A Gothic Soul by Jiří Karásek

Author:Jiří Karásek [Karásek, Jiří]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction & Literature, Decadence, Symbolism
ISBN: 9788086264912
Publisher: Twisted Spoon Press
Published: 2015-01-07T00:00:00+00:00

XIII

He wandered around and lay in bed for entire days. His senses seemed to have become incapable of seeing anything, hearing anything, judging, feeling interest in anything. That his dream could be revived in shades of color struck him as impossible. He knew now that there would be only nothingness.

Then came grief. Silent, patient grief. For everything. For the vanity of life, desires, all endeavors. Nothing would be possible except to conceal himself in his own being and be silent forever.

And although he felt that the death of his dream originated in his own inner self, there nevertheless came times when he blamed his surroundings, people, and the world for killing his dream.

How indifferent to his torments was everyone who crossed his path! Although he avoided people, he loved them nonetheless. He loved them from afar. He gave them appearances more beautiful than they had and feelings more beautiful than he could perceive in them.

He intended to start a new life, one purged of all sentimentality over not having found an answer.

All of these things teemed in his mind. They all occupied his thoughts.

Yet now these thoughts seemed not to emanate from his inner self, as they had before. His brain dictated them, but he could no longer think about them intimately, only direct them with logic rather than with his heart. He was now talking aloud much too often, and he sought to divert himself by observing his surroundings with a forced superciliousness.

He sensed something unexplained behind all of life. Or was he wrong? Was life lived more simply than he imagined?

His conception of life, how it should be lived in actuality, weighed on his mind. Hour after hour, day after day, from dawn to twilight. Some daily cares, conversation, smiling, pain, and that was it. And all the while the constant feeling that he was not living his life as he should, that it was only something temporary. An illusion. This was the only feeling that had any permanence in the ephemerality of everything.

Life was so dark, doubtful – probably because he continually thought about it. Why wasn’t he like other people? They don’t think: in the morning they get out of bed, go to work, eat and drink, have fun, grieve and get angry, love and hate, so as to begin the next day all over again. And they do not lose their appetite for things repeated a hundred times over. That they already know today what tomorrow will bring does not upset them in the least. The word why does not exist for them; they know that everything ends with the grave, a layer of earth tossed on their dead body, nothing but a necessity that need not spoil the present moment.

Only he was in the habit of questioning, although he knew he would find no answer. He sought to penetrate the mystery of life, although he had no way to light its depths.

He lived so little. He did not know what living was.

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