Ann Goldstein

And you’ll never know the law

that I, like so many, have learned—

and that has broken my heart:

Outside Limbo there is no Elysium.

For me his words were divorced from every earthly reason and value. I heard them as one hears a sacred liturgy, where the drama recited is no more than a symbol, and the ultimate truth it celebrates is bliss. This last, true meaning is a mystery that only the blessed know: pointless to seek an explanation by human means.

Like the mystics, I wanted not to receive explanations from him but to dedicate my faith to him.

I kept on day after day, committed to asserting, with increasing thoroughness, to the teachers, to my classmates, to myself my application and diligence. But inside I felt a growing sense of solitude, I felt I was learning without energy.