Reading Notes: Greek Lessons

Han Kang

"This morning, recalling once more this slim green book, I fetched it from my suitcase in the storeroom. Turning the pages, I discovered a note written in a rough hand. Scribbled directly below a sentence by Borges, The world is an illusion, and living is dreaming, it read: How is that dream so vivid? How does blood flow and hot tears gush forth?"

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"There is, inevitably, something tenuous and unsatisfactory in the way the logical demonstrations works, sifting all of humankind's sufferings and regrets, attachments, sadness, and weaknesses through the loose net of truth and falsity to obtain a handful of premises like a handful of gold dust. Boldly casting fallacies aside and proceeding along the narrow balance beam one step at a time, we see silence rippling like a black body of water past the net of clear, coherent questions we've asked and answered ourselves. And still we go on asking and answering - even as our eyes remain immersed in the silence, in the menacing blue quiet that is constantly rising, like the black water."