the human question

"Each day I believe less and less in the social question, and in the political question, and in the moral question, and in all the other questions that people have invented in order that they shall not have to face resolutely the only real question that exists- the human question. So long as we are not facing this question, all that we are now doing is simply making noise so that we shall not hear it."

Miguel de Unamuno




"As to the drama which informs these works, it has nothing to do with the individual versus society, nothing to do with the 'conquest of bread,' nor has it even ultimately to do with the conflict between good and evil. It has to do with freedom. For not a line could have been written by the men I have in mind if man had ever known freedom or even what is meant by it. Here truth and freedom are synonymous. In these works the drama begins only when man voluntarily opens his eyes. This act, the sole one which may be said to have heroic significance, displaces all the sound and fury of historical substance. Outward bound, man is at last able to look inward with grace and certitude. No longer looking at life from the world plane, man ceases to be the victim of chances or circumstance: he "elects" to follow his vision, to become one with the imagination. From this moment on he begins to travel; all previous voyages were but circumnavigation."

Henry Miller