Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead

by Olga Tokarczuk

one day we shall all be nothing more than corpses.

Anger makes the mind clear and incisive, able to see more. It sweeps up the other emotions and takes control of the body. Without a doubt Anger is the source of all wisdom, for Anger has the power to exceed any limits.

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

until the words ceased to have any meaning, as if they were pebbles in the sea, tossed eternally by the waves,

As I gazed at the black-and-white landscape of the Plateau I realized that sorrow is an important word for defining the world. It lies at the foundations of everything, it is the fifth element, the quintessence.

But the truth is that anyone who feels Anger, and does not take action, merely spreads the infection.

Everything will pass.

‘You know what, sometimes it seems to me we’re living in a world that we fabricate for ourselves. We decide what’s good and what isn’t, we draw maps of meanings for ourselves… And then we spend our whole lives struggling with what we have invented for ourselves. The problem is that each of us has our own version of it, so people find it hard to understand each other.’

my belief that the human psyche evolved in order to defend us against seeing the truth. To prevent us from catching sight of the mechanism. The psyche is our defence system – it makes sure we’ll never understand what’s going on around us. Its main task is to filter information, even though the capabilities of our brains are enormous. For it would be impossible to carry the weight of this knowledge. Because every tiny particle of the world is made of suffering.

from the grass until it goes dull and grey. Then everything becomes black against white: snow falls on the ploughed fields. ‘Drive your plow over the bones of the dead,’