The Book

Posted on Aug. 7, 2006 at 15:39 - Post Comment

I havent read much lately. well… except “harry potter” of course ;)) but I meant serious reading.

I really wanted to read a book, that could impress, could give something to me. I needed a book that couls awake emotions deep inside me and since I couldn’t find such a book, I just stopped reading for a while.

Last Saturday I finally found the Book. It was Janusz Leon Wiśniewski’s book “Loneliness in the Net”. Wiśniewski is from Poland, but lives in Germany now. “Loneliness in the Net” is translated into several languages (the rights of the book were mainly sold to the publishers from Eastern Europe and Russia”). Actually the book was written 2001 but was translated to Russian only last years. Strange that I didn’t come across this book before, but I think it is better so, because only now I could understand the real meaning of this book.

The most dangerous disease of the 21^st century is loneliness. The modern life rhythm makes it almost impossible to cultivate any kind of contacts, but only virtual. We don’t find time to go out with our friends, it is much easier to write an email than talking to them personally, we use lots of devices that make us easy to cultivate such a virtual contacts. We cant do it in other way because we just don’t have time for anything else. And also because in this case we don’t feel lonely. Loneliness is the worst that can happen to us. And we try to do everything to lessen this painful feeling of staying alone. Loneliness, as a feeling, can rarely catch up with us in the rush of everyday life. “One is lonely only when one has the time for it” (Janusz L. Wiśniewski). And we try to organize our life in the way that we have no time for being lonely. But we can do nothing about the destiny which can just knock at our life like it did for the main character of Janusz Wiśniewski’s book. He, who always tried to hide from his loneliness, being haunted by his past, he had to let his destiny in and it changed his life fully. This book made me cry, I felt so happy for the main character that he finally found his woman and I felt so sad when everything was over. I just thought how could she do this to him, to both of them... even now, writing this entry I cant stop crying thinking about this book, just rereading some passages – it is the book we all can relate to, the book that can not only make us feel, but should make us think, because sometimes we don’t think communication over the internet is as adequate as communication in real life. yes, it is different, more open, more difficult, a bit strange, but it makes as feel, it makes us think, it makes us share… like it is a reality.. well, it really is a reality. The reality of 21^st century….

I’m not sure, if the book is now fully translated into English, I could find only 3 chapters of it in English. 3 first chapters. which you can find in the previous entry (fragment 1), the second fragment is from the last chapter and was translated by me…