When You Read A Great Book, You

Whores. Necessary In The Nineteenth Century For The Contraction Of Syphilis, Without Which No One Could Claim Genius.

In My Terms, I Settled For The Realities Of Life, And Submitted To Its Necessities: If This, Then That, And So The Years Passed. In Adrian's Terms, I Gave Up On Life, Gave Up On Examining It, Took It As It Came. And So, For The First Time, I Began To Feel A More General Remorse - A Feeling Somewhere Between Self-pity And Self-hatred - About My Whole Life. All Of It. I Had Lost The Friends Of My Youth. I Had Lost The Love Of My Wife. I Had Abandoned The Ambitions I Had Entertained. I Had Wanted Life Not To Bother Me Too Much, And Had Succeeded - And How Pitiful That Was.

Life Isn't Just Addition And Subtraction. There's Also The Accumulation, The Multiplication, Of Loss, Of Failure.

I Had Wanted Life Not To Bother Me Too Much, And Had Succeeded - And How Pitiful That Was.

There Is A German Word, Sehnsucht, Which Has No English Equivalent; It Means 'the Longing For Something'. It Has Romantic And Mystical Connotations; C.s. Lewis Defined It As The 'inconsolable Longing' In The Human Heart For 'we Know Not What'. It Seems Rather German To Be Able To Specify The Unspecifiable. The Longing For Something - Or, In Our Case, For Someone.