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the darkness in which the blind live was nothing other than the simple absence of light, that what we call blindness was something that simply covered the appearance of beings and things, leaving them intact behind their black veil. Now, on the contrary, here he was, plunged into a whiteness so luminous, so total, that it swallowed up rather than absorbed, not just the colours, but the very things and beings, thus making them twice as invisible.
Blindness
He dreamt at once that he was pretending to be blind, he dreamt that he was for ever closing and opening his eyes, and, that on each occasion, as if he were returning from a journey, he found waiting for him, firm and unaltered, all the forms and colours of the world as he knew it. Beneath this reassuring certainty, he perceived nevertheless, the dull nagging of uncertainty, perhaps it was a deceptive dream, a dream from which he would have to emerge sooner or later, without knowing at this moment what reality awaited him.
blind people do not consult an ophthalmologist.
1
we made our eyes into a kind of mirror turned inwards, with the result that they often show without reserve what we were verbally trying to deny.
2
A doctor is worth several men, words we should not accept as a straightforward expression of quantity, but above all, of quality, as we shall soon see. He summoned the courage to go to bed without disturbing his wife, not even when, muttering and half asleep, she stirred in the bed and snuggled up to him. He lay awake for hours on end, the little sleep he managed to snatch was from pure exhaustion. He hoped the night would never end rather than have to announce, he whose profession was to cure ailments in the eyes of others, I’m blind, but, at the same time, he was anxiously waiting for the
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he knew that his image was there watching him, his image could see him, he could not see his image.
1
This is the stuff we’re made of, half indifference and half malice.
2
that is what we say when we do not wish to play the weakling, we say Fine, even though we may be dying, and this is commonly known as taking one’s courage in both hands, a phenomenon that has only been observed in the human species.
