Above: “Left Side of Darkness”. Below: a map of Getan that Ursula herself drew (from the website)
Seven quotes I collected in my last reading of “The Left Side of Darkness” by Ursula K. Le Guin (translation: Emmanuel Lotham):
(“The Left Side of Darkness” was released in 1969 and it describes Getan/Winter, a world where the humans who inhabit it have no fixed gender or sexuality. Except for a few days a month, during which they become a man or a woman, according to what suits them at that time, the rest Time is just people. It is a book in which sentences like: The king was pregnant. I read it again as part of the decision to read everything that Ursula K. Le Guin wrote. A decision that was made before I realized that she wrote many more books than I thought.
Anyway, here are seven quotes:
01
“The only thing that makes life possible is constant, unbearable uncertainty: not knowing what will happen in a moment.”
02
“If there is a conflict with civilization, it is war. Of these two things you can choose one, or the other, not both.’
03
“Fire and fear are good servants, and bad masters.” He uses fear to his service. I would let fear lead me around, the long way. The courage of the heart and the balanced construction support his position. What’s the point of asking for the safe way, on a journey like this? There are foolish ways, and I will not walk in them; But there is no safe way.’
04
“He was a tough, shrewd and cheerful looking politician whose generosity served his interest and his interest was himself. You will find his kind all over the human space. I met him on Earth, and in Hain and in Olol. I think I’m going to meet him in hell.’
05
“To learn these unanswerable questions, and to avoid answering them: this skill is most necessary in times of distress and darkness.”
06
“We’re getting close to the limit, aren’t we?” I said one night (…)
He smiled. “With a little luck we’ll make it, and without luck we won’t.”
07
“All these worlds and the different forms and ways of the souls and the lives in them, together they will produce a truly magnificent harmony.”
“No harmony lasts forever,” said the young king.
“Harmony was never achieved,” said the ambassador. “The pleasure is in the experience.”
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Light is the left hand of darkness
and darkness the right hand of light
(from a well-known song in Getan, the world of the left side of darkness)
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In which corner of the world is there a full moon?