[...] About sympathy for example -- we can do without it. That illusion of a world so shaped that it echoes every groan, of human beings so tied together by common needs and fears that a twitch at one wrist jerks another, where however strange your experience other people have had it too, where however far you travel in your own mind someone has been there before you -- is all an illusion. We do not know our own souls, let alone the souls of others. Human beings do not go hand in hand the whole stretch of the way. There is a virgin forest in each; a snowfield where even the print of brids' feet is unknown.
Virginia Wolf, "On Being Ill", Selected Essays
Friday, November 6, 2009
Tea, Hold the Sympathy
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(I can comment on my own post, right?) This passage was quoted by the character "Alice" in Craig Lucas' "Blue Window" which I originally saw as an American Playhouse presentation on PBS. I later directed a production of BW in college. The play always stuck with me, and this passage in particular
ReplyDeleteDoes this free me from ever needing to feel sympathy for anyone ever again? I mean, if I can tell my mom to go mow the lawn in her wheelchair, I'm already well on my way.
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