twenty-two before 22
i’m reading 22 books before my 22nd birthday—in three monthsArchive for soul
#6 of 22
Night (1958)
by Elie Wiesel
Novel
112 pages
Beginning:
“They called him Moishe the Beadle, as if his entire life he had never had a surname,” (3).
Somewhere in the middle, I began to weep:
“The darkness eveloped us. All i could hear was the violin, and it was as if Juliek’s soul had become his bow. He was playing his life. His whole being was gliding over the strings. His unfulfilled hopes. His charred past, his extinguished future. He played that which he would never play again.
I shall never forget Juliek. How could I forget this concert given before an audience of the dead and dying? Even today, when I hear that particular piece by Beethoven, my eyes close and out of the darkness emerges the pale and melancholy face of my Polish comrade bidding farewell to an audience of dying men.
I don’t know how long he played. I was overcome by sleep. When I awoke at daybreak, I saw Juliek facing me, hunched over, dead. Next to him lay his violin, trampled, an eerily poignant little corpse,” (95).
End:
“One day when I was able to get up, I decided to look at myself in the mirror on the opposite wall. I had not seen myself since the ghetto.
From the depths of the mirror, a corpse was contemplating me.
The look in his eyes as he gazed at me has never left me,” (115).
#1 of 22
Lady Chatterley’s Lover (1928)
by D.H. Lawrence
Novel
321 pages
Beginning:
“Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically. The cataclysm has happened, we are among the ruins, we start to build up new little habits, to have new little hopes. It is rather hard work: there is now no smooth road into the future: but we go round, or scramble over the obstacles. We’ve got to live, no matter how many skies have fallen,” (3).
Somewhere in the middle:
“It seems to me absolutely true, that our world, which appears to us the surface of all things, is really the bottom of a deep ocean: all our trees are submarine growths, and we are weird, scaly-clad submarine fauna, feeding ourselves on offal like shrimps. Only occasionally the soul rises grasping through the fathomless fathoms under which we live, far up to the surface of the ether, we there is true air. I am convinced that the air we normally breathe is a kind of water, and men and women are a species of fish,” (285).
End:
“But a great deal of us is together, and we can but abide by it, and steer our courses to meet soon. John Thomas says goodnight to lady Jane, a little droopingly, but with a hopeful heart,” (324).
