a number of selections from the rest of The Early Ayn Rand. i finally finished it today...which of course meant i had to go to half-price books and buy, i don't know, eight books to replace it. i love bookstores so much.
"Their memories were the only future they had."
The Viking smiled as men smile when they look up at heaven; but he was looking down. His right arm was one straight line with his lowered sword; his left arm, straight as the sword, raised a goblet of wine to the sky. The first rays of a coming sun, still unseen to the earth struck the crystal goblet. It sparkled like a white torch. Its rays lighted the faces of those below. 'To a life,' said the Viking, 'which is a reason unto itself.'
---
A Viking had lived, who had laughed at Kings, who had laughed at Priests, who had laughed at Men, who had held, sacred and inviolable, high over all temples, over all to which men knew how to kneel, his one banner - the sanctity of life. He had known and she knew. He had fought and she was fighting. He had shown her the way. To the banner of life, all could be given, even life itself.
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A Viking had lived, who had laughed at Kings, who had laughed at Priests, who had laughed at Men, who had held, sacred and inviolable, high over all temples, over all to which men knew how to kneel, his one banner - the sanctity of life. He had known and she knew. He had fought and she was fighting. He had shown her the way. To the banner of life, all could be given, even life itself.
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'None of us,' one of the characters complains, 'ever chooses the bleak, hopeless life he is forced to lead.' Yet as the play demonstrates, all these men do choose the lives they lead. When confronted by the ideal they profess to desire, they do not want it. Their vaunted 'idealism' is largely a form of self-deception, enabling them to pretend to themselves and others that they aspire to something higher. In fact and in reality, however, they don't.
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A great quest. The quest of the hopeless. Why do we hope? Why do we seek it, when we'd be luckier if we didn't think that it could exist?
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A great quest. The quest of the hopeless. Why do we hope? Why do we seek it, when we'd be luckier if we didn't think that it could exist?
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There is something about you which I can't give a name to, something I had and lost, but I feel as if you're keeping it for me, for all of us. I had it long ago, when I was very young.
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You see, I'm not unhappy at all. In fact, I'm a very happy man - as happiness goes. Only there's something in me that knows of a life I've never lived, the kind of life no one has ever lived, but should.
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But when I speak to men about the sacred meaning of life, I feel that you hold the same Truth which my words struggle in vain to disclose. We are traveling different roads, Miss Gonda, but we are bound to the same destination.
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About what a peculiar thing it is - a leaking soul. You go through your days and it slips away from you, drop by drop. With each step. Like a hole in your pocket and coins dropping out, bright little coins, bright and shining, never to be found again.
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About what a peculiar thing it is - a leaking soul. You go through your days and it slips away from you, drop by drop. With each step. Like a hole in your pocket and coins dropping out, bright little coins, bright and shining, never to be found again.
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Perhaps you have taken a life in order to save another. A long time ago-no, isn't that strange?-it was only a few minutes ago-I was ready to kill myself. Don't look at me like that. It isn't frightening. But what did become frightening was that feeling of utter indifference, even to death, even to my own indifference. And then you came. . .I think I could hate you for coming.
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I didn't want to be proud of myself again. I had given it up. Yet now I am. Just because I see you here. Just because a thing has happened which is like nothing I thought possible on earth.
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I thought my life would be a thing immense and shining. I wanted to kneel to my own future... [shrugs] One gets over that.
Does one?
Always. But never completely.
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I'm terribly afraid. I have never been happy before.
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I want to see, real, living, and in the hours of my own days, that glory I create as an illusion! I want it real! I want to know that there is someone, somewhere who wants it, too!
I'm terribly afraid. I have never been happy before.
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I want to see, real, living, and in the hours of my own days, that glory I create as an illusion! I want it real! I want to know that there is someone, somewhere who wants it, too!
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A spirit, too, needs fuel. It can run dry.
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What do you dream of?
Nothing. Of what account are dreams?
Of what account is life?
None. But who made it so?
Those who cannot dream.
No. Those who can only dream.
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That's not what I mean. You couldn't be what. . . what I'm talking about. I mean, people who use kindness as some sort of weapon. . .Steve! It's a horrible weapon. I think it's worse than poison gas. It gets in deeper, it hurts more, and there's no gas mask to wear against it. Because people who would say you're wicked to want such a mask.
A spirit, too, needs fuel. It can run dry.
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What do you dream of?
Nothing. Of what account are dreams?
Of what account is life?
None. But who made it so?
Those who cannot dream.
No. Those who can only dream.
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That's not what I mean. You couldn't be what. . . what I'm talking about. I mean, people who use kindness as some sort of weapon. . .Steve! It's a horrible weapon. I think it's worse than poison gas. It gets in deeper, it hurts more, and there's no gas mask to wear against it. Because people who would say you're wicked to want such a mask.
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There is a kind of surgical conscientiousness involved as she struggles to name it, to name the exact shade of her feeling, in all its complexity and contradiction.
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The voice was exultant, breaking under an emotion it could not control. It seemed to fail suddenly in the wrong places, speaking the words not as they should have been spoken on a stage, but as a person would fling them out in delirium, unable to hold them, choking upon them. it was the voice of a somnambulist, unconscious of its own sounds, knowing only the violence and the ecstasy of the dream from which it came.
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She always stopped in jerks, as if the momentum of her every movement would carry her on forever and it took a conscious effort to end it. She had the inertia of motion; only stillness seemed to require the impulse of energy.
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Then she knew how it would feel to die, because she did not exist then, save in the knowledge of her nonbeing, because the boat did not exist, nor the water, nothing but the man at the railing and what he saw beyond those strings of light.
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Everything wrong and everything exactly as it had to be, inevitable in a crazy perfection of her own.
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Everything wrong and everything exactly as it had to be, inevitable in a crazy perfection of her own.
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Without him, she did not have to look up to herself.
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That year of her life had given her no happiness; only bewilderment and doubts and fear; a fear underscored by rare moments of a joy which was too much to bear. . .
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That year of her life had given her no happiness; only bewilderment and doubts and fear; a fear underscored by rare moments of a joy which was too much to bear. . .
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Keep still. You know better than to regret it.
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I'll start in a minute, he said. Just one minute more and then I'll start. I will, this time. I'll just rest for a minute, that's all right, isn't it? I'm very tired. You've done nothing today, he said. You've done nothing for months. What are you tired of? That's why I'm tired-because I've done nothing. I wish I could. . .I'd give anything if I could again. . .
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I'll start in a minute, he said. Just one minute more and then I'll start. I will, this time. I'll just rest for a minute, that's all right, isn't it? I'm very tired. You've done nothing today, he said. You've done nothing for months. What are you tired of? That's why I'm tired-because I've done nothing. I wish I could. . .I'd give anything if I could again. . .
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Try to think of something human. . .How does one make one's mind work? How does one invent a story? How can people ever be writers?
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It must be written as if you'd never tried to find any meaning in anything, not ever in your life.
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He's a nice, able, likeable kid, but he has no real, driving desire for anything. He's been adequate at several different jobs and he's dropped them all. There's no passion to him, no goal. What he wants above all is security. he doesn't care what he does or how or who tells him to do it. He's never created anything. He's given nothing to the world and he never will. But he wants security from the world. And he's like by everybody.
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She can't see anything in that window-only the silhouettes of people against the light. Only the shadows.
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She can't see anything in that window-only the silhouettes of people against the light. Only the shadows.
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She's never seen him and she doesn't want to. She doesn't know anything about him and she never tries to learn. She doesn't care. It's not what he is. It's what she thinks of him as being. It's a love without future, without hope or the need of hope, a love great enough to find happiness in nothing but its own greatness, unreal, inexpressible, undemanding-and more real than anything around her.
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Don't you see? It's a matter of one reversal. just make one single reversal: instead of believing that one must try to be intelligent, different, honest, challenging, that one must do the best possible to the best of ones ability and then stretch it some more to do still better - believe that one must be dull, stale, sweet, dishonest and safe.
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