“—the transition from any value system to a new one must pass
through the zero- point of atomic dissolution, must take its way
through a generation destitute of any connection with either the
old or the new system, a generation whose very detachment, whose
almost insane indifference to the suffering of others, whose state
of denudation of values proves an ethical and so an historical jus-
tification for the ruthless rejection, in times of revolution, of all
that is humane . . . And perhaps it must be so, since only such a
generation is able to endure the sight of the Absolute and the
rising glare of freedom, the light that flares out over the deepest
darkness, and only over the deepest darkness . . .”
Excerpted from “The House Gun”, author Nadine Gordimer.
Publisher: Penguin Group [USA] Inc., 375 Hudson Street,
New York, New York 10014, U.S. A.
The author wrote the above in the context of the end of apartheid
in South Africa. She also is winner of the Nobel Prize in literature.
Islander.