But I’m not sure such blissful moments can be conveyed—you have to live through them to understand. All of this is possible in these circumstances, precisely these and none other. For example, during holidays or vacations in normal times each pleasant moment of vacation is poisoned, if only subconsciously, by the thought of what is waiting upon the return: you have to pay this or that bill, Mr. X is a swine, though you must keep on good terms, because “he can pull strings,” and so on. This entire burden of concerns under normal conditions, the burden of the future, has fallen away. There’s a war; I’m struggling to return to Paris; I haven’t the slightest idea what will happen tomorrow or a month from now, and I really don’t care. The future may turn out this way or that, but in any case, not as I might have imagined. So I don’t think about it at all—what’s too distant to be seen doesn’t count. This civilization may not be worth very much, but on most continents it has accomplished at least one great thing: the hardest way to die in our time is from hunger. If this too goes to the devil, then it’s all over. But no such danger for the moment, so I’m eating grapes. The NOW is what really counts, and one mustn’t be afraid to drain this NOW to the last drop, then toss it aside and figure out how to make the most of the next NOW. One thing alone gives me pause: it’s neither the Carpe diemof Horace nor Après nous le déluge. For the first you need peace and quiet, the second comes from boredom or fatigue. I don’t know.
Andrzej Bobkowski
Wartime Notebooks
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