Solaris

by Stanisław Lem

The darkness was looking at me, amorphous, immense, eyeless, devoid of limits.

My thoughts seemed to be moving along the edge of a cliff, in danger of falling off at any moment—annihilation or at least loss of consciousness would have been a unutterable, unattainable act of grace.

in the end the new state of affairs will also reach equilibrium.

There was a time we tormented one another with excessive honesty in the naive belief it would save us.

Humans are constantly coming up with hypotheses, even when they’re being cautious, and even though they’re quite unaware of it.

“When you lie for hours through the night like that, in your thoughts you can go very far, and in very strange directions, you know…”

I can’t predict what’s to come. Nor can you. I can’t even assure you I’ll always love you.

“It’s fear,” she said. She turned a little pale. “I can’t even say what it is I’m afraid of, because really I’m not afraid, I just lose myself. At the last moment I also feel this, this shame, I can’t explain.

I was overcome by a kind of passive, miry calm. It was as if I were looking at the whole situation, the two of us, everything, from a great distance, through the wrong end of a telescope.

in the tangled labyrinth of nighttime thoughts that were feverish, half logical, and thus acquired a new dimension and meaning,

I sensed that since the day before there was an unfilled gulf between us and that I ought to show her a least a little warmth; but I was overcome by complete apathy. I don’t know what would have had to happen for me to be shaken out of it.

It is faith wrapped in the cloak of science;

the faithful reject arguments that would subvert the underpinnings of their faith.

I could see that things were not good between us, and that this state of apathetic, mindless suspension couldn’t go on forever. I needed to break through it somehow, change something in our relations,

I’d be a reticent, observant, and therefore valued, companion,

For some time I’d have to force myself to smile, say hello, get to my feet, perform a thousand trivial actions from which life on Earth is composed, till I stopped being aware of them.

with an indulgent smile in which there was a hint of regret, but also of superiority, I’d recall my follies and my hopes.

A human being, appearances to the contrary, doesn’t create his own purposes. These are imposed by the time he’s born into; he may serve them, he may rebel against them, but the object of his service or rebellion comes from the outside. To experience complete freedom in seeking his purposes he would have to be alone, and that’s impossible, since a person who isn’t brought up among people cannot become a person.