But we need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us.
via: Vasco Brondi, Una cosa spirituale (Einaudi, 2025), chapter Visceri sul tavolo
Info & reflection: the book as a tool for breaking, not for comfort.
Related in anthology
- Una cosa spirituale. Non fare niente, altre forme d'arte — Brondi quotes Kafka in Visceri sul tavolo: the book as an axe that breaks the ice, close to his own experiment with truth that unsettles