<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style=""><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lacrimae_rerum">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lacrimae_rerum</a><br></div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Tue, Jun 7, 2016 at 6:45 AM, Mark Kohut <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:mark.kohut@gmail.com" target="_blank">mark.kohut@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><p style="margin:0px 0px 1em;padding:0px;border:0px;font-family:ff-tisa-web-pro,serif,Georgia;font-size:1.125em;line-height:1.825em;vertical-align:baseline;color:rgb(38,38,38)">I want to suggest that Mann's perspective below, and he was not, of course, alone in articulating it,  as more than a few thinkers and writers share the notion, is also Pynchon's as 'buried' but shimmeringly clear, kinda beautifully in his works. </p><p style="margin:0px 0px 1em;padding:0px;border:0px;font-family:ff-tisa-web-pro,serif,Georgia;font-size:1.125em;line-height:1.825em;vertical-align:baseline;color:rgb(38,38,38)">Answering in the 1950s — decades after his <a href="https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/10/08/hermann-hesse-thomas-mann-appreciation-letters/" style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border-width:0px 0px 1px;border-bottom-style:solid;border-bottom-color:rgb(225,155,155);font-family:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-style:inherit;line-height:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;color:rgb(195,55,55);text-decoration:none" target="_blank">touching correspondence with young Hermann Hesse</a> and a few years before his death — Mann writes:</p><blockquote style="margin:1.25em 0px 1.4em;padding:0px 0px 0px 100px;border:0px;font-family:-webkit-standard;font-size:16px;line-height:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;quotes:none;min-height:60px;background-image:url(https://www.brainpickings.org/wp-content/themes/brainpickings/images/sprites.png);color:rgb(38,38,38);background-repeat:no-repeat no-repeat"><p style="margin:0px 0px 1.4em;padding:0px;border:0px;font-family:fira-sans;font-size:1.2em;font-style:inherit;line-height:1.6em;vertical-align:baseline;color:rgb(26,26,26)">What I believe, what I value most, is transitoriness. </p><p style="margin:0px 0px 1.4em;padding:0px;border:0px;font-family:fira-sans;font-size:1.2em;font-style:inherit;line-height:1.6em;vertical-align:baseline;color:rgb(26,26,26)">But is not transitoriness — the perishableness of life — something very sad? No! It is the very soul of existence. It imparts value, dignity, interest to life. Transitoriness creates <em style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-family:inherit;font-size:inherit;line-height:inherit;vertical-align:baseline">time</em> — and “time is the essence.†Potentially at least, time is the supreme, most useful gift. </p><p style="margin:0px 0px 1.4em;padding:0px;border:0px;font-family:fira-sans;font-size:1.2em;font-style:inherit;line-height:1.6em;vertical-align:baseline;color:rgb(26,26,26)">Time is related to — yes, identical with — everything creative and active, with every progress toward a higher goal. Without transitoriness, without beginning or end, birth or death, there is no time, either. Timelessness — in the sense of time never ending, never beginning — is a stagnant nothing. It is absolutely uninteresting.</p></blockquote></div>
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