Cat Williams 05/03/2024
"I want a Life, and yet I'm always afraid."
"Lord, what a fool of a world we live in."
"Life's worse than death."
"She felt blind when she tried to look into the future."
"God's cruel; He let us get flawed in the making."
"A gruesome companion to have, a dead heart."
"Her thoughts slipping back to her childhood, would find many things in her past that perplexed her. She had never been quite like the other small children, she had always been lonely and diconnected, she had always been trying to be someone else - that was why she had dressed herself up as young Nelson (...) Alone - it was terrible to feel so much alone - to feel oneself different from other people."
"(...) there was nothing to hold her, she was free - what a terrible thing could be freedom. Trees were free when they were uprooted by the wind; ships were free when they were torn from their moorings; men were free when they were cast out of their homes - free to starve, free to perish of cold and hunger."
"Yes, it was trying to get her under, this world with its mighty self-satisfaction, with its smug rules of conduct, all made to be broken by those who strutted and preened themselves on being what they considered normal. They trod on the necks of those thousands of others who, for God knew what reason, were not made as they were; they prided themselves on their indignation, on what they proclaimed as their righteous judgments. They sinned grossly; even vilely at times, like lustful beasts - but yet they were normal! And the vilest of them could point a finger of scorn at her, and be loudly applauded."
A sensação de desolamento e vazio nesse livro são constantes desde as primeiras páginas até o fim, e isso é o que faz desse livro, além de várias coisas, ser uma experiência completa e dolorosamente inesquecível; é o tipo de obra que não se tem como sair a mesma pessoa depois de ler. Os assuntos que são propostos em "The Well of Loneliness" são, em maioria, incrivelmente bem retratados, como a sensação de estar separado de um mundo que não permite que se gravite além de seu sistema, mas também a constante rejeição desse mesmo sistema, criando esse paradoxo social e humano na existência de pessoas como a Stephen, o amor pelas coisas simples, as crises de fé que são inevitáveis para qualquer um que, de alguma forma, se vê olhado de baixo pelo resto do mundo, a sinceridade com que a personagem tenta segurar as coisas, mas, na maior parte das vezes, é como se tentasse segurar água entre os dedos, a ingratidão do destino e de Deus por permitir que as pessoas nasçam com defeitos que ele mesmo condena, as reflexões criativas da Stephen enquanto vê a escrita como uma forma de fugir do mundo, mas, posteriormente, como uma forma de se manter firme nele. É um livro difícil de ler em vários aspectos, mas vale a pena a jornada.