Aldous Huxley was an English writer, poet and philosopher whose birthday is today 60th anniversary of his death. His best-known and recognized work is A happy world. We remember it with this selection of fragments, phrases and poems.
Aldous Huxley
Born into a family of intellectuals, in his youth he had serious vision problems who postponed their studies in Oxford, but he recovered, finished them and was traveling through Europe as an art and literature critic.
He wrote poetry and short stories and his first novels did not do very well. But in 1932 published what would be the most famous and controversial: A happy world. Visionary and dystopian In equal parts, it reflected the obsessions that worried him most, such as state control and the dehumanization of technology.
He later settled in United States, where he died of throat cancer in Los Angeles at the age of sixty-nine.
Aldous Huxley — Selection of fragments, phrases and poems
Counterpoint
- God's best joke, as far as he was concerned, was that he didn't exist. It simply didn't exist. Neither God nor the devil. Because if the devil existed, God would also exist. All that existed was the memory of solid, disgusting stupidity, and now formidable pugilism. First a matter for the trash can and then a farce. But, deep down, perhaps that was the devil: the spirit of the garbage cans. And God? God, in this case, would be the absence of garbage cans.
- …if possessed, then, I assure you, this world would look much more like the kingdom of heaven than it does under our current Christian-intellectual-scientific regime.
A happy world
- And here is the secret of happiness and virtue: loving what one must do.
- Madness is contagious.
- Words can be like X-rays, which go through anything, if you use them properly.
- What unites man, nature is incapable of separating.
- The greater the talent of a man, the more he can corrupt others.
- … Real happiness always appears paltry in comparison with the compensations that misfortune offers. And, of course, stability is not nearly as spectacular as instability. And being satisfied with everything does not have the charm of a good fight against misfortune, nor the picturesqueness of the fight against temptation or against a fatal passion or a doubt. Happiness never has greatness.
- Nothing can be achieved without perseverance.
- But I don't want the comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want true risk, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.
- There can be no lasting civilization without an abundance of pleasant vices.
- I claim the right to be miserable.
- I prefer to be myself, myself and unhappy, rather than anyone else and happy.
- If one is different, one is condemned to loneliness.
- Happiness is a tyrannical master, especially the happiness of others.
- Speeches about the freedom of the individual. The freedom of being useless and miserable. The freedom to be like a round peg in a square hole.
- Family, monogamy, romanticism, everywhere exclusivity: everywhere concentration of interest, close channeling of impulse and energy.
- There is no civilization without social stability. There is no social stability without emotional stability.
- It would be pure cruelty to afflict them with excessive leisure.
- When everyone is suspicious of you, you also become suspicious of them.
- You have to be sore, restless; Otherwise you won't get the really good, penetrating phrases right.
- One of the main functions of a friend is to suffer the punishments that we want - and cannot - inflict on our enemies.
Mirror
In slow motion, the moonlight once passed through
the mirror dreamer,
where, kneeling, inviolably deep,
old unforgotten secrets harbor
unforgettable wonders.
But now dusty cobwebs intertwine
through the mirror, the one that once
I saw the fingers that removed the gold
of a carefree forehead;
and the depths are blinded to the moon,
and forgotten its secrets, never told.
The doors of the temple
Numerous are the doors of the spirit that lead
to the most intimate sanctuary:
and I consider the doors of the temple divine,
because the god of the place is God himself.
And these are the doors that God established
that they would bring to their house: wine and kisses,
cold abysses of thought, youth without respite,
and quiet senescence, prayer and desire,
the breast of the lover and the mother,
the fire of judgment and the fire of the poet.
But he who venerates those doors in solitude,
forgetting the sanctuary beyond, you will see
suddenly the closures open,
revealing, not the radiant throne of God,
but the fires of anger and pain.