Zeno's Conscience

by Italo Svevo

She was thus unaware that when two are joined in this world, the union lasts for a period so very, very short that we cannot comprehend how we arrived at intimacy after an infinite time when we hadn’t known each other, and we were now prepared never to see each other again for an equally infinite time.

In fact, in real life we lack the monotony of museums. Days go by, suitable for framing; they are rich in sounds that daze you, and besides their lines and colors, they are also filled with real light, the kind that burns and therefore isn’t boring.

Health impels us to activity, to take on a world of nuisances.

Naïve because she had to be ignorant of the history of the world to be able to believe that she had made a clever transaction simply by buying an object: it’s when you sell the object that you judge the wisdom of the purchase.

I was living in a simulation of activity. Very boring activity.

Perhaps I didn’t mention my virtue because I was constantly being unfaithful to Augusta in my thoughts, and even now, speaking to Copler, with a shudder of desire I thought of all the women that I was neglecting on her account.

But later, when I remained alone, I was amazed at having felt the necessity to be sincere with Carla. Did I love her already? Why, I hadn’t even taken a good look at her!

The battle with sin in some circumstances becomes very difficult because you have to renew it every day and every hour:

In no way did it harm my relations with Augusta: quite the contrary, in fact. I spoke to her now not only with the affectionate words I had always had for her, but also with those that, in my thoughts, were being formed for the other.

For a long while I had been deprived not of love, but of the thrill of rushing to it.

sometimes, to be satisfied, it was enough to light the match, then throw away both match and cigarette.

Masturbation

She had been rendered desirable also by everything I had already suffered for her.

it was very original to set out on the conquest of one woman with a declaration of love for another on your lips.

That’s how women are. Every day that dawns brings them a new interpretation of the past.

I suppressed those words because in the sea of wine in which I was swimming, I found a plank that saved me.

Wine is a great danger, especially because it doesn’t bring truth to the surface. Anything but the truth, indeed: it reveals especially the past and forgotten history of the individual rather than his present wish; it capriciously flings into the light also all the half-baked ideas with which in a more or less recent period one has toyed and then forgotten; it ignores the erasures and reads everything still legible in our heart. And we know there is no way of canceling anything there radically, as you can cancel a mistaken endorsement on a promissory note. All our history is always readable there, and wine shouts it, overlooking whatever life has subsequently added.

Good devil that I am, I let myself be touched by those tears, and I begged Carla to split my ears with her big voice in the little room.

cad! Besmirching his own house like that!” I was

One of the first effects of female beauty on a man is to strip him of avarice.

Then I tried a system of mine that consisted of shouting insults into the tiny ear of that yelling monkey. The only result was to alter the rhythm of her screams, because she began to cry out also in fright.

Perhaps whatever produces pain in large organisms can be reduced, in the very small, until it becomes a different experience, a stimulus to thought.

One of the most difficult things in life is guessing what a woman wants. Listening to her words is no use, because a whole speech can be erased by one look, nor can that look guide us when we are with her, at her invitation, in a convenient, dark little room.

Unable to read her, I tried to read myself. What was my desire? Did I want to kiss those eyes and that skeletal body?

Finally, in a broken voice, she told me once again of her love for Guido, hence I had neither duties nor rights toward her.

“Since you ask me, I’ll go on helping Guido. Indeed, I’ll do my best to help him more effectively than I’ve done so far.” Another exaggeration! I realized as much at the very moment I blundered into it, but I couldn’t give it up. I wanted to assure Ada (or perhaps lie to her), saying that she was important to me.

When a woman gives you her hand, she is offering a great deal! I have always felt that. When I was granted a hand, I felt I was grasping an entire woman.

I felt as if I were performing an act that resembled an embrace. Without doubt, it was an intimate contact.

How a word can traverse time! It becomes an event in itself, connecting with other events! My words became an event, a tragic event, because they were addressed to Ada!

I couldn’t sit still a moment without growing older.

I sincerely believe that I have always needed adventure, or some complication resembling it.

Natural law does not entitle us to happiness, but rather it prescribes wretchedness and sorrow.

for nature doesn’t do sums, she experiments. When food no longer suffices, then consumers must diminish through death preceded by pain; thus equilibrium, for a moment, is reestablished. Why complain? And yet everyone does complain. Those who have had none of the prey die, crying out against injustice, and those who had a share feel that they deserved more.

The only admissible cry is that of the triumphant.

They had taken away his food, and he closed his eyes perhaps to dream that he still possessed it, instead of opening them wide to see if he could somehow snatch a little morsel.

At that moment she didn’t love me. My act of kindness had been too great. It crushed the people on whom it fell, and it was no wonder that the beneficiaries protested.

Oh! While he was gambling he had clearly glimpsed the possibility of ruin, but never that of being subjugated to women who didn’t understand a thing.

My time may not be all that valuable, but I surely suffer horribly when I can see I have labored in vain.

From him I learned only this: when he came outdoors and felt the rain soaking him despite his umbrella, he regretted he had studied medicine instead of agriculture, recalling that a peasant, when it rains, stays home.

I remember that agitation as true toil.

When my eyes closed, however, in the darkness I saw that her words had created a new world, like all words that are not true.

If he knew how, by predilection, we recount all the things for which we have the words at hand, and how we avoid those things that would oblige us to turn to the dictionary!

But inventing is a creation, not a lie.

It was a strange day. Certainly up above, a strong wind was blowing, because the clouds constantly changed shape; but below, the atmosphere was unmoving. It happened that from time to time, among the shifting clouds, the already-hot sun found an aperture through which to lavish its rays on this or that patch of hill or mountaintop, emphasizing the sweet green of May amid the shadow covering the landscape.

Unlike other sicknesses, life is always fatal.

Present-day life is polluted at the roots. Man has put himself in the place of trees and animals and has polluted the air, has blocked free space. Worse can happen. The sad and active animal could discover other forces and press them into his service. There is a threat of this kind in the air. It will be followed by a great gain … in the number of humans. Every square meter will be occupied by a man. Who will cure us of the lack of air and of space? Merely thinking of it, I am suffocated!

But bespectacled man, on the contrary, invents devices outside of his body, and if health and nobility existed in the inventor, they are almost always lacking in the user. Devices are bought, sold, and stolen, and man becomes increasingly shrewd and weaker. His first devices seemed extensions of his arm and couldn’t be effective without its strength; but, by now, the device no longer has any relation to the limb. And it is the device that creates sickness, abandoning the law that was, on all earth, the creator. The law of the strongest vanished, and we lost healthful selection.