And if you'll just listen I'll make your eyes glisten
My obstinate rejection of time is now taking its revenge on me. Its passage never existed for me. I never felt it as a river that could dry up. It was all around me, inexhaustible, a sea. I drifted about in all directions; it seemed natural to go on this way. My time would never run out. Everything I undertook was for eternity, and eternities were at my disposal, even for the smallest projects.
I was in search of the old gods, wanted to reconcile them to myself. My intellectual ambitions were fulfilled in the studies of many peoples: this was how I atoned for the arrogance of my own forbears. I did not look to history for guidance. The smallest things, because they were on the verge of disappearing, meant more than the biggest. I could not accept ignoring a single life. Whatever this crowded world had no room for, I made a place for within myself. And so now I feel as broad as the world: I feel I touch it everywhere. Year by year the arrogance of those who live for themselves alone seems more and more alien to me. Today I know how little I am myself, how much of me is in the universal breath of the spirit.
But having attained this goal, I recognize my own futility. I have scorned time, and now it is running out on me.
-Elias Canetti (1905-1994), 1960
I was in search of the old gods, wanted to reconcile them to myself. My intellectual ambitions were fulfilled in the studies of many peoples: this was how I atoned for the arrogance of my own forbears. I did not look to history for guidance. The smallest things, because they were on the verge of disappearing, meant more than the biggest. I could not accept ignoring a single life. Whatever this crowded world had no room for, I made a place for within myself. And so now I feel as broad as the world: I feel I touch it everywhere. Year by year the arrogance of those who live for themselves alone seems more and more alien to me. Today I know how little I am myself, how much of me is in the universal breath of the spirit.
But having attained this goal, I recognize my own futility. I have scorned time, and now it is running out on me.
-Elias Canetti (1905-1994), 1960