"Why is light given to him who suffers,
And life to the bitter of the soul,
Who long for death, but there is none,
And dig for it more than for hidden treasures,
Who rejoice greatly,
And exult when they find the grave?
Why is the light given to a man whose way is hidden,
And whom God has hedged in?
For my groaning comes at the sight of my food,
And my cries pour out like water.
For what I fear comes upon me,
And what I dread befalls me.
I am not at ease, nor am I quiet,
And I am not at rest, but turmoil comes."
--Job 3:20-26
"What is a man that You magnify him,
And that You are concerned about him,
That You examine him every morning
And try him every moment?
Will You never turn Your gaze away from me,
Nor let me alone until I swallow my spittle?
Have I sinned? What have I done to You,
O watcher of men?
Why have You set me as Your target,
So that I am a burden to myself?
Why then do You not pardon my transgression
And take away my iniquity?
For now I will lie down in the dust;
And You will seek me, but I
will not be."
--Job 7:17-21
Monday, January 26, 2009
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
The Destitute
"What is reported of men, whether it be true or false, may play as large a part in their lives, and above all in their destiny, as the things they do." -p19
"Mlle Baptistine was tall, pale, thin and gentle, a perfect expression of all that is implied by the word 'respectable': for it seems that a women must become a mother before she can be termed 'venerable'. She had never been pretty. Her life, which had been wholly occupied with good works, had endowed her with a kind of pallor and luminosity, and as she grew older she had acquired what may be called the beauty of goodness. What had been skinniness in her youth had become, as she matured, a quality of transparency through which her saintly nature could be seen to shine. She was a spirit more than she was a virgin. Her being seemed composed of shadow, with too little substance for it to posses sex. It was a shred of matter harbouring light, with large eyes that were always cast down; a pretext for a soul to linger on earth." -20
"Can human nature be ever wholly and radically transformed? Can the man whom God made good be made wicked by man? Can the soul be reshaped in its entirety by destiny and made evil because destiny is evil? Can the heart become misshapen and afflicted with ugly, incurable deformities under disproportionate misfortune, like a spinal column bent beneath a too low roof? Is there not in every human soul, and was there not in the soul of Jean Valjean, an essential spark, an element of the divine, indestructible in this world and immortal in the next, which goodness can preserve, nourish, and fan into glorious flame, and which evil can never quite extinguish?" -98
With the hazy perception of an unformed nature and an overborne intelligence, he was confusedly unaware of something monstrous that oppressed him. Did he seek to look upward beyond the pallid half-light in which he crouched, it was to see, with mingled terror and rage, an endless structure rising above him, a dreadful piling-up of things, laws, prejudices, men and facts, whose shape he could not discern and whose mass appalled him, and which was nothing else than the huge pyramid that we call civilization. Here and there in the formless, swarming heap, near to him or at an inaccessible height, some detail would be thrown into sharp relief- the prison- warder with his truncheon, the gendarme with his sabre; above these the mitred bishop, and at the very top, like a sun, the Emperpor radiantly crowned. Far from dispelling his own darkness, those distant splendors seemed only to intensify it. Life came and went above his head- laws, prejudices, facts, men and things- in the intricate and mysterious pattern God stamps on civilization, bearing down and crushing him with a placid cruelty and remorseless indifference. Men fallen into the nethermost pit of adversity, lost in that limbo where the eyes do not follow, those outcasts of the law feel upon their necks the whole weight of society, so formidable to the outsider, so terrifying to the underdog. -101
--Les Miserables
"Mlle Baptistine was tall, pale, thin and gentle, a perfect expression of all that is implied by the word 'respectable': for it seems that a women must become a mother before she can be termed 'venerable'. She had never been pretty. Her life, which had been wholly occupied with good works, had endowed her with a kind of pallor and luminosity, and as she grew older she had acquired what may be called the beauty of goodness. What had been skinniness in her youth had become, as she matured, a quality of transparency through which her saintly nature could be seen to shine. She was a spirit more than she was a virgin. Her being seemed composed of shadow, with too little substance for it to posses sex. It was a shred of matter harbouring light, with large eyes that were always cast down; a pretext for a soul to linger on earth." -20
"Can human nature be ever wholly and radically transformed? Can the man whom God made good be made wicked by man? Can the soul be reshaped in its entirety by destiny and made evil because destiny is evil? Can the heart become misshapen and afflicted with ugly, incurable deformities under disproportionate misfortune, like a spinal column bent beneath a too low roof? Is there not in every human soul, and was there not in the soul of Jean Valjean, an essential spark, an element of the divine, indestructible in this world and immortal in the next, which goodness can preserve, nourish, and fan into glorious flame, and which evil can never quite extinguish?" -98
With the hazy perception of an unformed nature and an overborne intelligence, he was confusedly unaware of something monstrous that oppressed him. Did he seek to look upward beyond the pallid half-light in which he crouched, it was to see, with mingled terror and rage, an endless structure rising above him, a dreadful piling-up of things, laws, prejudices, men and facts, whose shape he could not discern and whose mass appalled him, and which was nothing else than the huge pyramid that we call civilization. Here and there in the formless, swarming heap, near to him or at an inaccessible height, some detail would be thrown into sharp relief- the prison- warder with his truncheon, the gendarme with his sabre; above these the mitred bishop, and at the very top, like a sun, the Emperpor radiantly crowned. Far from dispelling his own darkness, those distant splendors seemed only to intensify it. Life came and went above his head- laws, prejudices, facts, men and things- in the intricate and mysterious pattern God stamps on civilization, bearing down and crushing him with a placid cruelty and remorseless indifference. Men fallen into the nethermost pit of adversity, lost in that limbo where the eyes do not follow, those outcasts of the law feel upon their necks the whole weight of society, so formidable to the outsider, so terrifying to the underdog. -101
--Les Miserables
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