Date: Mon, 28 May 2001 16:41:41 +0200
Subject: Re: body & soul


Joseph Conrad, in Under western eyes, writes of Razumov,
when he is finally all alone and on a little island in Geneva,
above him a bronze Rousseau, writer of the Social Contract:

""There can no doubt that now I am safe", he thought. His fine ear
could detect the faintly accentuated murmurs of the current
breaking against the point of the island, and he forgot himself
in listening to them with interest. But even to his acute sense of
hearing the sound was too elusive.

"Extraordinary occupation I am giving myself up to", he
murmured. And it occurred to him that this was about the only
sound he could listen to innocently, and for his own pleasure,
as it were. Yes, the sound of water, the voice of the wind -
completely foreign to human passions. All the other sounds
of this earth brought contamination to the solitude of a soul.

This was Mr. Razumov's feeling, the soul, of course, being his own,
and the word being used not in the theological sense, but standing,
as far as I can understand it, for that part of Mr. Razumov which was 
not his body, and more specially in danger from the fires of this earth.
And it must be admitted that in Mr. Razumov's case the bitterness of
solitude from which he suffered was not an altogether morbid
phenomenon."





   


-----------------------------------
drs. René de Bakker
Universiteitsbibliotheek Amsterdam
Afdeling Catalogisering 
tel. 020-5252368              


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