Читать книгу The Lower Quarter - Elise Blackwell - Страница 3

For David,

who once observed

that all novels

are historical novels

Only part of us is sane: only part of us loves pleasure and the longer day of happiness, wants to live to our nineties and die in peace, in a house that we built, that shall shelter those who come after us. The other half of us is nearly mad. It prefers the disagreeable to the agreeable, loves pain and its darker night despair, and wants to die in a catastrophe that will set back life to its beginnings and leave nothing of our house save its blackened foundations. Our bright natures fight in us with this yeasty darkness, and neither part is commonly quite victorious, for we are divided against ourselves and will not let either part be destroyed.

rebecca west, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon

The human body was entering a machinery of power that explores it, breaks it down, and rearranges it.

michel foucault, Discipline and Punish