B's Updates

"4.5

Who was I? I was nothing. No one. A poor, mortified body, waiting for someone to take it.

How do we perceive ourselves?
When we look in the mirror, does our reflected image see what we see?
Is the ‘us�� that we know one and the same ‘us�� that our friends and family know?

Is my case any different now, or is it the same? So long as I keep my eyes closed, we are two; I here and he in the mirror. But when I open my eyes, he will turn into me and I into him, and that is the thing I must prevent. I must see him without being seen. Is it possible? As soon as I see him, he will see me, and we will recognize ourselves. No, thanks! I don't want to recognize myself; I want to know him, outside of me. Is it possible? My one supreme effort must be this: not to see myself in me, but to be seen by me, with my very own eyes, but as if I were another, that other whom all see and I do not.

Do other people see us as we perceive ourselves?
And if not, then who is the other image people see? Who is that stranger we thought we knew?
And how many of ‘us�� are there?

From that time on, I had one despairing obsession: to go in pursuit of that stranger who was in me and who kept fleeing me; whom I could not halt in front of a mirror, without his at once becoming the me that I knew; the one who lived for others and whom I could not know; whom others beheld living and not I. I wanted to see and know him, too, as others saw and knew him.

The day Vitangelo Moscarda’s wife tells him that the right side of his nose is a little lower than the other, is the day his descent into madness or in other words, existential crisis begins.
He begins to analyze his identity, dissect his ‘being��, destroy the other images of his ‘I’s, piece himself back together and ultimately dismantle his ‘self��.

I have lost, I have lost forever my reality, and that which lies behind all things in the eyes of others…No sooner do I touch it than it vanishes.

This is a deeply philosophical work, exploring the themes of identity, human relationship, social opinion, self perception and disintegration of life.

An excerpt:

"Solitude is never where you are; it is always where you are not, and is only possible with a stranger present; whatever the place or whoever the person, it must be one that is wholly ignorant concerning you, and concerning which or whom you are equally ignorant, so that will and sensation remain suspended and confused in an anxious uncertainty, while with the ceasing of all affirmation on your part, your own inner consciousness ceases at the same time. True solitude is to be found in a place that lives a life of its own, but which for you holds no familiar footprint, speaks in no known voice, and where accordingly the stranger is yourself."

My only problem was with the translation (by Samuel Putnam), which sometimes made the reading tough and confusing."