Sublime

It’s enough to make your head swim.

Poche storie sono belle come quella di quest’uomo solo, medioevale, contadino, scampato al cancro e al gulag, sorretto dalla certezza che prima di morire riuscirà ad assistere al trionfo della verità, perché quelli che mentono hanno paura, e lui no.

The outside world was harsh, merciless towards the weak, and hardly ever kept its promises, and love remained the only thing in which one could still, perhaps, have faith.

vi

He turns. “Nichts,” he says. Nothing.

A city in Italy is something different from one in my land. . . . It is not only a place to live, it is also a place to decide,

you are gripped by the fear of having also passed over to “the other side” and of having lost that privileged relationship with books which is peculiar to the reader: the ability to consider what is written as something finished and definitive, to which there is nothing to be added, from which there is nothing to be removed.