At the end of an exhilarating search, I had my savages. I asked nothing more than to be one of them, to share their days, their pains, their rituals. Alas! they didn’t want to have me, they were not prepared to teach me their customs and beliefs! They had no use whatsoever for the gifts I laid beside them, no use at all for the help I thought I could give! It was because of me that they abandoned their villages and it was only to discourage me, to convince me there was no point in my persevering, that they chose increasingly inhospitable sites, imposing ever more terrible living conditions on themselves to show me they would rather ace tigers and volcanoes, swamps, suffocating fog, elephants, poisonous spiders, than men. I think I know a good deal about physical suffering. But this is worst of all, to feel your soul dying.
Marcel Appenzell’s letter to his mother from Life: A User’s Manual by Georges Perec

Notes

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