| For neither the lamb nor the dove
can laugh the Florentian laughter, which is the precondition for all experiments
and adventures with matter. The dove would never have discovered that
peculiar secret of nature, that all matter is at bottom explosive.
We eat our sandwiches, carry on our love-life, are born and die on top
of a powder-barrel careening through the cosmos...
This laughter is why the Tuscans discovered natural science and the lucid,
Tuscan lines of their cool paintings; the laughter means distance.
In contrast, where the laughter ends, is the beginning of madness.
Jens Bjørneboe: Frihetens øyeblikk, pp.123, 117 (my translation) |