I Love Books And Reading

pg's 280 - 281 of Stages on Life's Way is a little bit of a lengthy part called A Possibility, as it sets the scene of a mentally ill person who from 11 to 12 would be different from the rest of the day has a Fernando Pessoa feel to it, little existential narratives, and here in this snippet is just one of many langorous descriptive curlicues that is rich in illustration, which in the Princeton edition comes packed full of footnotes, and footnotes for the footnotes, and even footnotes for those as well.

Often we gain a completely different impression of a person when we see him in his home or apartment than when we see him elsewhere in life, and this is far from being the case only with alchemists and others who devote themselves to the secret arts and sciences or with astrologers like Dapsul von Zabelthau, who while sitting in his living room looks like any other man but when he is sitting in his observatory wears a high peaked cap on his head, a grey calamanco cape, has a long white beard, and talks in a dissembled voice so that his own daughter cannot recognize him but thinks he is a Christmas goat.

🐃