Paradox

A statement that seems to contradict itself or common sense, but which, once thought through, reveals a truth.

In One, No One, and One Hundred Thousand

Whenever I stood before a mirror, something like a halt came over me; all spontaneity ended, and every gesture of mine seemed to me feigned or redone. I could not see myself live.

Seeing oneself and living seem compatible, but in the sentence they exclude each other: at the moment the gesture is seen, the spontaneity "ended". "I could not see myself live" sounds like a contradiction he only notes, without resolving it.

Book I: The nose and the mirror, Vitangelo Moscarda, on what happens to him when he stands before a mirror

On discovering the hundred thousand Moscardas that I was, not only for others but also for myself, all with this single name of Moscarda, ugly to the point of cruelty, all within this poor body of mine, which was also one, one and none, alas.

Book I: The nose and the mirror, Vitangelo Moscarda, summing up what the stranger's pursuit showed him

It was a moment, but an eternity. I felt within me all the dread of blind necessities, of things that cannot be changed: the prison of time; being born now, and not before or after; the name and the body given to us; the chain of causes.

Book III: The father and the one hundred thousand, Vitangelo Moscarda, facing his father's vision

You sent yourself away, that one who is for your old friend, because you felt him to be totally different from what he is, or wants to be, for the new one.

Book III: The father and the one hundred thousand, Vitangelo Moscarda to the reader, who has just sent away his old friend when a new one arrived

And that one, he does not see it, because he sees something else, when you think he should see your thing, as it seems to you. He sees it as it seems to him, and for him, therefore, the blind ones are you.

Book IV: The first experiment, Vitangelo Moscarda to the reader, on the way to notary Stampa's office

When the sight of others does not come to our aid, in some way, to constitute in us the reality of what we see, our eyes no longer know what they see; our consciousness is lost, because what we judge the most intimate part of us, consciousness, means the others within us; and we cannot feel alone.

Book V: The vital point, Vitangelo Moscarda, in the fenced empty lot, after thinking of killing himself

Two, then, not in their eyes, but only for me, who knew myself, for those two, one and one; which for me did not make one more, but one less, for it meant that, in their eyes, I as myself was no one.

Book V: The vital point, Vitangelo Moscarda, on entering the room where Dida and Quantorzo are waiting for him

You can only know yourself by posing: a statue, not alive. When someone lives, he lives and does not see himself. To know oneself is to die. You spend so much time looking at yourself in that mirror, in all mirrors, because you do not live; you do not know how, cannot, or do not want to live. You want too much to know yourself, and you do not live.

Book VII: The revolver and the bishop, Vitangelo Moscarda to Anna Rosa, in her room

I no longer have this need, because I die every instant, I, and am reborn new and without memories: alive and whole, no longer in myself, but in every thing outside.

Book VIII: Nameless and inconclusive, Vitangelo Moscarda, at the end of the novel, hearing the bells of the distant city