This man had once been led out with others to the scaffold and a sentence of death was read over him. He was to be shot for a political offence. Twenty minutes later, a reprieve was read to them, and they were condemned to another punishment instead. Yet the interval between those two sentences, twenty minutes or at least a quarter of an hour, he passed in the fullest conviction that he would die in a few minutes. ...The priest went to each in turn with a cross. He had only five minutes more to live. He told me that those five minutes seemed to him an infinite time, a vast wealth; he felt that he had so many lives left in those five minutes that there was no need yet to think of the last moment, so much so that he divided his time up. He set aside time to take leave of his comrades, two minutes for that; then he kept another two minutes to think for the last time; and then a minute to look about him for the last time. He remembered very well having divided his time like that. He was dying at twenty-seven, strong and healthy... He said nothing was so dreadful at that time as the continual thought, What if I were not to die? What if I could go back to life - what eternity! And it would all be mine! I would turn every minute into an age; I would lose nothing, I would count every minute as it passed, I would not waste one! You are very disconnected, observed Aglaia. You probably meant to show, prince, that not one instant of life can be considered petty, and that sometimes five minutes is a precious treasure. Thats all very laudable, but let me ask, how did that friend who told you such horrors... he was reprieved, so he was presented with that eternity of life. What did he do with that wealth afterwards? Did he live counting each moment? Oh no, he told me himself. I asked him about that too. He didnt live like that at all; he wasted many, many minutes. -Fyodor Dostoevsky in The Idiot https://youtube/watch?v=T3JzcCviNDk
Posted on: Sat, 16 Aug 2014 01:04:22 +0000
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