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| All injustice and suffering on earth has its reason in the fact that experiences cannot be transmitted. At the most, they can be communicated. Between the appropriate and the unbearable lies the whole path of experience, which only one person can ever travel alone. Just as only one person ever dies alone and no one knows anything about death.... |
Jakob Wassermann (10 March 1873 – 1 January 1934)
I am not sure I agree with him. I think that a LOT of the injustice and suffering in this world is brought about by greed and selfishness. It is not that experiences cannot be transmitted, but that the effort to understand/empathise is not made.
ReplyDeleteHmm, I'm pretty sure Wassermann wouldn't disagree with you, Sue. In fact, I think he expressed almost the same thing in different words.
DeleteWhen kind, empathic people, in order to warn and protect me from them, tell about certain negative experiences they have made or experienced and I don't care or even laugh inwardly about them, they could as well have transmitted their experiences to their goldfish.
Thank you. I obviously misunderstood him. Empathy is a double edged sword and often painful, but the world is a poorer place when it is not used.
DeleteEstic d'acord en que les experiències no es poden transmetre, tal i com són viscudes; però sí que es poden comunicar. Dependrà del grau d'empatia el fet d'apropar-se més o menys a la realitat.
ReplyDeleteAferradetes, Sean.
Empathy is the magic word, Paula.
DeleteI agree with Elephant's Child. Today's society is full of greed and selfishness. People care only for themselves and nothing else. The world is not at a good place these days.
ReplyDeleteIndeed, Bill, there is so much greed, envy, egoism, often frightening viciousness and brutality in words and deeds etc. etc. - like Brecht once put it in another context, we "live in dark times."
DeleteMay they not become darker.
The peace of the night.
Best to you in the New Year. Thanks for your interesting author’s introduction who I understand that his earlier work mostly fictional Jewish characters inclusive of the Judea /Christian idea of justice, with philosophic underpinnings for love whilst making a case against tyranny.
ReplyDeleteI was interested in the quote which I couldn’t quite understand except I agree of course you can’t live another’s experiences. Also your explanatory note where you quoted his embrace of empathy which seemed to me to illustrate negatively e.g. might as well be talking to gold fish?
Is there a possibility these quotes are from the characters in his writings rather than the author’s personal views or I assume you think it’s his views speaking through the character? Aren’t experiences and our interpretations of them as to what we know (from empirical studies) and can understand about such experiences the very essence of life and also the case of an author’s narrative? Best wishes
Thank you for your good wishes, Lindsay. All the best for you too in 2023.
DeleteAs for the quotation: It comes from "Der Fall Maurizius", 1928, (The Maurizius Case), p.353.
In my reply to EC's comment I did not quote Wassermann. I merely stated that if someone's well-intentioned advice falls on deaf ears with me or whoever, he could also have given this advice to a goldfish, because then the well-intentioned advice is a wasted effort.
I hope this passage is now unambiguous.
The peace of the night.
Thanks Sean. That now makes much more sense to me. Maybe the quotes context is more a matter of the authors illustration (through his character) of an injustice due to a lack of imagination settling on supposition in a cold hearted legalistic manner.
ReplyDeleteBest wishes