George-steiner Quote by William Styron
““One of the things I cannnot grasp, though I have often written about them, trying to get them into some kind of bearable perspective," Steiner writes, "is the time relation." Steiner has just quoted descriptions of the brutal deaths of two Jews at the Treblinka extermination camp. "Precisely at the same hour in which Mehring and Langner were being done to death, the overwhelming plurality of human beings, two miles away on the Polish farms, five thousand miles away in New York, were sleeping or eating or going to a film or making love or worrying about the dentist. This is where my imagination balks. The two orders of simultaneous experience are so different, so irreconcilable to any common norm of human values, their coexistence is so hideous a paradox-Treblinka is both because some men have built it and almost all other men let it be-that I puzzle over time.””
About This Quote
Source Interview: The Paris Review, “Time and Memory,” William Styron, 1979
The simultaneity of ordinary life and horrific events creates a paradox that challenges our ability to comprehend and assign meaning.
In simple terms: Hardship and normalcy coexist, creating a painful paradox.
Key Takeaway
Acknowledge the coexistence of joy and tragedy.
Themes
memory
paradox
human experience
Mood
somber
reflective
Type
literary
philosophical
When to use this quote
- Holocaust education
- personal grief processing
- historical analysis
- artistic expression
Key Concepts
philosophy of time
ethical reflection
Questions to Reflect On
- How do you reconcile everyday life with historical atrocities?
- Can empathy bridge the gap between past and present?
A Different Perspective
Understanding may be limited by emotional distance.
![“Every writer since the beginning of time, just like other people, has been afflicted by what [a] friend of mine calls "the fleas of life"-you know, colds, hangovers, bills, sprained ankles and little nuisances of one sort or another.” quote by William Styron](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/ecc/william-styron-3859_afflicted_every-writer-since-the-beginning-of-time_83391.jpg)
