Why prolong
it? If it is unhappy you would only draw out the unhappiness to greater
lengths, and such joy as it has is joy only because it is quick, sudden,
violent. I would concentrate a lifetime into an instant, if I could,
and then die content in having suffered everything, enjoyed everything,
dared everything in the flash of a great lightning between two total
darknesses. But to drag on through slow sorrows, or to crawl through a
century of contentment--never! Better be mad, or asleep, and unconscious
of the time."
"You are a very desperate person!" exclaimed Keyork. "If you had the
management of this unstable world you would make it a very convulsive
and nervous place. We should all turn into flaming ephemerides,
fluttering about the crater of a perpetually active volcano. I prefer
the system of the brick liver. There is more durability in it."
The carriage stopped before the door of Kafka's dwelling. Keyork got out
with him and stood upon the pavement while the porter took the slender
luggage into the house. He smiled as he glanced at the leathern
portmanteau which was supposed to have made such a long journey while
it had in reality lain a whole month in a corner of Keyork's great room
behind a group of specimens. He had opened it once or twice in that
time, had disturbed the contents and had thrown in a few objects from
his heterogeneous collection, as reminiscences of the places visited
in imagination by Kafka, and of the acquisition of which the latter was
only assured in his sleeping state.
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