Jens Bjorneboe, "The Sharks"

From "The Sharks", Jens Bjorneboe,p.175,

"Only the very strong can live with no fear of losing their autonomy. Still, this is the precondition for loving: not to want power-not to want to OWN someone.

There can be talk of love only when one gives up one's self-assertion, when one lays down arms and capitulates fully. When one no longer defends oneself. Love is the absolute yielding, the total surrender-unconditionally. It knows no reservations, no defence.

Love creates no need to be the strongest, it knows no lust for power, no personality struggle. Love is pure devotion, absolute self-surrender. Only one who is strong enough not to fear losing his personality can love. To love, one must be able to foresake oneself, to make the other free."

Strange to find these words which I could sign, so clearly laid in the last writing of Bjorneboe. But, thinking of 'Moment of freedom', his trilogy which I recommend to anyone as a re-collection on humanity, maybe not so strange. He knew, for certain, power of ... love.

When love is mentioned, thoughts of God are not far away, this is recognized even by such an ateist like me. Bjorneboe laid it well, also:

The Sharks, p.183:"...man before me was quite simply a GOD, filled with a fathomless supernatural power. And at the next moment I was overwhelmed by one sensation, stronger perhaps than any other feeling I've tasted, stronger than the deepest mortal terror I knew, it was the vast, indescribable experience of my own STUPIDITY. Of stupidity and shame."

Very nice encounter with God (Neptune in this case), indeed! And how appropriate feeling. Bjorneboe really had good sense of humorous reality. Not to feel fear, excitation...but shame. Like she-monkey catched to masturbate with banana :-D

"The Sharks" is very strong reading. VERY. Rarely I find such a concentrated, well laid text. And it is on an eternal topic, where it is not, really, easy to write something new or original. Except for clean-cut factual approach, Bjorneboe is here to be praised for intensivity in his style, indeed. This makes 'The Sharks" a literature gem, a feast. Highly recommendable.