Tuesday, August 22, 2006

Trapped by Affection

Essay published in Serbian as "Držanje u škripcu pomoću naklonosti", from The Selected Works of Borislav Pekić, volume 12, pp. 411-412, © Borislav Pekić; English translation © by Ljiljana Pekić.

Friendship is a two-way interaction. The first is determined by giving, the second by receiving. The fist measures our altruism, the second our egoism. Neither can live only from "entrance" or "exit" …

Caravaggio-Spilled_PerlesThe true meaning of every friendship changes all the time, but frequently it doesn't last only whilst it means something. It breaks whilst it still has some meaning; it continues when it makes no sense any more …

The nature of friendship is determined more by its origin, then by its course. I know of some - including some of mine – which are maintained exclusively by its origin …

Friendships don't live from understandings but from tolerances. Those which rely on understandings are not especially durable. No one could be understood all the time and completely; more often we understand others partially and rarely; most of the time we don't understand anyone at all.

Therefore we have to get used to tolerating them even when we don't understand them.

Tolerance is neither an approval of those things which we understand, nor an understanding of the things which we approve. It is an acceptance of those things which we neither understand nor approve …

Sometimes a friendship is based on pinning somebody down using - affection.

I and (…) for example, hold each other by the throat, in a way, by mutually behaving as good friends. Our friendship is but a refined form of mutual antipathy. And that is, probably, an active level of passive fear that we sense from each other …

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