“Is it surprising that the people could see their fate and that of the world only as an endless succession of evils? Bad government, exactions, the cupidity and violence of the great, wars and brigandage, scarcity, misery and pestilence – to this is contemporary history nearly reduced in the eyes of the people. The feeling of general insecurity which was caused by the chronic form wars were apt to take, by the constant menace of the dangerous classes, by the mistrust of justice, was further aggravated by the obsession of the coming end of the world, and by the fear of hell, or sorcerers and devils. The background of all life in the world seems black. Everywhere the flames of hatred arise and injustice reigns. Satan covers a gloomy earth with his sombre wings. In vain the militant Church battles, preachers deliver their sermons; the world remains unconverted. According to a popular belief, current towards the end of the fourteenth century, no one, since the beginning of the great Western schism, had entered Paradise.”

(Johan Huizinga, The Waning of the Middle Ages, pp. 30–31.)

“A WHITE BEAR! Very well. Have I ever seen one? Might I ever have seen one? Am I ever to see one? Ought I ever to have seen one? Or can I ever see one?

Would I had seen a white bear? (for how can I imagine it?)

If I should see a white bear, what should I say? If I should never see a white bear, what then?

If I never have, can, must or shall see a white bear alive; have I ever seen the skin of one? Did I ever see one painted?—described? Have I never dreamed of one?

Did my father, mother, uncle, aunt, brothers or sisters, ever see a white bear? What would they give? How would they behave? How would the white bear have behaved? Is he wild? Tame? Terrible? Rough? Smooth?

—Is the white bear worth seeing?—

—Is there no sin in it?—

Is it better than a BLACK ONE?”

(Laurence Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, chapter 43.)

“But as we came from Antheil’s ‘Ballet Méchanique’ a woman of our party, herself a musician, made this remark: ‘The subway seems sweet after that.’ ‘Good,’ I replied and went on to consider what evidences there were in myself in explanation of her remark. And this is what I noted. I felt that noise, the unrelated noise of life such as this in the subway had not been battened out as would have been the case with Beethoven still warm in the mind but it had actually been mastered, subjugated. Antheil had taken this hated thing life and rigged himself into power over it by his music. The offense had not been held, cooled, varnished over but annihilated and life itself made thereby triumphant. This is an important difference. By hearing Antheil’s music, seemingly so much noise, when I actually came upon noise in reality, I found that I had gone up over it.”

(William Carlos Williams, “George Antheil and the Cantilène Critics: A Note on the First Performance of Antheil’s Music in New York City (April 10th, 1927)” from A Novelette and Other Prose, p. 355 in Imaginations.)

“The greatest work of the twentieth century will be that of those who are placing literature on a plane superior to philosophy and science. Present day despairs of life are bred of the past triumphs of these latter. Literature will lay truth open upon a higher level. If I can have a part in that enterprise, I shall be extremely contented. It will be an objective synthesis of chosen words to replace the common dilatoriness with stupid verities with which everyone is familiar. Reading will become an art also. Living in a backward country, as all which are products of the scientific and philosophic centuries must be, I am satisfied, since I prefer not to starve, to live by the practice of medicine, which combines the best features of both science and philosophy with that imponderable and enlightening element, disease, unknown in its normality to either. But, like Pasteur, when he was young, or anyone else who has something to do, I wish I had more money for my literary experiments.”

(William Carlos Williams, from A Novelette and Other Prose, p. 363 in Imaginations.)

“—Music hurts me. I don’t know whether I truly love it. It finds me wherever it happens to. I don’t go looking for it. I let it caress me. But these caresses are injurious. How should I say it? Music is a weeping in melodies, a remembrance in notes, a painting in sounds. I can’t rightly say. Just so no one takes my statements about art up there too seriously. They’re certain to miss the mark somewhat as not a single note has yet struck me today. There’s something missing when I don’t hear music, and when I do, then there’s really something missing. That’s the best I can say about music.”

(Robert Walser, from “Music”, from Fritz Kocher’s Essays, trans. Susan Bernofsky, p. 10 in Masquerade and Other Stories.)

“Simon was twenty years old when it occurred to him one evening as he lay in the soft, green moss beside the road that, just as he was, he could wander out into the world and become a page boy.”

(Robert Walser, from “Simon: a love story”, trans. Susan Bernofsky, p. 15 in Masquerade and Other Stories.)