Harmony between body and soul is certainly a good and necessary thing, and you are proud and happy because Nature, your beloved Nature, has granted it to you in a way that is almost miraculous. But harmony between one's life and one's innate moral convictions is, in the end, even more necessary, and where it is disrupted the only result can be emotional disruption, and that means unhappiness. Don't you feel that this is true?
— from The Black Swan, by Thomas Mann.
2 comments:
This was my first novel by Thomas Mann, and I enjoyed it. (But, I must say I like Buddenbrooks more.) Thanks for the quote on Nature; it killed me how the mother in the novel was so betrayed by her affection for Nature (when it worked in her favor).
I believe it is true, indeed.
What I like is that Mann uses the word "Nature" where someone else may have used the word "God."
A morality from Nature is safe, but a morality from God can be... all too dangerous.
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