Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead

by Olga Tokarczuk

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.

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.

In a way, people like her, those who wield a pen, can be dangerous. At once a suspicion of fakery springs to mind—that such a Person is not him- or herself, but an eye that’s constantly watching, and whatever it sees it changes into sentences; in the process it strips reality of its most essential quality—its inexpressibility.

Reality has grown old and gone senile; after all, it is definitely subject to the same laws as every living organism—it ages. Just like the cells of the body, its tiniest components, the senses, succumb to apoptosis. Apoptosis is natural death, brought about by the tiredness and exhaustion of matter. In Greek this word means “the dropping of petals.” The world has dropped its petals.

I didn’t like poetry; all the poems ever written seemed to me unnecessarily complicated and unclear. I couldn’t understand why these revelations weren’t recorded properly—in prose. Then Dizzy would lose patience and become exasperated. I liked teasing him this way.

“Its Animals show the truth about a country,” I said. “Its attitude toward Animals. If people behave brutally toward Animals, no form of democracy is ever going to help them, in fact nothing will at all.”