The Imaginary Galaxy
And besides, the last word
is not said -- probably shall never be said. Are not our lives too short for that full utterance which through all our stammerings is of
course our only and abiding intention? I have given up expecting
those last words, whose ring, if they could only be pronounced,
would shake both heaven and earth. There is never time to say our
last word -- the last word of our love, of our desire, faith, remorse,
submission, revolt. The heaven and the earth must not be shaken,
I suppose -- at least, not by us who know so many truths about
either. My last words about lim shall be few. I affirm he had
achieved greatness; but the thing would be dwarfed in the telling,
or rather in the hearing. Frankly, it is not my words that I mistrust,
but your minds. I could be eloquent were I not afraid you fellows
had starved your imaginations to feed your bodies. I do not mean
to be offensive; it is respectable to have no illusions -- and safe -- and
profitable -- and dull. Yet you too in your time must have known
the intensity of life, that light of glamour created in the shock of
trifles, as amazing as the glow of sparks struck from a cold stone --
and as short-lived, alas!'--Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim |
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