“ What was love? A wind whispering among the roses, no, a yellow phosphorescence in the blood. Love was a hot devil’s music that set even the hearts of old men dancing. It was like the marguerite, which opens wide as the night comes on, and it was like the anemone, which closes at a breath and dies at a touch. Such was love. It could ruin a man, raise him up again, and then brand him anew; it could fancy me today, you tomorrow, and someone else tomorrow night, that’s how fickle it was. But it could also hold fast like an unbreakable seal and blaze with unquenchable passion until the hour of death, because it was eternal. So, what was the nature of love? Ah, love is a summer night with stars in the sky and fragrance on earth. But why does it make young men follow secret ways, and old men stand on tiptoe in their lonely rooms? Alas, love turns the human heart into a mildewed garden, a lush and shameless garden in which grow mysterious, obscene toadstools. Doesn’t it make monks prowl by night through closed gardens and press their eyes to the windows of sleepers? And doesn’t it possess nuns with foolishness and darken the understanding of princesses? It can knock a king’s head in the dust, making his hair sweep the road as he whispers lewd words to himself, laughing and sticking out his tongue. Such was the nature of love. No, no, again it was very different, it was like nothing else in the whole world. It came to earth on a spring night when a young man saw two eyes, two eyes. He stared and saw. He kissed two lips—it was as though two flames met in his heart, a sun flashing at a star. He fell into a pair of arms, and he heard and saw no more in the whole wide world. Love is God’s first word, the first thought that sailed through his brain. When he said, “Let there be light!” there was love. And everything that he made was very good, and no part thereof did he wish undone. And love became the world’s beginning and the world’s ruler; but all its ways are full of flowers and blood, flowers and blood. ”
—Knut Hamsun - from Victoria
“It seemed beyond all measure dense to me, and I felt its presence oppress me. I closed my eyes, commenced to sing under my breath, and tossed to and fro, in order to distract myself, but to no purpose. The darkness had taken possession of my thoughts and left me not a moment in peace. Supposing I were myself to be absorbed in darkness; made one with it? ”
—Knut Hamsun, Hunger
[light, faint]
