆ 我们文职人员，您是知道的，判断战争的胜负有一个很坏的习惯。战斗结束时谁退却谁就是打输了，根据这个道理，所以我们说，普图斯克战役是我们吃了败仗。

◆ 在这主帅未定期间，我们开始了一连串的极为奇特和有趣的军事运动。我们的作战方案不再是它应有的那样——回避或者进攻敌人，而是一味回避在职位上应是我们的长官的布克斯格夫登将军。我们是那么拼命地追求这个目的，甚至过一条无法涉水过去的河，然后就把桥梁烧掉，为的是摆脱我们的敌人，这敌人现时不是波拿巴，而是布克斯格夫登。

◆ 皇上准备授权各师长就地枪决匪兵，可是我非常担心，这样会使一半军队枪毙另一半军队。

◆ 另一些主管在恐惧了一阵之后，发现皮埃尔口齿不清的发音和他们从未听过的新名词怪有趣的；还有一些主管觉得听主人讲话简直是一种娱乐；第四类主管是一些聪明人，其中包括总管，他们从这些话里懂得了要怎样应付主人才能达到自己的目的。
总管对皮埃尔的意图表示极大的同情；但是他说，除了这些改革外，必须整顿情况欠佳的业务。

◆ 皮埃尔缺少那种亲自管事的实干毅力，所以他不喜欢业务，只不过是在总管面前装作他在处理业务。总管在伯爵面前也极力假装处理这些业务对主人非常有利，而对他本人却是个难题。

◆ 他不知道，按照他的命令不再派喂奶的妇女服徭役，而她们在自己的份地上却在做最苦的活儿。他不知道，那个手持十字架去迎接他的神甫，对农奴课以重税，压榨他们的膏脂，他所招收的学生是学生的父母流着眼泪送到他那儿，然后又用大笔金钱赎回来。他不知道，按照统一图样建造房子，是由农奴出的劳动力，因而加重了农奴的徭役，减轻徭役只不过是在纸上说说而已。他不知道，主管给他看的帐簿上表明，遵照他的意志，代役租减了三分之一，而实际徭役租却增加了一半。因此，皮埃尔对他巡视田庄感到心满意足，完全恢复他离开彼得堡时那种乐善好施的心情

◆ “是的，我们都知道，自己认为是恶的事情，不能施加于人。”安德烈公爵越来越兴奋了，看来他想对皮埃尔说出自己的新观点。他用法语说：“我认为，在生活中只有两种实在的不幸：受良心责备和疾病。只要没有这两件坏事，就是幸福。我活着，光为了避免这两件坏事，这就是我现在的全部哲学。”

◆ 我曾经这样生活过，我为自己活着，结果毁了自己的生活。只有现在，当我为别人，至少我是努力（为了表示谦虚，皮埃尔修正了一下）为别人活着的时候，只有现在我才懂得生活的幸福。

◆ 你说你过去为自己生活，几乎因此毁掉了你的生活，只有为别人而活着的时候，才找到幸福。可是，我的经验正相反。我过去为名誉而活着。（究竟什么是名誉呢？其实也是爱别人，想为别人做点事，希望得到别人的称赞。）我是这样为别人而生活的结果不是几乎，而是完全毁掉了自己的生活。自从我只为我个人而生活以后，我的心就平静得多了。”

◆ 他指着一个脱下帽子从他们身旁走过的农奴，说，“从禽兽的状况挽救出来，并且满足他精神的需要，可是我认为，唯一可能的幸福就是禽兽的幸福，可是你呢，偏要剥夺他这种幸福。我羡慕他，而你想把他弄成我这个样子，可是又不把我的财产给他。

◆ “干吗不洗脸啊，太不卫生了，”安德烈公爵说，“相反，要尽力使自己过得愉快一些。我活着，这不是罪过，所以说，我不妨害任何人，尽可能活得好些，直到老死。”

◆ 解放农奴对于另外一些人才是需要的，他们在精神上陷于崩溃，内心郁积了很多悔恨，可是又极力压抑着，但由于有权实行公正和不公正的惩罚，而变得粗暴残酷。我是可怜这些人，为了他们，我赞成解放农奴。也许你没见过，我可见过，那些享有世袭的无限权力的好人们，随着年龄的增长，越来越变得暴戾

◆ 2026/01/14发表想法    嗯，又是看到后面会觉得讽刺的话
原文：除了这个共济会，到处都充满了虚伪和荒谬，

◆ 可是在宇宙中，在整个宇宙中，有一个真理的王国，我们现在是尘世的儿女，但从永恒来看，我们是整个宇宙的儿女。难道我在自己的灵魂中没有感觉到我是这个巨大而和谐的整体的一部分吗？难道我没有感觉到我是在这作为上帝化身的许许多多的生物之中（您可以把上帝看作是至高无上的力量）从最低级生物到最高级生物中间的一个环节，一个阶梯吗？如果我看见，确实看见从植物到人这部梯子，为什么我要设想这部梯子从我这里中断，而不是通向更远更远的地方呢？

◆ “如果有上帝，有来世，那么就有善和真；人生的最大幸福就在于追求善和真。要活着，要爱，要信仰，”皮埃尔说，

◆ 他一面离开渡船，一面望了望皮埃尔指给他看的天空，在奥斯特利茨战役后，他第一次又看见了他躺在奥斯特利茨战场上看见的那个崇高的永恒的天空，那种久已沉睡在他心中的美好的感情，忽然欢乐地、青春焕发地在他心灵中苏醒了。

◆ 老公爵带着讽刺的口吻反驳他，但是并不生气。
“把血管里的血抽出来，都注上水，那时就不会有战争了。妇道人家的胡说，妇道人家的胡说。”

◆ 没有可以用各种方式来消磨一昼夜的二十四小时；没有既不亲近也不疏远的无数人；没有跟父亲不明不白、不清不楚的金钱关系；没有输给多洛霍夫那么多钱的回忆！在这里，在团队里，一切都是简单明了。整个世界分成两个不相等的部分：一部分是保罗格勒团队，另一部分是团队以外的一切。

◆ 保罗格勒团杰尼索夫骑兵连的士兵们仍然主要吃这种甜根，因为最后一次发给每人的半俄斤面包干已经过了一个多星期了，新近送来的马铃薯是发了芽的，都冻坏了。
军马也有一个多星期只靠屋顶的茅草维持生命，瘦得不像样子，自入冬以来，毛就纠成一团团的。

◆ 土窑是用当时流行的方法建成的：先挖一条沟——宽一俄尺 半，深二俄尺，长三俄尺半。沟的一头做成台阶，这是入口和门廊；沟本身就是房间，幸运一点的（骑兵连就是这样的），在对着台阶的另一头，用几根木桩架一块木板当桌子。

◆ 杰尼索夫算是阔气的，因为他连里的士兵都爱他，三角山墙上有一块木板，木板上嵌着一块粘起来的破玻璃。天太冷的时候，从士兵的篝火里用铁片兜一些炭火放到台阶下面（杰尼索夫把土窑的这一部分叫做接待室），土窑因此暖洋洋的

◆ “骑墙的狗，骑墙的活狗。”杰尼索夫在他后面说，这是骑兵对骑马的步兵最辛辣的嘲笑。

◆ ——我说，‘拿了粮食喂饱自己的士兵，不是抢劫，拿了粮食装到自己的腰包里，才是抢劫！’好。他说，‘您到军需那儿打个收条，不过您的案子要转到司令部的。

◆ “我们已经请求过，大人，”那个老兵下巴颏直打哆嗦，说，“今天一早就死了。我们是人，不是狗……”
“马上就叫人来抬走，抬走。”医助急忙说，“咱们走吧，大人。”

◆ 图申，在申格拉本是我送您来着，您还记得吧？我短了一截儿，您瞧……”他让罗斯托夫看他那只空空的袖筒，微笑着说。“您是找瓦西里·德米特里奇·杰尼索夫吗？和我住在一起！

◆ “看来，鞭子是打不断斧背的。”他说，他离开窗口，把一个大信封交给罗斯托夫。这是军法检察官拟的给皇上的呈文，其中并没有军需处的责任，只是请求赦免。
“你给转上去吧，看来……”他没有说下去，苦笑了一下。

◆ “您是说拿破仑吧？”那位将军微笑着对他说。
鲍里斯用疑问的目光看了将军一眼，他立刻明白了，将军的话是戏谑的试探。
“公爵，我是说拿破仑皇帝。”他回答说。将军含着微笑拍了拍他的肩膀。
“你的前程远大。”将军对他说，并且答应带着他。

◆ 鲍里斯竟然来到了蒂尔西特，所以他感到他的地位从此就完全稳固了。人们不仅都认识他，而且常常看见他，对他完全习惯了。他曾经两次因执行任务而面见皇上，因此皇上已经认得他的面孔

◆ 罗斯托夫和他所在的部队在对待拿破仑和法国人的态度上，还远远没有形成总部和鲍里斯身上所发生的这种化敌为友的转变过程。对波拿巴和法国人的愤恨、蔑视和恐惧的混合感情仍然在军队中持续着。

◆ 厌烦的表情已经从鲍里斯的脸上消失了；看来，他已经考虑好，并且决定怎么办，他特别镇静地握起他的双手，领他到隔壁房间。鲍里斯那对镇静而坚定地望着罗斯托夫的眼睛，仿佛蒙着一层东西，仿佛被一副世故的蓝色眼镜遮住了。

◆ 仿佛拿破仑知道，只要他拿破仑的手往那个士兵的胸前碰一碰，那个士兵就会永远幸福，就是得了赏赐，就是天下最了不起的人。拿破仑刚把那枚十字勋章贴到拉扎列夫的胸前，就松了手，向亚历山大转过身去，就好像他知道勋章应当粘到拉扎列夫的胸前。勋章果然粘上了。因为几只俄国的和法国的殷勤的手，一下子就接住勋章，把它挂到军服上。

◆ 他现在竟如身临其境似的感觉到医院里死尸的气味，甚至使他向四周环顾，想弄清楚这气味是从哪里来的。他时而想起自鸣得意的波拿巴和他那只白胖的小手，他现在是受到亚历山大皇帝爱戴的一国的皇帝。锯断胳膊和腿，把人打死，究竟为了什么呢？

第三部
◆ 一八〇九年，拿破仑和亚历山大两位所谓当代主宰的关系已经如此亲密，这一年拿破仑对奥地利宣战时，俄国军团竟开赴国外协助昔日的敌人波拿巴以反对昔日的盟友奥皇；

◆ 皮埃尔想做的那些田庄改革的措施，由于他总是朝三暮四，结果一无所成，而安德烈公爵毫不张扬，也没有费很大的力气，就完成了这些改革的措施。
他非常富于那种为皮埃尔所欠缺的抓紧工作的本领，

◆ 只有它对春天的魅力不愿屈服，既不愿看见春天，也不愿看见太阳。
“春天，还有什么爱情，幸福！”这棵橡树似乎在说，“你们对这老一套毫无意义的愚蠢欺骗怎么不觉得厌倦呀！永远是这么一套，永远是欺骗！

◆ 老橡树在安德烈公爵心中引起了一连串绝望的、然而令人愉快的淡淡的愁思。在这次旅途中，他仿佛重新把自己的一生思考了一遍，又得出从前那个心安理得的绝望的结论：他已经无所求，既不做什么坏事，也不惊扰自己，不抱任何希望，度过自己的后半生。

◆ 他刚一打开护窗板，月光仿佛久已警惕地守候在窗外，立刻闯了进来。... 黑色的树木更远的地方，有一个露水闪亮的屋顶，右首有一棵枝条曲卷的、干和枝又白又亮的树，树的上面，在几乎没有星星的明朗的春天的天空中，悬挂一轮快要浑圆的满月，他臂肘倚着窗台，眼睛注视着天空。

◆ 那个靠近窗口的第一个声音回答说。显然她整个人都探出窗外，因为可以听见她的衣裳的沙沙声，甚至听见她呼吸的声音。周围一切，就像月亮和它的光和影，寂静无声，凝然不动。安德烈也不敢动弹，怕暴露他并非有意在旁听。

◆ “不，你瞧瞧月亮！……咳，真美呀！你到这儿来。亲爱的，我的好姐姐，到这儿来吧。你可知道？就这么蹲着，就这么蹲着，把膝盖抱得紧紧的，尽可能地抱紧，整个人都缩得紧紧的，——这样就会飞起来了。

◆ 2026/01/14发表想法 这里的口是心非可以和尼古拉向他父亲承认赌债时的轻描淡写～
原文：他反复地思考那些不合理的、非言语所能表达的、像犯罪一般秘密的思想，这些思想是与改变了他的全部生活的皮埃尔、荣誉、坐在窗口的少女、老橡树、女人的美貌和爱情分不开的。每当这样的时刻，如果有人进来见他，他总是特别冷淡、严厉、专断，尤其令人不愉快地讲些枯燥无味的道理。

◆ 正在拟定两道十分著名和震动社会的法令——关于废除宫内官阶和关于八等文官和五等文官考试的法令，而且正在制定整部的国家宪法，这部宪法付诸实施后，将改变上至枢密院下至乡公所现存俄国的司法、行政和财政制度。现在亚历山大皇帝正在实现他在登极时所怀抱的自由主义理想

◆ 他这时在彼得堡的心情，就好像在战斗前夕所感受的一样，有一种不安的好奇心折磨着他，不可抗拒地驱使他到最高统治阶层中去，那里所做的一切关系着千百万人未来的命运。

◆ 在一八〇九这一年，在彼得堡这个地方，正在酝酿一场大规模的国内战争，这场战争的总指挥是他所不认识的、颇为神秘的、在他心目中认为很有天才的人——斯佩兰斯基。

◆ 就像一般人那样，特别像那些对别人严格要求的人那样，安德烈公爵和一个人刚见面，特别是和这位久闻大名的斯佩兰斯基刚见面，他总是期待在他身上找到完美的人类品质。

◆ “我是孟德斯鸠的崇拜者，”安德烈公爵说，“他的思想是君主政体的基础是荣誉，我觉得这是无可怀疑的。在我看来，贵族的某些权利和特权是支持这种荣誉感的手段。”

◆ 他那么希望在某个人身上发现他所追求的至美至善的活的理想人物，因此他轻易就相信，他在斯佩兰斯基身上找到了一个十分有理性、有道德的理想人物。如果斯佩兰斯基的出身和安德烈公爵一样，教养和道德观念也一样，那么博尔孔斯基就会很快发现他的弱点，发现一般人常有的非英雄的一面，可是现在这个头脑清晰、令他惊异的人，正因为不为他全然了解，更加使他肃然起敬

◆ 此外还有那双白净滑腻的手——就像一般人通常喜欢看掌权的人的手那样，安德烈公爵不由得老看他的手。清澈的目光和白嫩的手不知为什么烦扰着安德烈公爵。还有使安德烈公爵吃惊而且不愉快的是他发现斯佩兰斯基对人过份藐视

◆ 才开始觉得，他越是想在共济会这块土地上站稳，他脚下这块土地就越是往下沉。同时他觉得，他脚下这块土地陷得越深，他就更不由自主地依赖这块土地。

◆ 有很多会友，特别是近来新加入的会员，归入最后一类，第四类。据皮埃尔观察，这些人并没有什么信仰，也没有什么志愿，他们进共济会只不过为了结交达官贵人以及年轻富有的会友，在支会里有很多这样的人。

◆ 简而言之，必须建立一个具有普遍权威的统治形式，把它推广到全世界，同时并不破坏世俗的制度，一切别的统治形式照常进行，只是不得妨碍本会的伟大目标实现——使德行战胜罪恶。

◆ 在这次会议上，皮埃尔第一次感到吃惊的是人类的头脑无穷无尽的多样性，以致任何真理在两个人的理解中都不一样。甚至和他站在一边的人，对他的理解也各有不同，带有一定的限度和改变，

◆ 由于我们的不纯净而不配去了解秘密，要么我们去从事人类的完善，而我们自己却是卑鄙和放荡的坏典型。光明教之所以不是纯洁的教派，正因为它热衷于社会活动和骄傲得了不得。

◆ 只有在尘世的纷扰中，我们才能达到三个主要的目的：一，自知，因为人只有通过比较才能认识自己；二，自我完善，只有通过斗争才能达到；三，获得主要的德行——爱死亡。只有人生的无常才能向我们展示人生的虚妄，并且能够促使我们对死亡和对获得新生的自然爱好。’

◆ 他在这些晚会上所体验的感觉，就像魔术家每次表演时都怕自己的骗术随时都有被戳穿的可能的那种感觉。但是，不知道是因为主持这种客厅正需要愚蠢呢，还是因为受欺骗的人在这种骗术中找到了乐趣，反正骗术始终没有被揭穿，海伦·瓦西里耶夫娜·别祖霍娃所享有的又可爱又聪明的女人的声誉毫不动摇

◆ 被接纳入会的是鲍里斯·德鲁别茨科伊。我是他的介绍人，又是他的训导师。当我和他单独在一间黑暗的圣堂的时候，有一种奇怪的感情使我很不安。我发现我对他怀有仇恨，

◆ 三位一体，是物质的三元素——硫磺、水银和盐。硫磺具有油与火的性质；它以其火力与盐相结合，便引起盐的强烈欲望，由于有了这种欲望就吸引水银，捉住它不放，于是共同生出每件其他物体。水银是流动的、容易飞散的精神元素——基督，圣灵，他。”

◆ 2026/01/14发表想法 ‘burn with longing to caress him’ 的他是教P教义的约瑟夫·阿列克谢耶维奇
原文：随后我们忽然来到我的卧室里，那里摆着一张双人床。他躺在床边上，我非常想和他亲热一下，也想躺在那里。

◆ 在彼得堡他们是被人瞧不起的外省人，而那些瞧不起他们的人，不管他们是属于哪个社会的，在莫斯科都曾受到罗斯托夫家的款待。

◆ 他对每个人都讲这件事，讲得冗长而且不厌其烦，使得每个人都相信应当那样做，——于是他因为参加芬兰战争又得到两枚勋章。

◆ 一个利沃尼亚地方无名小贵族的儿子，竟然向罗斯托娃伯爵小姐求婚，起初未免令人奇怪；可是贝格的性格的主要特点是：他那自私自利表现得那么天真，那么憨厚，使得罗斯托夫家的人们不由地觉得，既然他本人有这么大的信心，认为这是一件好事，甚至是一件大好事，那么这一定是一件好事。

◆ 贝格对他的一个同事说，他把这个人叫作朋友，仅仅因为他知道人人都得有个朋友，

◆ 就是有点不合我的口味——他是那么窄，窄得像饭厅里的钟……您明白吗？……太窄，您知道吧，颜色发灰，太浅……”
“你瞎说什么！”伯爵夫人说。
娜塔莎继续说：
“您真的不懂吗？要是尼古拉就会懂得……别祖霍夫——他是蓝的，深蓝中带红的颜色，而且他是四方形的。”

◆ 用第三人称来谈论自己，她心中想象谈论她的人是一个非常聪明、聪明透顶、最好的男人……“她身上什么都有，什么都有，”这个男人继续说，“非常聪明，可爱，而且漂亮，非常漂亮，灵活——游泳、骑马，样样都擅长，还有那副嗓子！可以说，是一副奇妙的嗓子！”于是她唱了唱她所喜爱的凯鲁比尼 歌剧中的乐句，纵身扑到床上，她一想到她马上就进入梦乡，高兴得笑起来，

◆ 她极力摆出她认为一位小姐在舞会上必须有的端庄凝重的风度。可是，幸好这时她感到眼花缭乱：她的眼睛模糊了，她的脉搏每分钟跳一百次，血液突突地鼓荡着她的心脏。她未能做出那种会使她显得可笑的样子，

◆ 起海伦的肩膀，她的肩膀就太瘦了，胸部不够丰满，手臂纤细；但海伦的身体由于被千百双眼睛玩赏过，仿佛涂了一层油漆，而娜塔莎还是初次袒胸露臂的少女，

◆ 她那微笑就在他眼前，她那杯富于魅力的美酒，立刻冲上他的头脑：

◆ 像所有在上流社会长大的人那样，安德烈公爵喜欢在上流社会中看见那不带上流社会共有的烙印的事物。娜塔莎的惊奇、喜悦和羞怯的神情，甚至说法语时的错误，正是具有这样的特点

◆ “如果她先找表姐，然后找另一个女伴，她将要做我的妻子。”安德烈公爵望着她，完全出乎意外地自言自语说。她先到表姐面前。
“有时头脑里冒出多么无聊的念头！”安德烈公爵想道，

◆ 他这种人选择派别就像选择衣服一样，只选时髦的，正因为这样，这种人成为某些派别最热烈的倡导者。他

◆ 安德烈公爵听着斯佩兰斯基的笑声，看着大笑的他，感到很惊讶，由于失望而产生了悒郁。安德烈公爵似乎觉得这不是斯佩兰斯基，而是另一个人。斯佩兰斯基先前在安德烈公爵心目中引起的神秘感和魅力，现在忽然变得一目了然和索然无味了。

◆ 饭后，斯佩兰斯基的女儿和她的女教师站起来。斯佩兰斯基用他那白净的手抚摸女儿，吻吻她。安德烈公爵觉得他这个动作也不自然。

◆ 2026/01/15发表想法 前面某作战计划也是被先来后到了
原文：他的已经被当作参考材料的陆军操典草案的遭遇，他的草案之所以不予考虑，仅仅因为另外有一个不像样的草案已经写好，并且呈给了皇上

◆ “皮埃尔说得对，他说，要想幸福，就应当相信幸福是可能的，我现在相信他的话。任凭死人埋葬他们的死人 ，而我活着一天，就应当生活，而且生活得幸福。”

◆ 贝格拿他的妻子来衡量所有的女人，认为她们都是懦弱无能而且愚蠢的；而薇拉则把她对她丈夫一个人的看法推而广之，认为所有的男人都以为只有自己聪明，其实都是最无知的，都是狂妄自大，而且自私成性。
贝格站起来拥抱妻子，怕把他花了很多钱买的花边披肩弄皱，

◆ 看见客厅中人来人往，听见那些不连贯的谈话声、衣衫的沙沙声和寒暄声，贝格和薇拉抑制不住欢喜的微笑。像所有的晚会一样，应有尽有，

◆ 薇拉继续说（正像一般浅薄的人，总喜欢议论我们的时代，认为他们已经发现并且能够评价我们时代的特点，认为人的禀性随着时代在起着变化）

◆ 他一定使父亲同意这桩亲事并且喜爱她，或者，即使得不到他的同意，也要办成功，可是，他说了这些后，又感到惊奇，惊奇他自己竟然有这样奇怪的、陌生的、不以他为转移的感情。

◆ 在他行将就木的时候，他不愿意生活有什么变化，在生活中多添什么新的东西。“让我按照自己的意愿以终晚年吧，以后再随你们的便吧。”老头子自言自语。然而这次和儿子谈话，他还是用了那遇见重大问题才用的外交手腕。他扯着从容不迫的腔调，对问题做了全面的考察。

◆ “难道这个陌生人现在真的成为我的一切了？”她自问，随即回答道：“是的，一切：他现在是世上我唯一最宝贵的人。”安德烈公爵垂下眼睑，走到她跟前。

◆ 在他心中已经找不到先前对她的爱情。他内心忽然起了一个变化：先前那种诗意的、神秘的憧憬魅力没有了，取而代之的是对她那妇孺的软弱性的怜悯，对她那无限忠诚和信任的畏惧，以及由于他和她将要永远结合在一起而产生的又沉重又欢快的责任感。目前这种感情虽然不像先前那么光辉灿烂和富有诗意，然而却更严肃，更强有力。

第四部
◆ 道德观念不允许我们无所事事而又心安理得。一个秘密的呼声在说：无所事事就是犯罪。如果人类能达到一种境界，他既能悠闲自得，又能觉得自己有益，而且是在履行义务，那么，他就找到了原始幸福的一个方面。整整一个阶层——军人阶层，就是享有这种既悠闲又不受惩罚的境界的。这种必须遵守而不受惩罚的悠闲，过去是，将来仍然是，从军的主要乐趣。

◆ 米坚卡从六级台阶上飞也似地冲下来，一直冲向花坛。（这个花坛是奥特拉德诺耶犯罪的人有名的避难所。米坚卡吃醉酒从城里回来，他本人就是躲在这个花坛里的，许多在这儿躲米坚卡的奥特拉德诺耶居民，都知道这个花坛的庇护效能。）

◆ 什么农民呀，银钱呀，转账呀，全都见鬼去吧，”他想，“怎么押注，我早就内行，至于什么转账，我一窍不通。”他对自己说，从此他不再过问家务。只是有一次，伯爵夫人把儿子叫来，对他说，她有一张安娜·米哈伊洛夫娜的二千卢布的期票，问尼古拉怎么办。

◆ 八月底，山巅和树林在冬麦的黑土田地和禾茬中间还是一些绿洲，这时在嫩绿的冬麦中间，已经变为金黄和鲜红之洲了。野兔的毛已经换了一半，小狐狸也开始出窝了，狼仔已经长得像狗一样大小。这是狩猎的最好季节。

◆ 再没有比今天早上的天气更适于打猎的了：天空仿佛在融化，平静无风地向地面降落。天空中唯一移动的东西，就是烟尘或者是雾霭的微粒静悄悄地下降。花园里秃树枝上挂着晶莹的水珠，坠落在刚刚落下的树叶上。菜园的土地有如罂粟花黑亮湿润，在不远的地方，和灰暗的潮湿雾幕融为一体。

◆ 带着只有猎人才有的独立自主和藐视一切的表情。他在主人面前脱下切尔克斯高顶帽，轻蔑地望着他。这种轻蔑的态度并没有使主人觉得受辱：尼古拉知道，这个蔑视一切、高出一切的丹尼洛，仍然是他的奴仆和猎人。

◆ 别看丹尼洛个子不高，看见他站在书房里却给人这么一个印象，仿佛看见在周围都是家具和人类生活必需设备的地板上站着一匹马或者一头熊。

◆ 大约出动了一百三十只狗，二十名骑马的猎人，向田野进发。
每只狗都认识自己的主人，知道呼号。每个猎人都知道自己份内的事、把守的地点和担负的任务。大队人马刚走出菜园，就听不见一点喧哗声和谈话声，均匀地、肃静地沿着通往奥特拉德诺耶森林的大路和田野散开。

◆ 2026/01/15发表想法  忽然猜测这样的天适于打猎是因为雾气可以吸收声波，猎马等动静小些
原文：马在田野上行走，就像在松软的地毯上行走一样，有时走过大路上的水洼，发出噗哧噗哧的声音。雾濛濛的天空，仍然悄悄地、均匀地向地面下降；

◆ 此人胡须花白，身穿肥大的女长衣，头戴尖顶帽。这是名叫纳斯塔西娅·伊万诺夫娜 的小丑。

◆ “您的这只母狗不错！”他用随随便便的口气说，“跑得快吗？”
“这只母狗吗？是的，是只好狗，能捉野兽。”伊拉金用漫不经心的腔调说他的红花叶尔扎，这只狗是他去年用三户农奴从邻人那儿换来的。

◆ “叶尔扎尼卡 ！好朋友！”传来伊拉金变了腔的要哭的声音。叶尔扎不懂他的祈求。就在它眼看要抓住灰兔的一刹那，灰兔猛地一扭身，滚到麦田和禾茬地之间的界沟里去了。

◆ 托盘里有草药酒、露酒、腌蘑菇、乳浆黑麦饼、鲜蜜、蜜酒、苹果、生核桃、炒核桃以及蜜饯核桃。然后阿尼西娅·费奥多罗夫娜又端来蜜果酱、糖果浆、火腿、刚烤好的子鸡。
这一切都是阿尼西娅·费奥多罗夫娜的经营、收集、制作。这一切都散发着阿尼西娅·费奥多罗夫娜的气息，都有一点她的味道。一切都新鲜，清洁，白净，带有愉快的微笑。

◆ 再来一个，劳驾，再来一个。”三弦琴刚停下来，娜塔莎就对着那扇门喊道。米季卡调了调琴，又奏起芭勒娘舞曲，带有颤音和变奏。大叔坐在那儿谛听，歪着头，含着一丝笑意。芭勒娘舞曲的旋律重复上百次。调了好几次弦，又弹起那个曲调，听的人总也听不厌，只是想再听一次，再听一次。

◆ 这个受过法籍家庭女教师教育的伯爵小姐是何时何地、又是怎样从她呼吸的俄罗斯空气中汲取了这种精神的？而且从其中得到了早已被pɑs de châle挤掉的舞姿？而这正是大叔所期待于她的那种学不来教不会的俄罗斯的精神和舞姿。她刚一站稳，微微含笑，那神态庄严、高傲、狡黠、欢乐，顷刻之间，尼古拉和所有在场的人最初那阵担心——担心她做得不像那么一回事——就完全消失了，而且他们在欣赏她了。
她做得正像那么回事，而且是那么地道，简直丝毫不爽，阿尼西娅·费奥多罗夫娜立刻递给她一条为了做得更好必不可少的手帕，她透过笑声流出了眼泪：这个陌生的有教养的伯爵小姐，身材纤细，举止文雅，满身绫罗绸缎，竟能体会到阿尼西娅的内心世界，以及阿尼西娅的父亲、婶婶、大娘，每一个俄罗斯人的内心世界。

◆ 大叔是按照老百姓的唱法唱的，他天真地坚信，只有歌词才是一支歌的全部意义，至于曲调，自然而然就会形成的，离开歌词的曲调是没有的，而曲调不过是为了有节奏罢了。就是这样，大叔无意中唱出的曲调，如同鸟唱歌一样，也是非常悦耳的。娜塔莎听了大叔的歌唱，欢欣若狂。她决定不再学竖琴，以后只弹吉他。她从大叔手里拿过吉他，立刻就找到这支歌的和弦。

◆ 猎队依旧，而且被尼古拉扩大了，马厩依旧养着五十匹马和十五名车夫；命名日依旧有贵重的礼物和宴请全县的盛大筵席；伯爵的威斯特和波士顿牌局仍然不可缺少，他让大家都能看见他的牌，每天让邻人赢去数百卢布，而邻人把同伊利亚·安德烈伊奇伯爵斗牌看作一项最好的收入。

◆ 全家没有一个人像娜塔莎这样打发这么多的人和交代这么多的事了。她看见人不支使他们做点什么就不甘心。她仿佛要试试他们之中有没有人生她的气或者对她不满，但人们再没有比执行娜塔莎的命令那么乐意的了。“我做什么好呢？我去哪儿好呢？”

◆ 娜塔莎好像是在巡视自己的王国，试了试她的权威，证实人人都是顺从的，可是仍然觉得无聊；她走进大厅，拿起吉他，坐在柜子后面黑暗的角落里，开始拨弄低音弦，弹她在彼得堡同安德烈公爵一起听过的歌剧中的乐句。

◆ 她那母性的敏感告诉她，在娜塔莎身上有太多太多的东西，这将使她得不到幸福。

◆ 索尼娅的化装最好。她的小胡子和眉毛对她非常合适。大家都说她很好看，她今天特别活跃和精神饱满，她这种情绪是从来没有的。

◆ 后面咯咯吱吱响起了其余的雪橇。先是在狭窄的路上小跑。在经过花园时，光秃秃的树影常常横断道路，遮住明亮的月光，但是一走出垣墙，整个浴在月光中一动不动的雪原，钻石似的发出淡蓝色的闪光，向四外伸展开来。一颠，又一颠，前头的雪橇驶过一个坑洼；跟着，后面的也照样颠了两下，四辆雪橇威风凛凛，冲破禁锢着的沉寂，渐渐拉开了距离。

◆ 尼古拉大喝一声，提提缰绳，挥舞着鞭子。只有从仿佛迎面吹来的越来越大的风声、拉紧套索和逐渐加快跃进步伐的边马的牵动，才使人明显地感到雪橇飞驶得多么快。

◆ 她尽量设法不使女儿们烦闷。当前厅响起来客的脚步声和说话声的时候，女儿们正在安静地滴蜡烛油，然后观看凝结的各种形状的影子。
骠骑兵、老太太、巫婆、小丑、狗熊，在前厅清清嗓子，擦掉脸上冻结的霜，然后进入人们急忙点起蜡烛的大厅。小丑季姆勒和老太婆尼古拉带头跳起舞来。被吵吵嚷嚷的孩子们围起来的化装的人，遮着脸，改变了声音，向女主人请安行礼，然后在室内散开来。

◆ “在仓库里怎么算卦？”索尼娅问。
“现在就可以去试试，到仓库里去听声音。你如果听到敲敲打打的响声，就不好，听到装粮的声音，就是吉兆；有时也有……”

◆ 尼古拉都不离索尼娅的身边，并且对她完全另眼相看。他觉得，多亏这个软木炭小胡子，他今天才第一次完全认识她。索尼娅这天晚上的确是尼古拉从未见她这么快乐、活跃、漂亮。

◆ 室外仍然是凝然不动的严寒，仍然是明月当空，只是更亮了。光亮是那么强，雪地上的星星是那么多，简直使人不愿仰望天空，天上真正的星星反倒暗淡无光。天空是黑暗的，寂寞的，地上是快乐的。

◆ 索尼娅裹着皮袄走来了。她走到离他只有两步远的地方才看见他；她看见一个不是她平时认识并且有点害怕的那个人。他穿着女人衣裳，头发乱蓬蓬的，面带幸福的、索尼娅从未见过的微笑。她赶快跑到他身边。
“完全换了一个人，可仍然是原来的样子。”尼古拉望着完全被月光照亮的脸，心里想。

第五部
◆ 他就觉得到了自己家里，到了一个风平浪静的港湾。在莫斯科居住有如穿上一件旧长衫，舒适、温暖、肮脏。

◆ 皮埃尔是一个最可爱、善良、聪明、快乐、心胸宽广的怪人，是一个漫不经心而待人热诚的老式的俄罗斯贵族。他的钱袋经常是空的，因为它对每个人都是敞开着的。

◆ 如果不是有两个借过他很多钱的朋友自动来监护他的话，他准得把一切都分个精光不可。

◆ 拿破仑·波拿巴在他还是一位伟人时，人人都鄙视他，可是当他变成可怜的小丑以后，弗朗茨皇帝却把自己的女儿献给他当情妇。西班牙人通过天主教感谢上帝，因为六月十四日他们打败了法国人，而法国人为了他们六月十四日打败西班牙人也同样通过天主教向上帝感恩。我的共济会会友们用血宣誓，他们准备为邻人牺牲一切，可是他们为贫民捐款连一个卢布也不肯出

◆ 皮埃尔想。他具有许多人，特别是俄罗斯人，所有的那种不幸的能力：看出和相信善和真的可能性，同时对生活中的罪恶和虚伪又看得过于清楚，以致失去认真生活的勇气。

◆ 每当这时，他仍然能使全体客人肃然起敬。在来访者眼中，那座老式的宅第和其中高大的壁镜、古老的家具、扑过粉的仆人，以及严峻而精明的老人（他本人就是上一世纪的老古董）和他那十分崇敬他的温良的女儿和好看的法国女人，这一切合成一种庄严而赏心悦目的气象。但是客人们没有想到，在他们会见主人的两三个小时之外，一昼夜还有二十一、二个小时，在这期间，在这个家庭里进行着秘密的内部生活。
这种内部生活近来使玛丽亚公爵小姐日子很不好过。

◆ 在她和尼古卢什卡相处的时候，她吃惊地发现她自己也具有她父亲那种急躁的脾气。尽管她对自己说过许多次，教侄儿时不要激动，可是几乎每次拿起教鞭坐下来教法语字母时，她总是一心想快些、轻易些就把自己的知识灌输给孩子，

◆ 但是这个疼爱她的暴君，——正是由于他疼爱她而折磨自己，也折磨她，才是最残酷的暴君，——不仅蓄意侮辱她，损害她，而且让她知道，她不管做什么都有错。

◆ 埃尔微笑着继续说，“这个年轻人现在奉行的宗旨是，哪儿有有钱的待嫁姑娘，他就到哪儿去。我对他可看透了。他现在拿不定主意进攻谁：进攻您还是进攻朱莉·卡拉金娜小姐。他对她可注意呢。”

◆ “如今，要想得到莫斯科小姐的欢心，要做出多愁善感的样子。他在卡拉金娜小姐面前多愁善感的了不得。”皮埃尔说。

◆ 只有少数几个青年，其中也有鲍里斯，比较深入地体会朱莉的忧郁情调，她和这些年轻人单独地长谈尘世的空虚，给他们看上面全是感伤的绘画、格言和诗句的纪念册。

◆ 快来排遣我这孤独的愁闷，
在我这流不尽的泪水上，
添上一滴神秘的欢欣。
朱莉给鲍里斯弹竖琴，她弹的是最悲哀的夜曲。鲍里斯给她朗诵《可怜的丽莎》 ，好几次中断了朗诵，因为他激动得透不过气来。朱莉和鲍里斯在大庭广众场合相遇的时候，两人认为在这淡漠的人间他们是唯一相互了解的一对。

◆ “我多么怜惜她的母亲啊，”她继续说，“今天她把从奔萨送来的账单和信件拿给我看（她们的田庄可大呢），真可怜，全靠她一个人：人人都骗她！”
听着母亲说话，鲍里斯微微露出一丝笑意。他温和地嘲笑她那天真的狡猾，但是他留神听她说话，有时注意向她打听奔萨和下城的田庄情况。

◆ 鲍里斯一想到他当了一次傻瓜，白白费了一个月的功夫在朱莉跟前表演吃力的忧郁情调，而且眼看已经到手并且在想象中派了适当用场的奔萨田庄的收入落到别人手里（特别是落到愚蠢的阿纳托利手里），一想到这里，鲍里斯就觉得受了侮辱。

◆ 朱莉的脸焕发出胜利和得意的光彩；但她逼着鲍里斯把在这种场合应当说的话通通向她说出来，说他爱她，从来没有像爱她那样爱过任何一个女人。她知道，凭奔萨的田庄和下城的森林，她可以这样要求，而且她也就得到了她所要求的。

◆ 大姑小姑，是非满屋，可是这一位连苍蝇都不伤害。

◆ “他到过高加索，又从哪儿逃走了，据说在波斯某个大公手下当大官，在那儿杀死了波斯王的一个兄弟；嗬，莫斯科的太太小姐们简直都发狂了！都是为了波斯人多洛霍夫。如今是三句话离不开多洛霍夫：

◆ 娜塔莎在乡居之后，并且在目前心情严肃的时候，觉得舞台上一切都是粗野的，令人吃惊的。她无法集中注意力观看剧情的发展，甚至连音乐也听不进去：她只看见彩色的纸板，奇装异服的男女在明亮的灯光下奇怪的动作、说话和唱歌；她知道那是表演，但是那一切却是那么怪诞和虚假，矫揉造作，她不由得时而为演员害羞，时而觉得好笑。她环顾四周，在观众的脸上寻找她内心所有的那种讪笑和困惑的感情；但是所有的面孔对舞台上的表演都是那么聚精会神

◆ 第二幕的布景是在纸板上画的纪念碑，天幕上的一个圆洞是月亮，灯罩遮着脚灯，开始奏起低音小号和低音提琴，从左右两边走出许多穿黑长袍的人。这些人挥舞着双手，手中握着类似短剑的东西；然后又跑来一些人要拖走那个原先穿白衣、现在穿蓝衣的少女。他们不是马上把她拖走，而是同她一起唱了很久后，才把她拖走

◆ 然后一个男的站在台角。乐队更响地吹打起扬琴和小号，于是这个男的独自赤着脚跳起舞来，跳得非常高，而且迅速地摆动着两脚。（此人名叫迪波尔，他凭这手技艺每年挣六万卢布。）

◆ 在那儿，在那有海伦在场的地方，一切都是明了的，简单的；可是现在一人独处的时候，一切都变得不可理解。“这是怎么回事呢？我对他感到惧怕是怎么回事？我现在感到受良心的责备又是怎么回事？”她想。
只有老伯爵夫人一个人是娜塔莎可以把她想到的这一切在夜间，在床上对之诉说的。她知道索尼娅有她严格的整套的看法，听到她的坦白，要么是不理解，要么是大惊小怪。娜塔莎想尽可能自己解决那使她苦恼的问题。
“我是不是失去了安德烈公爵的爱情呢？”

◆ 2026/01/18发表想法 他爸给他二万，要缺一万呢
原文：他既没有能力思考他的行为对别人会有什么影响，也没有能力思考他这种或者那种行为会有什么结果。他相信鸭子生来就应该生活在水里，而他被上帝创造出来，就应该每年有三万卢布的收入，就应该在社会中占最高的地位。

◆ 所以他打心眼里认为他是一个无可非议的人，他真心诚意地鄙视恶棍和坏人，怀着平静的良心把头抬得高高的。
花天酒地的公子哥儿，这些男马格达林 们，正如女马格达林们一样，都有一种自以为无罪的隐密感觉，所以有这种感觉，是因为有得到原谅的希望。“她许多的罪都赦免了，因为她的爱多； 他的许多罪也都赦免了，因为他的享受多。”

◆ 多洛霍夫需要阿纳托利·库拉金的名望、门第和关系作钓饵，以引诱富家子弟加入他的赌帮，他利用他，拿他开心，但却不让他有所察觉。除了在这些方面有用得着阿纳托利的地方外，对多洛霍夫说来，控制别人的意志本身就是一种享乐、习惯和需要。

◆ 娜塔莎一见他，心中就充满了在剧院中有过的那种感觉——由于他喜欢她而得到虚荣心的满足，同时由于她和他之间没有道德的隔膜而恐惧。

◆ “美极了，妙极了，好极了！”四面八方喊起来。娜塔莎望着胖胖的乔治，什么也没听见，也没看见，也不明白她面前发生的事；她只觉得自己又完全无可挽回地远远离开那个原先的世界，而陷入一个奇异的、疯狂的世界，在这个世界，无法知道什么是好的，什么是坏的，什么是合理的，什么是疯狂的。

◆ 娜塔莎用颤抖的双手拿着多洛霍夫为阿纳托利代笔写的热情洋溢的情书，她读着，觉得她从其中找到了她所感到的一切的回声。

◆ 2026/01/18发表想法    她哥哥尼古拉初次上战场也这种幼稚地讨功样子
原文：“索尼娅，你对他还瞎说八道呢，”娜塔莎说，她的声音是那么柔和，小孩子想让大人夸他时正是用这种声调，“今天我们两个作了一番解释。”

◆ 于是阿纳托利带着蠢人对他们用自己的头脑得出的结论特别的偏爱，重述对多洛霍夫已经重述一百遍的论断。“我已经对你解释过了，我的结论是：如果这桩婚事无效，”他屈起一个指头，说，“那么我没有责任；如果有效，那也同样没问题：反正在国外不会有人知道，你说是不是？别说了，别说了，别说了！”

◆ 巴拉加是著名的三驾马车车夫，

◆ 他不止一次拉着多洛霍夫逃脱追逐，不止一次拉着茨冈女人和“风骚娘儿们”（巴拉加这样叫她们）在莫斯科街上兜风。他不止一次为他们赶车时在莫斯科街上冲撞行人和别的马车夫，而他的老爷（他这样称呼他们）经常搭救他。他为他们赶死了不止一匹马。他不止一次挨他们的打，他们不止一次灌他香槟酒和他所喜爱的马德拉酒，他知道他们每个人所干的每件胡闹的事，要是一个普通老百姓干的话，早就该被流放到西伯利亚了。

◆ 但是他喜爱他们，爱那种每小时十八俄里的疯狂的驰骋，爱撞翻马车，轧倒行人，在莫斯科街上风驰电掣地飞奔。

◆ 巴拉加刚要离开房间。
“不，站住，”阿纳托利说，“关上门，大家坐下来。就这么着。”门关上了，大家都坐下。
“好，现在可以出发了，弟兄们！”

◆ 一个俊俏、瘦削、面色苍白的茨冈姑娘，眼睛又黑又亮，乌黑的鬈发泛着灰蓝色，披着红围巾，手臂上搭着一件貂皮大衣，跑了出来。
“没关系，我没有什么舍不得的，你拿去吧。”她说，看样子，她舍不得那件貂皮大衣，可是又怕她的主人。

◆ 玛丽亚·德米特里耶夫娜遇见索尼娅在走廊里哭泣，她逼索尼娅把一切都说了出来。她抓过娜塔莎的信，读完后，就拿着信去找娜塔莎。
“坏丫头，不要脸的东西，”她对她说，“你的话我连听都不愿听！”她推开用吃惊而无泪的眼睛望着她的娜塔莎，把她锁在房里，吩咐管院子的人把今晚的来人让进大门，但不要放他们出去，命令仆人把那些人带来见她，交代完了后，她就坐在客厅里等待拐骗的人。

◆ 娜塔莎病得很厉害，玛丽亚·德米特里耶夫娜秘密地告诉他，就在向她说明阿纳托利已经结婚的那天夜里，她服了她偷偷弄到的砒霜。她吞了一点，就吓坏了，把索尼娅叫醒，对她说出她做了什么事。

◆ 皮埃尔这一天在俱乐部用餐，从四面八方都听到人们谈论企图抢劫罗斯托娃的事件，他坚决否认这些说法，他向所有的人担保什么事都没发生，只不过阿纳托利向罗斯托娃求婚，遭到拒绝罢了。

◆ “不要叫他坏人吧，”娜塔莎说，“可是我什么也不知道，什么也不知道……”她又哭了。
于是一种更强烈的怜悯、温柔和爱慕的感情涌上皮埃尔的心头。他听见扑簌簌的泪水在他的眼镜下面流，他不愿让人看见。

◆ “全都完了？”他重复说，“如果我不是我，而是世界上最漂亮、最聪明、最好的人，并且是自由的，那么此刻我就跪下向您求婚和求爱了。”
许多天以来，娜塔莎第一次流下感激和感动的眼泪，她看了看皮埃尔，就走了。
她走后，皮埃尔几乎是跑着到了前厅，忍着哽住喉咙的、因受感动和幸福而要流出的眼泪，他没有伸进袖子，披上皮大衣，就上了雪橇。

◆ 几乎是在这片天空的中央，在圣洁林荫道上方，悬着一颗巨大的明亮的一八一二年彗星，据说这是一颗预示着各种灾难和世界末日的彗星，它周围被撒满了的星斗拱卫着，它不同于众星的是它低垂地面，放射白光，高高地翘起长尾巴。

◆ 忽然间，就像一支射向地球的利箭，在黑暗的天空中刺入它选定的地点就停住了，强劲地翘起尾巴，在无数闪烁的星星中间，炫耀着它的白光。皮埃尔觉得，这颗彗星和他那颗生气勃勃地走向新生活、变得软化和振奋起来的心灵完全吻合。

项飙和吴琦的对话录。形式所限，我感兴趣的话头往往展开得不深，但读起来还是很有新鲜感的。

代序 重建对话的精神
◆ 更敏感、更独特的声音。这不仅需要一个诚实、丰沛的谈话者，也需要一个敏锐、耐心的提问者。他们穿梭于不同时空，同时紧紧抓住个人思想之锚。

前言 自我是一种方法
◆ 就像对待一件别人的作品。过去的自己可能也是某种他者，我们曾经付出的智力活动、文本工作、时间和旅途，已经自成一体，纷纷开始自我说明。

◆ 这也是一个参与者不得不首先把自我交出来，又在共同的探索中得以放下自我的过程，直到最后发现，正是“自我”这个工具，让我们能够撞击出超越自我的问题。

◆ 想象一下，两个还比较陌生的朋友见面，在弄明白对方是谁、经历过什么之前，任何表态都显得操之过急。

◆ 提问者出于试探而回答者是出于礼貌和严谨，才通过这样一种对回忆的再认识、对回忆的回忆，推敲出背后的问题。

◆ 一些我们原本想要涉及的议题或理论，比如乡绅、知识精英、对80年代的反思、教育问题等，像沙滩上的贝壳，在这个潮汐般的来回中渐次浮现出来。

◆ 没有在那些故事里徘徊，他们参与制造的神话某种程度上正是这次谈话希望克服和重新检视的东西。陌生的牛津风景，也因此失去了一部分魔力

◆ 剧烈的思考，反映在生活里，有时就只剩一点淡淡的余味和痕迹。

◆ 一个在复杂的大国政治中寻找位置的故事，提示着所有追逐中心梦想的人，在无声处听见有声，在边缘发现边缘。

◆ Raymond Aron)所言，“对话的社会是人类的关键所在”。谈话作为载体，人类学作为中介，乡绅作为思想资源，自我作为方法，这些总体性的线索也随之清晰，

◆ 我第一次意识到，有些沉默只是思想在拧紧。

◆ 你们会发现在一场开诚布公的谈话中，现成的看法和预设都会失效，价值需要重新判定，而精神会抖擞起来，那些困扰、挫败过我们的难题变得不再那么绝望无解。“方法”首先是一种勇气。不一定要遵守那么多惯例，不一定要听所谓主流的意见，想做的事不一定做不成，同行的人不一定都会掉队。

访谈之前
◆ 今天的社会不一样了，我们有社交传媒、平台经济，年轻人受教育的水平空前提高，我们需要的是大众的思考工具。

◆ 我不能给你什么，我只能激发你、提醒你。原来那种专家告诉群众的模式要改变。

童年图景
◆ 像如何处理邻里关系，他也会用概念和道理，把事情赋予一定的意义、价值判断。他跟新社会的关系也比较复杂，不是简单的排斥或者赞扬，而是一种比较独立的评论，有一种能够自洽的距离感。

◆ 我小时候就是生活在这样三重世界里。一重是底层街区；一重是我外公的没落贵族世界；再一重是我上学后，和父母住的学校里，听到的是正统的话语，每天早上吃饭必须做的事是听中央人民广播电台的“新闻和报纸摘要”

◆ 我外公家那种生活环境是，一家吃饭，邻居们都来串门，围着桌子站着，观摩你怎么吃。谈话也都是跟政治有关，对时局怎么评价，对政治人物怎么评价。

◆ 让他坐下来讲一下他们班、他们学校的事情，讲清楚这个体系是怎么运转的，基本的权力结构是什么，主导意识是什么，每个人的动机是什么，能够分成几类，大部分人讲不出来。这其实是非常重要的一种训练。

◆ 比如说做年糕，他会把从浸水、攒米 到火候掌握很系统地讲出来，能够把其中的道理勾勒出来，事情和事情的联系也就清晰起来，形成一个图景。“图景”这个概念很重要，“理论”在拉丁文里就是“图景”的意思，给出一个理论，就是给出一个世界的图景。我写过一篇文章叫《作为图景的理论》 ，意思就是说理论其实不是给出判断，而是给世界一个精确的图景，同时在背后透出未来可能的图景。

◆ 什么叫真正的精确？真正的精确就是你把握住它内在的未来方向。

◆ 所以“图景”就有两重意思，一是现在的概括，再一个是未来可能的走向。

◆ 对“文革”不能够做这样简单的对与错的评价。以我大舅舅这个过来人的观点来看，“文革”是一个典型的悲剧。所谓悲剧，如果回到古希腊的意思，就是一个潜在崇高的东西，不但崩溃了，还形成了巨大的破坏力。其实它背后延伸出来的是一种内在矛盾——社会主义革命确实要不断发动群众，防止官僚化，不能让人民的代表老坐小车、肚子越来越大，但用什么办法去防止？

◆ 《河殇》出来时我已经上高二了，完全能够看懂，当然震动比较大，认为它值得重视，但我有一种很强的距离感，不太喜欢这种有点耸人听闻、比较夸张，带有很强的断论性的东西。

◆ 什么叫内在呢？就是他能够把多数人活在这个系统里面的味道讲出来，他能够说清楚这个系统是怎么靠里面的人和事叠加出来，而不是靠外在的逻辑推演，所以他用的语言也基本上是在地的语言，是行动者他们自己描述生活的语言。

◆ 我们传统的儒家文化所以能支持起那么大的国家体系，很重要的特色就在于它怎么处理小地方和大地方、边缘和中心的关系。

◆ 它所想象的地方与中心的关系不是等级化的关系，有高有低，而是像月照千湖，每一个湖里都有自己的月亮，靠这样构造一个共同性。所以说内在化。

◆ 所以有人说，中国开始现代化的象征之一，就是官僚退休不回家乡了。城市和农村之间的循环性的关系被打断了。告老不还乡，点出了中国的中心和边缘的关系、城市和农村的关系、知识分子和普通群众（主要是农民）的关系，在现代发生了什么变化。

◆ 乡绅和道德家也不一样，乡绅的伦理判断不能完全按照书上写的标准来。他的伦理判断要和老百姓的实践理性对得上。儒家乡绅的伦理判断，很重要的考虑是和谐。不只是你一个人做得对不对，而且要看你做的事情和其他人是不是和谐。所以整体观就很重要，要看世界是怎么搭在一起的

◆ 我的理解是这样的，费孝通提出“差序格局”其实是要回应一个当时很大的政治争论，就是政党政治对中国是否合适。费和梁漱溟一样，一直认为政党政治对中国来说不合适。

◆ 费认为中国人不可能形成现代意义的政党，他讲“差序格局”其实是对民主体制的一种回应，如果从这个角度来看，差序格局就有很强的内在意味

◆ 所以他的观察是在回应一定的政治问题、伦理问题，提出实证性的图景，这个跟专业化、技术化的学术研究是有距离的。我们要激发他的理论的生命力，一定要回到他所在的背景，看到他要处理的问题。

80年代
◆ 有亲戚说，把配额给别人也就是把好运气给别人了。这样就借钱买了彩电。所以人们在自我劝说的时候，会用一些非常抽象的概念和原则，像好运不能出让。

◆ 当时社会上有一个争论，问私有经济会不会带来两极分化 。我就根据我看到的这个例子做了一个非常臆测性的结论，说不会有两极分化，因为赚钱的机会会分散到亲戚那里去，会带来地域性的共同富裕。我对这个报告很骄傲。其实当时的那个观察对我后来做“浙江村”的研究也有影响。它让我看到，一个小型企业，与其说它是一个组织，还不如说它是一个网络。

◆ 温州确实是一个超级务实的地方，觉得文艺腔很奇怪。

◆ 一个值得商榷的问题就是对整个80年代的评价。80年代大家的调子那么高，这种情怀的影响可能还是蛮重要。

◆ 反思的题目，为什么这批人没有产生大的思想？从我的角度来讲，如果调子太高就很容易极端化。这个我受汪晖 老师的影响比较大，他也说为什么90年代新自由主义改革能够那么顺利地进行，因为80年代没有给我们留下可以反思的资源 。

◆ 经过20世纪六七十年代，大家觉得要有自由，人性受到扭曲，要去接受人类普世价值，但知识分子的人生经验跟基层群体的差别还是相当大。这里可能有一个扭曲，把普通老百姓对当时官僚腐败、通货膨胀的反感，理解成对社会主义体制本身的反感。老百姓当然说物价要稳定，不要搞腐败，但不是要讲个人自由。

◆ 现在的叙述说南斯拉夫解体是必然的，因为他们本来就是不一样的民族，靠苏联把他们捏合在一起。那就要问，不同的民族生活在一起，成为当时世界上福利水平最高、生活水平最高的国家之一，文化艺术都很好，这不是我们应该追求的目标吗？

北大青年的焦虑
◆ 北大1990年的新生去石家庄军训一年，这个是很重要的经历。开始自己不知道，后来跟高年级同学交往的时候才发现，对我们的影响非常大。对我个人来讲有两个影响，一是我观察到的，在一个等级制度非常严格的体系下，人格的扭曲。

◆ 其实能拿到的利益非常小，如果不取悦，也不一定有什么风险。这个是超越理性的理性计算。横向的战友关系当然也存在，毕竟大家都是同学，回到北大以后，大家变成很好的朋友。但总的感觉是纵向的关系在主导，心理上的压抑非常明显。

◆ 我们知道，在战争期间，地主要捐地，地主儿子要参军，战后一片废墟，更是人人平等了，战后回来的士兵都要妥善安排，不管原来什么出身。这样就发展了全民教育、全民福利。

◆ 所以它和明治时代军国主义的现代化不一样，它是一个比较民主的现代化。
英国也是这样，如果没有战争把贵族的势力打破，1948年的国民医疗服务体系(NHS) 也通不过，更不会有像1968年那样带有社会主义倾向的社会。当然这不是美化战争，是说如果旧结构不打破，新结构出不来。

◆ 我们去军校的时候，军队已经不打仗了，主要功能是驯化，失去了原来军队的优良传统，变成了一个非常机械化的东西，只讲服从的重要性。其实服从的重要性是辩证的，在打仗的时候当然要服从，但如果这个服从没有协调，没有把斗争精神内化到小团队里，那么到了战场上，情况千变万化，绝对的服从打不了胜仗。

◆ 德国，最老牌的资本主义国家之一，长期实行“社会市场经济”的模式，强调竞争，强调个人企业家精神，同时非常强调国家对市场秩序的调配、福利制度，又有很深的基督教传统在里面——人是怎么回事，在市场上怎么对待人，失败以后怎么办，什么样的成功应该引以为荣、什么样的成功要引以为耻。苏东解体之后，它就成了赤裸裸的资本主义，只有成功和失败的区别，没有可耻的成功和可荣的成功之间的区别，... 在匈牙利、罗马尼亚，右翼出来，就是对原来这一波功利的市场经济、工具主义的反弹。

◆ 等级制度确实打破了比较天然的自我认知。这跟中国的早期改革还不一样。中国早期改革从农村开始，公社制度还扮演了一个正面的角色。乡镇企业里有集体的感觉，大家都想赚钱，但没有变得那么严重。但是城市改革之后，社会矛盾就多了起来，原来单位制下面的那种功利，就和东欧比较像了。

◆ 我妈妈回了一封信，我的印象比较深，她说他们年轻的时候什么都学苏联，现在什么都学西方，这是一个问题。我看了以后，就给了我一个理论框架来批判当时的课程设置。

◆ 了一封很长的信《关于课程设置的若干建议》，给我们系主任王思斌老师。我说我给您一个建议，不是说系里应该根据这个方案来改革，只是通过我的建议来形成一个参照物，以此映射出现的问题。王老师非常兴奋，在系里开会的时候，说这个学生给我写了一万多字的信，

◆ 我跟高年级的同学谈，怎么办，他说先找软柿子捏，意思是说有的老师比较凶，就先罢那些不凶的老师的课，

◆ 当时万马齐喑，大家都很功利地在学习，第一年很不愉快。

◆ 当时上面的安排是不报道，《深圳特区报》报道之后，风向变了，开始宣传《深圳特区报》的文章。我印象特别深，因为“东方风来满眼春”是新造的句子，之前没听说过。一夜之间，气氛就不一样了。

◆ “资源”这个概念是我从北大学到的最早的几个概念之一。资源是什么意思呢？就是在私有化市场经济之后，原来我们生存所需要的物质，现在转化成了潜在的资源，是可以升值的。你一定要占据，要有明确的产权。北大本来是一所学校，每天的日常生活就这么被编织起来，现在突然发现里面有资源，就办班、盖楼。

◆ 道德不应该像帽子一样戴在我们头上，罩在我们生活中，今天的道德必须把帽子从头上摘下来，放在我们手上，我们要去观察它。如果一顶帽子戴在头上，我们是看不到它的，

◆ 讲“穆先生”，是说道德应该是一种有选择的道德，要以个体自由为基础。

◆ 把一个不自然的、说不清楚的道德观猛然扣在你头上，不但让你无法选择，而且让你失去了究竟何为道德何为不道德的基本感知

◆ 没有选择的道德是不道德的，强加的道德最不道德，因为把我的道德强加于你，意味着我要对你的人性做一个潜在的彻底否定，你要不接受我的道德，在我眼里你就不是人了。

研究“浙江村”
◆ 认为我是在知道那些理论的情况下故意不用，所以又高出一层。其实是我完全不知道，所以没有让那些理论介入。

◆ 跟文字的关系比较隔膜，很难从文字里面得到兴奋感。
吴琦：这也成了对知识分子这种身份有隔膜的另一个原因。

◆ 如果你背后没有什么真东西，我不会被话语蒙住，我总想把说法拧干，看看下面到底是什么干货。所以我非常欣赏中国老式的报告文学的写法，那种直接性，没有什么外在的理论化、隐喻、类比。理论的欠缺还造成一个很大的问题，我不太能够阅读很多引经据典的东西。

◆ 她说你到李猛、周飞舟、李康那个圈子里去

◆ 竹内好讲的中国和日本的区别有点像，就是说受到新的文化冲击时“回心”（中国）和“转向”（日本）的问题 。“回心”是彻底粉碎，彻底反思自己为什么跟人家不一样，不是简单地问差距在哪里，而是问差别在哪里，把这个差别看作一种既定事实，同时也是思考和创造的来源，这是革命性的；

◆ 理论不在于新不新、深不深，更不在于正确不正确，而是能不能形成沟通性。可沟通性非常重要，哪怕是一个浅显的理论，但它一下子调动起对方的思想，把对方转变成一个新的主体，那这个理论就是革命性的。找到能引发共鸣的语言其实是很难的，不仅要对静态的结构，而且要对形势、未来发展的方向有精确的把握，才能够讲得简单，勾起大家的共鸣。

年轻人之丧
◆ 这段历史对今天的学生究竟有什么意义、有什么意思？这样就不能把历史的事实激活。激活有两种办法。一种是进入历史的内部，讲三国就讲三国内部的故事，这是一种比较粗浅的把它讲得有趣的办法。更重要的是能够建立一些联系，比如三国之间权力的争斗、领土之间的变迁以及人们的领土意识，和我们现在完全不一样，可以把这一层讲出来。

◆ 这样对小孩子讲好像很有趣。但如果把艺术理解成这样一种视觉的美，孩子很快就会觉得没意思，因为美是形式化的，很难追求下去。艺术真正的魅力是产生一种视觉效果，让对方去思考、反思，有思考的引带力，从这个角度去理解艺术，有趣的空间就大了，

◆ 我们读书，理解人类社会的规律，都一定要和自己这个人发生关系，否则搞艺术就是为了美，好像是一个服务工作，去取悦人。

◆ 我们这些年改革，在老百姓的生活里，其实是一个生命意义、生活意义转移的过程。读好书、考好学、找个好工作、家里给买房子，一直是将意义外化转移，到最后没有必要转移了，就是要回到人本身。

边缘与中心
◆ 清晰的自我认知，往往是我们思考外部命题的工具和武器，

◆ 关键是怎样形成一种意识，平衡自己的历史来源和自己现在的行动，这是真正的英雄。真正的英雄不是改变世界，而是改变自己生活的每一天

◆ 从长期来讲，所谓封建制和郡县制这个辩论在中国一直存在，费孝通到最后也认为中国最重要的出路是地方自治，这跟他提出的“差序格局”有关系。这里又回到“差序格局”，它不是一个简单的实证概念，它是一种格局，一种政治图景的安排。

◆ 日本入侵是非常重要的一次战争，是使得中国统一的一个原因。

◆ 所以我强调文化和社会的自主性，但是在经济上，市场要统一，资源上，通过行政力量来二次分配，还有军队税收，这些都不能放松。

◆ 2025/09/26发表想法  哈哈忘了John Berger是马克思主义者
原文：约翰·伯格有一本相册，

◆ 说到中心与边缘的关系，其实就是来自历史深处的视野，而谈到“文革”，又是在探寻历史和群众的关系，为什么到了21世纪的今天，这两个叙事似乎可以连接？

◆ 又怎样连接？如果说我们应该在历史的版图里面去认识我是谁，中国是谁，我们的身世到底是什么，现代国家的叙事到底是怎样的？今天好像没有共识。在这个基础上谈我们个人的小叙事，其实也会遇到这样的困难，我们的日常生活到底和现在的中国叙事有没有关系，是怎样的关系？对这些问题的解答，应该从哪里入手？
项飙：这个很有意思，很多人也想做这方面的努力，像甘阳的《通三统》[插图]。不只是古代文明和现代社会主义革命，还有改革前和改革后，也有很多断裂，怎么连接是一个历史哲学的问题。首先要问我们今天关怀的问题究竟是什么，然后再想我们用什么样的中国叙述来解释这个纠结。粗浅地说，有人用红色中国的经验来反思今天的情况，有人是用前现代中国的经验来反思今天的情况，其实它们跟“中国”不“中国”关系都不大，他们的意思是说其实我们不一定要像现在这么做事情，你看，60年代我们是这么做的，或者16世纪我们是那样做的。

◆ 正是因为话剧不涉及别的东西，给自己设置了很多限制，所以它的深度更深，给我们的冲击更大，如果把历史都放进去，反而就变成了一般的叙述。

◆ 这个矛盾出发，追溯到以前的矛盾，才能进入历史，形成历史观。如果我这样进入历史，就不太需要一种连贯的、稳定的、以中国为单位的历史，它可能是断裂的。海南的问题可能跟马来西亚、泰国更相通，因为它们本身在历史上的关系更紧密，

个人危机
◆ 为什么会去追求那种认可？就是因为没有小世界。如果我有自己真实的小世界，哪怕边缘，但比较强大，可以互相讨论，不用去找这样的认可。

◆ 我现在有这些焦虑，前提也是我有这么一个位置，如果没有这样的位置，现在还在一个不太知名的学校，为终身教职烦恼，可能连焦虑的能力都没有。

◆ 当然东方文化在政治上是相反的，这些东西都要被隐蔽，领导人不是个人，他是权力的化身，这就是不太一样的理解。

◆ 距离感”是分析上、方法上的概念，它和切入性是一种辩证关系。距离感不是指对问题的关心程度、对事实的熟悉程度，这些不能有距离感，越近越好，要把自己融进去。但在分析的时候，要有登上山丘看到平原的心态，才会比较客观、灵活、全面。

全球化与逆全球化
◆ 炒股票炒赔了，不一定是危机，但如果已经跟别人吹牛说能赚但实际上又赔了，这时候会是危机。危机不仅是失去，而且是一种没法解释的失去。

◆ 距离感其实就是历史感。有的事件发生了，不要把它在象征意义上做太多诠释，这是我反对的。

◆ 今天能做的是根据已有的历史经验、我们自己的道德原则，给人们发出警示，提醒大家可能的危险在哪里，可能会带来什么新的影响，我们要做好准备，而不仅仅是解释既成事实。

◆ 一个印度作家写过，英国有皇族、有共和派、有种族主义，但没有民族主义，因为英国从来都是以世界看世界，当英国成为一个国家的时候，它就是一个帝国的形式。

◆ 如果跟那些搞外交的人特别是做外经贸、搞工程的人聊，他们有时候是有苦说不出，因为他们是不想把“一带一路”都搞成中国故事的。那样一来，全球注意力都集中在你身上，认为你的投资都是有北京的战略性考虑在后面。

◆ 但他们就觉得面对那些挑战，怎样去处理政敌的意见，是考验智慧的时刻，觉得很有趣。这在中国人的文化里是很难去接受的。但过日子不都是这样吗，我们成了家，不是天天都有项目、有成就，也都是早上讨论要吃什么，

◆ 反思不一定要咬着牙，有的时候跟道德一样，需要拿下来放在手里，这样捏捏那样捏捏，就进入这个事情内部去了。

用80年代来批判80年代
◆ 今天我们可能不值得找回80年代的激情，现在我们要做的是更加在地的、更加具体的反思，跟大众经验直接相关，跟政治经济学的分析相关，跟对技术的理解相关。

◆ 女知青被村干部奸污这种故事流传了多少年，完全是不成比例的(out of proportion)。奸污当然是犯罪，但那种故事一再流传，背后是有一定意义的，指向的是农民和城市的关系，是一种知青受难的述说。

◆ 80年代又和西方不一样，主要不是个人气质，而是一种理想，要对自己的传统、生存方式做批判性的反思，从而重新开始，这个精神还是很重要。在这个意义上，我是用80年代的精神来批判80年代的思想，也是一种叛逆、超越和理想。具体来讲就是大胆，不服从权威，

什么是批判
◆ 研究和人生态度也是这样，永远是一个开放的对话过程，研究就是要参与对话，改变对话的方式，提出新的对话的问题，这个过程本身最重要。

◆ 所以个人把自己定义为什么样的个体，背后都有一定的社会公共意识在里头。这里头可能就有正能量。

◆ 你要谈压迫，那什么是人类社会里延续时间最长、最普遍的压迫？那就是性别的压迫。

理解的学问
◆ 什么叫“理解的学术”，不一定要把对方的心理机制像心理分析师一样写出来，主要就是位置的问题，把他在这个社会的位置讲清楚，把他所处的关系、所处的小世界描述清楚，大家自然就理解了。

◆ 要把他的言和行都看作是他的行动。

◆ 很多城市青年对范雨素文章的看法，看到的不是坚实、现实、黑泥土一样的生活，内在的痛苦和挣扎，没有什么悲剧也没有什么喜剧的活法，而是从中心看一个对中心充满欲望的边缘，里面有悲剧感，有自我提醒，又有自我强化

访谈之前
◆ 你说某个东西好玩，什么叫好玩？想一想，是很难回答的。那个比这个深刻，究竟怎么理解这个深刻性？只有不断问题化，才能深化下去。

◆ 它不像自然科学，发现自然规律，问题就解决了，顺着规律走就可以。它可能是倒过来，社会科学告诉你，其实没有什么很强的规律，都在于自己怎么样去理解这个世界，怎么样主动地采取行动。可能会有大的图景，但没有所谓的规律，

◆ 象征就是牢笼，奔向象征是奔向了文明，同时也奔向了牢笼。背后是一种非常野蛮的关系。

◆ 现在你看大学里面，确实他们在保护自己的下属，但也靠这个来获得资源，等于在体制和学者之间扮演了中间人。我们说的中间人和这个完全不一样，我们说的中间人是学者和学者之间的中间人，大众和学者的中间人，把不同的思想拧在一起，形成共同讨论。这是横向的中间人，不是纵向的。

牛津记忆
◆ 根源意识和历史意识，那种味道会出来。当你理解了知识的历史性之后，知识就变得有生命力，很灵动，很有趣，同时也是开放的，邀请你根据实际情况去改变它。

◆ 他们认为最高层次的学术其实是说大白话，尽量不要有专业术语，用的概念听起来也很简单，比如以赛亚·伯林的“两种自由”，这哪里像概念？都是描述性的语言，他有时候会用一些隐喻，比如“刺猬与狐狸”。这就是脑子里有意象、图景，然后把它描述出来。

◆ 觉得大学生在大学里的任务，不是树立norms（规范），而是树立exceptions（例外），你不是范例而是例外。

◆ 前半页是风花雪月，“未名湖的月光”之类，中学生作文式的矫情，后半篇是升官发财，这个校友当了副省长，那个校友晋升。这两种我都不太喜欢，我一想未名湖都是这些副省长在那里漫步，来充充电赏赏光，就觉得很没味道。

◆ 就是近二十年特别是近十五年，牛津才从一所以教学为主的大学变成以研究为主的大学。前面八百年，牛津主要是一个教学机构，老师认为他们最重要的工作就是在学院做一对一辅导，

◆ 那么为什么对温州人的认同相比起来更加强烈？
项飙：说老实话，这个是被建构出来的，也不是很自然，是我一轮一轮挣扎过来的结果。

距离感与直接性
◆ 前面我曾经提及的琼·贝兹、披头士的很多音乐都非常直接，直接的重要前提是一定要有内容，如果没有强大的内容，这种直接就是粗俗，

◆ 了很多不存在的字符，但这个玩笑怎么变成一种让人思考的艺术，就必须要做得认真，认真地把它雕刻出来，花了一整个夏天。他就讲到这里为止，没有更复杂的理论。为什么认真了就不是玩笑？背后其实很有意思。因为有了人的劳动投入之后，真和假、实和虚、熟悉和不熟悉才会形成强烈的对比。

◆ 我用这个例子来讲搞研究，也是一样，不是说你要讲出一个普遍的、正确的、深刻的理论，而是要把自己和世界的位置讲清楚，这非常重要。所以我告诉学生，他们不能仅仅是觉得老师们的原则是对的就支持罢工。他们要把他们自己和老师的关系、和老师所持的原则的关系想清楚。

人类学的圈子
◆ 人类学的问题比较容易解释。因为人类学作为一个学科，起点是在殖民主义。西方人要解释其他文化，然后从人类学里派生出社会学。

◆ 我觉得人类学原初的非政治性，和后来这种比较虚泛的政治性，也就是强调一切都是权力关系，包括自己的研究实践，从而老觉得对不住研究对象，其实有关系。事实上，政治是一个比较简单的东西，主要就是不同群体之间的利益分配，当然它具体的展示方式很丰富。但如果不讲人的位置和利益分配的过程，只讲弥散在日常生活里的权力关系，那到处都是，讲不清楚，于是就变得不够直接。

非虚构写作
◆ 温州人最早是做饭票的，他们知道要恢复高考，就开始做饭票——对温州人来说，最重要就是把东西做出来，其他都是白扯，

◆ 对很多青年思考者来说，他们不是职业的知识分子，那就要把自己和社会的关系想清楚，就是“认命不认输” 的那个说法。我们都知道在萨特之后，存在先于本质，意思就是说你本质到底是一个什么样的人不是给定的，你的行为、你的存在，决定了你是什么样的人。

◆ 女性当然是在社会化的进程中被塑造成女性的，但是你也不能轻易地把自己去女性化。

学术不是天职
◆ 我们都认为流动和权力结构还有体制是对立的，但流动其实也是某一种权力体系建立的重要基础。比方说天主教系统，主教在不同教区的流动很重要。

◆ 2025/10/21发表想法   刚看到奥特曼帝国派在匈牙利的殖民官换得很勤
原文：大英帝国在殖民主义时期，殖民官在不同殖民地间的流动也很重要。

◆ 用中文一说，发现其实没什么意思，没有新的见地在里头，敏锐性不够，杀伤力不足。所以中文可以检测出内容上究竟有多少新意，英文检测论证过程、定义是不是基本清楚，如果这两个都通过了，我就比较自信。

◆ 真正的about是一种问题意识，是关于劳工关系、关于空间布局的权力关系，还是关于性别关系，这个一定要拎出来。

民族与民粹
◆ 政策就把性产业的问题转化成一个人口贩卖的问题。它的意思是说，要是从东欧移到西欧做性工作者，不可能是自愿的，没有妇女会自愿做性工作者，肯定是被贩卖的，是这么一个逻辑的链条。这是对妇女自主性很大的否定

◆ 人口贩卖这个概念，是比较严重的夸张，这也是冷战之后，意识形态空洞化之后，很多东西被空洞地人道主义化，在世界在中国都是这样。

◆ 2025/10/23发表想法  读《公元1000年》这样的国际贸易史时就是这种感觉，所谓a breath of fresh air
原文：可以帮助我们建立起另外一种时间感，长时间感，使你对今天的政治有一个比较好的把握，同时又有比较健康的距离感。

◆ 这不是佛教的无常，认为现在的格局总会过去，人活在今世，国族总比人命要长，还是得认真地介入，但在介入的过程中——我们用一个学术研究的词——不要把它本质化。

◆ 首先，没有所谓真正的全人类，全人类也是某一种视角。其次，我们如果也学你看全人类，其实是对自己在世界上位置的背叛，要尊重我们被殖民、被剥削的过程，必须靠民族主义来对抗那种普适、抽象的叙述。

新加坡启蒙
◆ 你想多可怕，我要等到那个时候才理解到学术是人的一种实践，到了三十多岁才启蒙，在牛津都没有理解到。因为从小到大，学习是天职，从来不问为什么学习，没有想过学术和寓言其实是一回事，跟唱歌是一回事。

◆ 但在新加坡这样的小地方，政治上当然要统一，但文化上要生存，唯一的办法就是要强调多样性。
新加坡不可能有一个确定的自我，因为它的自我总是被别人所定义，所以要时刻观察全球的、地区的局势，让新加坡成为一个重要的中介国家(brokerage state)。

◆ 到现在为止，他们心理上的出发点还是这样，“我们的存在，其实违反了历史的自然规律”，所以要不断努力，要走在历史前头。这个意思很深，但这正是我们生存的意义所在，永远不能把任何东西认为是自然而然的。

“盘根”式共同体
◆ 觉得工作最好的状态是不用计划，想写的时候就写，不写的时候一天两天不用管。同时又有一个环境给你兜着，在你懒散的时候，旁边也有嗡嗡作响的思想，给你托着，大家一起进步。

◆ 这些流动都是为了对生命本身的维持和延续。我们把这些放在一块来看看世界是不是发生了变化。为什么“人的再生产”，而不是物的再生产，变得越来越重要？

◆ 盘根这个隐喻很好，是横向的、开放的、盘错的，每个方向都可以生长，到最后互补，互相汲取营养。

◆ 共同体永远要在构建当中才存在，即使是原来非常合理的共同体，停滞之后也没有意思，就变成了协会、学会。

跨国性的自洽的小世界
◆ 韦伯(Max Weber)讲得很清楚，理性化可能是一种牢笼，所以我们都渴求通过一种有机的个人性的盘根式的小世界抵制这个体制。前面讲到，这个小群体越是具备异质性、多样性，它的抵制的能力就越强，就会更加有机。

◆ 《全球“猎身”》是想说全球扩张性的经济体系是建立在这些地方性的基础上。因为印度有种姓制度、婚姻制度，才给全球体系提供了这些人力。而全球体系也是做出来的，那就要问是谁在做？为什么这些人能做？

大学应该寻找例外
◆ 当然在哲学意义上来说，人都是互为工具，什么时候被利用，什么时候利用别人，在每一个环节当中都是复杂的，这时候就需要一些基本原则，要看具体的情况怎么分析。

个人经验问题化
◆ 但流动人口的政策变得比较宽松，这么多年来一直是往这个方向走，怎么会在2017年底有这么大的转折？现在的清理和2003年以前的清理是不是一回事？我认为它们几乎完全不同，现在形成了一个新的权力运作方式，要把这个讲清楚不容易。这是比较具体的一个项目，以前没有准备，事情突然发生以后，我觉得需要有人做分析。

◆ 我们关心的是世界，不是自己，现在关键就是从哪里开始了解这个世界，同时也更好地了解自己，把个人自己的经历问题化，就是一个了解世界的具体的开始。

◆ 哪里回到实践？就是要从这些书本上学到的概念、范畴、理论、教条、框架离开，新的基础就是实践。但实践是那么流动、那么无情，怎么把握？个人经历就是开始把握实践的起点。

新研究
◆ 本来还想研究从西北去东南沿海做阿拉伯语翻译的这一批穆斯林，这些孩子是在西北辍学的问题少年，经常打架，家里很担心他们学坏了，就送到清真寺学经，在那里学到一点阿拉伯字母、语法，然后突然在2000年代初有机会成了翻译。

◆ 列宁是特别强调民族自治特别是文化自治的。我看过一个历史材料，列宁受他父亲的朋友、一个东正教传教士的影响，这个传教士非常强调一定要用本土语言、本民族语言去传教，不能用拉丁语，不能用俄语 。

◆ 这里对多样性的强调，和它的超越性有关系，既然我们有共同的未来、共同的理想，眼前的多样性就不是一件可怕的事，反而非常有趣、可爱。... 一旦失去这种超越性的共同理想，问题一下子就变了，只能靠物质利益、靠再分配解决问题。

◆ 我理解的多样性可能和一般描述意义上的多样性不一样，不是单单说有不同的文化、不同的自我认同，而是说怎么样使生活的状态不要被单一化为金钱关系、利益关系。其实是一种反单一性，反对公共事务被单一的逻辑所掌握。

共同理想
◆ 自己关于东北的书本来是想谈这个事情，市场关系怎样转化为一种权力关系。明明是一个纯粹的商业结构，大家却努力把利益关系转化成上下级关系，因为只有这样，商业利益才能得到更好的保证。

◆ 将近二十年在基层当官非常舒服，怎么搞都行，唯一就是不要出事，把利益格局平衡好，你贪一点，让别人贪一点，对学者把表面的尊重做好，大家感觉到还有很多空间，确实也出现很多民间组织。那个情况我是觉得有一点虚幻性，腐败到了那个程度，是不能持续的。今天要重新政治化，这个努力的方向我是支持的，但现在我们看到有人简单把它理解为一种口号，甚至拿个口号当宝剑，在中观和微观的层面上人人自危。在恐惧的情况下人会有一种极度的反应，要绝对的自保，不是从理念上改变自己、重新树立理想，而是知道自己已经背叛了理想，现在要通过一切手段来自保，不允许任何人说话

◆ 自我证明这个概念是个悖论。要证明自己其实就是没有自己，意思是说，要通过已经预设的原则和标准、别人的逻辑和流程来证明自己的存在，其实是取悦别人，把自己搞没有了。

乡绅作为方法
◆ 重要的是他代表一批人，不断把他们的情况表达出来，乡绅就是一种代表，是分析性、理解性、代表性的，是话语的提炼者、发声者，当然也是原则、规则的制定者。
吴琦：听起来很像我们政治制度设计中的人民代表。

◆ 人民代表应该就是从小世界的角度去讨论政策，但现在的人民代表根据职业来划分，来分配名额，代表和下面这批人的关系很疏远，那代表的有机性要怎么体现出来？

访谈之前
◆ 正因为“悬浮”之后，自己当下的行为本身不能产生意义，就有点原教旨主义，家里那点事儿成了人生唯一的意义寄托。这种新保守主义的对立面就是激进，因为多样、矛盾的经历很难厘清、给予意义，所以觉得需要革命式的、全面的、翻天覆地的变化，其他都是虚幻，都是假的，都在压迫。

◆ 艺术的功能不是为了创造一个美丽和谐的世界，而是让你有能力面对丑陋。我希望社会科学能够提供一些更好的工具给大家去思考。

◆ 好像知识界不同代际之间不太有沟通，互相指责，互相不信任，都觉得彼此是最糟糕的镜像。

◆ 年轻人对前一辈的逆反、对政治正确的反感都是诚实的，但是这个诚实真的代表了我们对现在的实践的更好理解吗？表达了我们对历史的新的认识吗？不尽然。大家感觉到的民粹主义，现在真的成了一个全球现象，很大程度上就可以理解为是“诚”和“真”之间的断裂

人的再生产
◆ 这个再生产的循环被现代性打破了。现代性跟资本主义紧密地联系在一起，人的活动并不是维持自己，而是要追求超额的利润，

◆ 为什么中国人在变富的同时追求所谓“早发早移”，也就是说，尽快赚钱然后尽早移民，很重要的原因就是移民并不是为了赚钱，而是为了“人的再生产”，为了更加稳定的可预期的未来，

◆ 原来我们有这样的假设，是因为我们觉得通过越来越多的紧密接触，对西方的理解更深，更知道它的道理，会产生出亲密性。但是现在我们看，生活方式的紧密性确实加强了，但政治上的对立性也加强了，这就是太平洋悖论。

◆ 新的民族主义。这种民族主义不是基于对历史、传统、文明的浪漫主义怀念和想象，而是基于一种对世界权力格局的理解，它是地缘政治意义上的民族主义。也就是说，强者这么做，我们也必须得这么做。一切都是权力和利益斗争，把世界化约为国家之间的权力场。

◆ 国家怎样利用仪式来界定自己和世界的关系，首先是强调经济主义，同时又把这种经济理性绝对化、仪式化，以这种方式来确立合法性。国家不问别的，只问经济，只问发展，所以它是进步的、务实的，各路精英都应该支持的。把经济主义变成自然的、不用问的、不可质疑的原则，这是仪式的功能，

◆ 留学是把社会分化跨国化了。在一个国家内部的分化竞争到了尽头，必须要往外走。

◆ 的跨国流动，人的再生产，背后总是有这样的辩证关系。流动，加速的流动，不一定使生活变得更开放，反而可能加固了原本的不平等关系和这种意识形态、社会规范。

阶层流动的悖论
◆ 这个全民参与式的分化，跟我们在印度看到的森严的等级不一样，也跟现代西方学术里强调的被排斥、被驱逐、边缘化、直接的压迫很不一样。中国人没有这种感觉，老觉得要跑得快，跑不快就落后了，这是自己的责任。

寻找新的话语
◆ 左翼认为是资本主义这个大的系统出现问题，右翼说是权力本身的腐朽和话语的滞后。但现在一个很大的问题是，首先这个对立慢慢在消失，其次可能也因为对立的消失，公共话语本身也消失了，

◆ 当时的假设是，原来的权力是靠不流动维持的，现在自由流动空间大了，权力能够直接控制的东西就越来越少。所以当时孙立平预测，人们越来越从一个自主的“社会”那里获得生存资源和发展机会，市民社会慢慢会出来，国家权力会减弱。

◆ 超级流动，农民工打工短工化，物资的流动就更不用说了，但是国家的权力也肯定加强了。所以我的一个问题意识就在于解释这么一个总体性秩序是怎么形成的。“物流型权力”想说我们现在有一种基于流动的权力在生成，它不是把流动当作管理对象，而是把流动当作权力的基础。

◆ 反思性可能是最重要的一点。这个反思性又是很新的东西，因为传统知识分子的目的不是反思，而是诠释，给出一个秩序，给大家一个世界观。反思是法兰克福学派普及起来的，它本身是很现代的，就是说大家不需要知识分子阐释世界的基本秩序，而是需要对世界秩序做批判性的分析。

◆ 因为在同一个物理空间里一起劳动，会形成很多呼应。

作为中介的人类学
◆ 基础设施化是指这样一种发展模式：政府不直接提供实际福利，而是提供给老百姓获得这些福利的可能条件。这的确是对亚洲普遍的发展趋势的一种概括，但好像“杀伤力”不够。

◆ 我们讲过理论和群众路线的关系，理论作为中介就很像毛泽东讲的群众路线，从群众中来，回到群众中去。

◆ 理论是互动性的，理论是一种劝说，是一种动员，如果没有这种互动的精神，就没有真的理论。

再谈乡绅
◆ 这种对人对生活的好奇，不断地追问，就是作为乐趣本身。人文教育应该从这里开始。所谓知识就是对世界上发生了什么事有根有据的了解，从这里开始，去观察，去沉淀，慢慢沉淀出底气。

◆ 中国的同学聚会上，男女同学的声音分贝、饮酒量的分布是非常平等的，但女性也普遍地接受特定的性别角色，对有歧视性的玩笑并不在意，她们甚至会用很强势的口吻教育你去接受主流的性别角色。

◆ 某个会议上吃了多少。我姨马上说了一句话，她说这不是吃了，都拿回家了。这个非常直观的反应，一下子有两条信息在里面：第一条，她没有反驳征收和饥荒的关系；第二条，不像冯客认为的那样，这些官员非常腐败、贪婪，吃得多，其实可能是小心翼翼地包起来拿回家了。这也是一种再分配，把它从底下抽取出来，在高层再分配，在干部的家族里再分配。