"There is no proportion between the pity we feel and the extent of the pain by which the pity is aroused: a single Anne Frank excites more emotion than the myriads who suffered as she did but whose image has remained in the shadows. Perhaps it is necessary that it can be so. If we had to and were able to suffer the sufferings of everyone, we could not live. Perhaps the dreadful gift of pity for the many is granted only to saints; to the Monatti, to the members of the Special Squad, and to all of us there remains in the best of cases only the sporadic pity addressed to the single individual, the Mitmensch, the co-man: the human being of flesh and blood standing before us, within the reach of our providentially myopic senses." (56)
(Trans. Raymond Rosenthal. New York: Vintage International, 1989)
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2 comments:
Maybe it would be a beautiful thing if the whole world grieved everytime an individual suffered. "Providentially" is right though...thank God we've evolved to be selfish and forgetful enough to avoid the pain of perpetual commiseration.
There was a crossword puzzle clue recently, something about "author Levi" and I knew I'd seen the name before. Here!
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