I Would I Might Forget That I am I

[sawyl]

The poetry mood matcher has detected that I'm experiencing an existential crisis and suggested that the following might grant solace:

I would I might forget that I am I,
And break the heavy chain that binds me fast,
Whose links about myself my deeds have cast.
What in the body's tomb doth buried lie
Is boundless; 'tis the spirit of the sky,
Lord of the future, guardian of the past,
And soon must forth, to know his own at last.
In his large life to live, I fain would die.
Happy the dumb beast, hungering for food,
But calling not his suffering his own;
Blessed the angel, gazing on all good,
But knowing not he sits upon a throne;
Wretched the mortal, pondering his mood,
And doomed to know his aching heart alone.
George Santayana (1863 - 1952)

I suspect that my crisis stems from my inability to remember anything about La Peste when someone asked me about it, other than that it involves a disease and a doctor as an allegory for something else. I think I'm going to have to troll down to the library tomorrow to see if I can correct the situation.

Now, if only I'd been asked what I remembered about La Nausee, they'd have been in luck: I remember reading it at a very wet conference in the Netherlands. I also remembering reading The Bell at the same conference - the sessions can't have been up to much if I managed to read two heavy duty philosophical novels within a week. I seem to remember enjoying The Bell rather more, but then it did have Dora Greenfield and her abominable husband Paul, a schizophrenic religious nut and an aquatic nun. If only Sartre had included more nuns - preferably nuns with 50m life saving badges - then he might have won me round.