Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead

by Olga Tokarczuk

it. I believe each of us sees the other Person in our own way, so we should give them the name we consider suitable and fitting. Thus we are polyonymous. We have as many names as the number of people with whom we interact.

Here the sky hangs over us dark and low, like a dirty screen, on which the clouds are fighting fierce battles. That’s what our houses are for – to protect us from the sky, otherwise it would pervade the very inside of our bodies, where, like a little ball of glass, our Soul is sitting. If such a thing exists.

The prison is not outside, but inside each of us. Perhaps we simply don’t know how to live without it.

Only a piece of machinery could possibly carry all the world’s pain. Only a machine, simple, effective and just. But if everything were to happen mechanically, our prayers wouldn’t be needed.