Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Gustav Meyrink

"Man is firmly convinced that he is awake; in reality he is caught in a net of sleep and dreams which he has unconsciously woven himself. The tighter the net, the heavier he sleeps. Those who are trapped in its meshes are the sleepers who walk through life like cattle being led to the slaughterhouse, indifferent and without a thought in their heads. Seen through the meshes, the world appears to the dreamers like a piece of lattice-work: they only see misleading apertures, act accordingly, and are unaware that what they see are simply the debris of an enormous whole. These dreamers are not, as you may perhaps think, dwellers in a world of fantasy and poets. They are the everyday men, the workers, the restless ones, consumed by a mad desire for restlessness. They are like those beetles which laboriously climb all the way up along a pipe, only to plunge down into it again as soon as they have reached the top. They say they are awake, but what they think life is, is really only a dream, every detail of which is fixed in advance and independent of their free will."
- The Green Face, by Gustav Meyrink, 1916

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Your blog keeps getting better and better! Your older articles are not as good as newer ones you have a lot more creativity and originality now keep it up!

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

Thank you very much. Good to hear.