The Era He was upstairs in a bookstore. Twenty years old at the time, he had climbed a ladder set against a bookcase and was searching for the newly-arrived Western books: Maupassant, Baudelaire, Strindberg, Ibsen, The sun threatened to set before long, but he went on reading book spines with undiminished intensity. Lined up before him was not so much an array of books as the fin de sieècle itself. Nietzsche, Verlaine, the Goncourt brothers, Dostoevsky, Hauptmann, Flaubert… He took stock of their names as he struggled with the impending gloom. The books began to sink into the somber shadows. Finally his stamina gave out and he made ready to climb down. At that very moment, directly overhead, a single bare light bulb came on. Standing on his perch on top of the ladder, he looked down at the clerks and customers moving among the books. They were strangely small—and shabby. Life is not worth a single line of Baudelaire. He stood on the ladder, watching them below… Akutagawa, Ryunosuke (2007-04-05). Rashomon and Seventeen Other Stories (Penguin Classics) (pp. 186-187). Penguin UK. Kindle Edition.
Posted on: Fri, 27 Sep 2013 15:45:39 +0000
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