We in On Paths Unknown

Feb 25, 2018 P.E. rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: utopia-dystopia, russian-literature

Lu dans la traduction L'imaginaire Gallimard.

Quelle idée originale en son temps ! Mais que les cordes sont grosses, et que la phraséologie de D-503 est déplaisante... ...more

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Nov 25, 2015 Erich C rated it really liked it

Shelves: my-library, rereads

p 2: Yes, to unbend the wild, primitive curve and straighten it to a tangent - an asymptote - a straight line. For the line of the One State is the straight line. The great, divine, exact, wise straight line - the wisest of all lines.

p 6: Then - a leap across the centuries, from + to -. [...] I suddenly remembered a picture I had seen in a museum: one of their avenues, out of the twentieth century, dazzlingly motley, a teeming crush of people, wheels, animals, posters, trees, colors, birds. ... p 2: Yes, to unbend the wild, primitive curve and straighten it to a tangent - an asymptote - a straight line. For the line of the One State is the straight line. The great, divine, exact, wise straight line - the wisest of all lines.

p 6: Then - a leap across the centuries, from + to -. [...] I suddenly remembered a picture I had seen in a museum: one of their avenues, out of the twentieth century, dazzlingly motley, a teeming crush of people, wheels, animals, posters, trees, colors, birds. ... And they say this had really existed - could exist. It seemed so incredible, so preposterous that I could not contain myself and burst out laughing.

p 12: Twice a day, from sixteen to seventeen, and from twenty-one to twenty-two, the single mighty organism breaks up into separate cells; these are the Personal Hours designated by the Table. In these hours you will see modestly lowered shades in the rooms of some; others will walk with measured tread along the avenue, as though climbing the brass stairs of the March; still others, like myself now, are at their desks. But I am confident - and you may call me an idealist and dreamer - I am confident that sooner or later we shall fit these Personal Hours as well into the general formula. Some day these 86,400 seconds will also be entered in the Table of Hours.

p 17: They were able to create only by whipping themselves up to fits of 'inspiration' - an unknown form of epilepsy.

p 22: Hence you see how the great power of logic purifies everything it touches.

p 35: when man's freedom equals zero, he commits no crimes. That is clear. The only means of ridding man of crime is ridding him of freedom.

p 61: Those two, in paradise, were given a choice: happiness without freedom, or freedom without happiness. There was no third alternative. Those idiots chose freedom, and what came of it? Of course, for ages afterward they longed for the chains.

p 93: Man ceased to be a savage only when we had built the Green Wall, when we had isolated our perfect mechanical world from the irrational, hideous world of trees, birds, animals. ...

p 139: And for some reason, the memory of an incident this morning at the building site flashed before me. In jest, someone had placed a watch under a hundred-ton hammer - the hammer swung, a gust of wind in the face, and a hundred tons delicately, quietly came to rest upon the fragile watch.

p 154: The sun ... this was not our sun, evenly diffused over the mirror-smooth surface of our pavements. These were living fragments, continually shifting spots, which dazed the eyes and made the head reel. And the trees, like candles - rising up into the sky itself; like spiders crouching on the earth with gnarled paws; like mute green fountains ... And everything was crawling, stirring, rustling ... Some shaggy little ball dashed out from underfoot. And I was frozen to the spot, I could not make a step, because under my feet was not a level surface - you understand - not a firm, level surface, but something revoltingly soft, yielding, springy, green, alive. ...more

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