From Nina Berberova's The Italics Are Mine:
Then the door of the study was opened, and Merezhkovsky came into the dining room. I never heard him speak of anything that wasn't interesting. Gippius often asked, when speaking of people:
'But is he interested in what's interesting?'
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| Dmitry Sergeyevich Merezhkovsky 1866 - 1941 |
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| Zinaida Nikolaevna Gippius 1869 - 1945 |
One begins to understand how important this is, with time: absolutely paramount, in fact.
ReplyDeleteI worked for a company for 12 years. People of all ages -- part-time college students, truck drivers, regular people, ambitious types, insufferable management types, customers along the wide spectrum from odd to pathological. During those 12 years -- hundreds of little conversations each day -- I heard not one interesting sentence spoken. It nearly cracked my brain and strangled my soul.
ReplyDeleteNow, that can be interpreted as: Tim is a snob. I don't think that's exactly the case. I think some people, from an early age, are "outside people" -- those who are chronically turned toward the mystery of being, who are permanently standing in the strange shadow cast by time.
I was disappointed a little when I read further about Merezhkovsky. Turns out, he wasn't interested in aesthetics.
I do understand the soul-crushing sensation of being in the wrong company. Try writing poetry to an abusive auto-mechanic sometime! Lost in translation is putting it mildly.
ReplyDeleteOne of my problems is that I lack some filtering mechanisms -- I can be fascinated by a grain of sand or a puddle or almost any human being, but I am learning discrimination.