When Mr Knott moved about the house he did so as one unfamiliar with the premises, fumbling at doors immemorially locked, kneeling rapt on window-seats, stumbling in the dark, seeking high and low the water-closet, pausing irresolute at the foot of the stairs, pausing irresolute at the head of the stairs.
-Beckett, Watt
Company of Thieves — Oscar Wilde (Acoustic)
I thought: Here I could be content. For here it is secluded and beautiful. It won’t take much courage to live here. One will have to struggle here as anywhere else, but at least one won’t have to do it with graceful movements. That won’t be necessary. For there are only mountains and a wide river and I have sense enough to regard them as inanimate. Yes, when I totter alone up the steep path through the meadows in the evening I will be no more forsaken than the mountains, except that I will feel it. But I think that this, too, will pass.
-Kafka, “Description of a Struggle”
“I don’t know,” I cried without a sound, “I really don’t know. If nobody comes, then nobody comes. I have done nobody any harm, nobody has done me any harm, but nobody will help me. A pack of nobodies. But it isn’t quite like that. It’s just that nobody helps me, otherwise a pack of nobodies would be nice, I would rather like (what do you think?) to go on an excursion with a pack of nobodies. Into the mountains, of course, where else?…Everybody in frock coats, needless to say. We walk along so happily, a fine wind is whistling through the gaps made by us and our limbs. In the mountains our throats become free. It’s a wonder we don’t break into song.”
Then my acquaintance collapsed, and I discovered that he was badly wounded in the knee.
-Kafka, “Description of a Struggle”
