The hare when fleeing pursuit, bounds
Death and the Penguin, Andrey Kurkov
Where the hare bounds, where it is placed under that terrible pressure to which it gives form and for which reason only it is in the world, giving a shape to what it most fears, and thereby reaching, in its bounding away, the highest state of its being. The hare exults in fearful flight, and as it bolts from its pursuers so it is exulted as hopper of ditches, the scutter, the wind swift, and so it becomes, most truly itself. Something similar is also true for philosophy. Whilst philosophy’s logical operations, its conventional moments, its scholarly convolutions, perform a domesticated and ruminative process, most properly set in enclosed pasture, its true form is reached only in a state of compulsive terror. That idea from which philosophy bounds away, from which it strains every sinew to flee, is the very idea which it most sincerely expresses – it is from the idea which hunts it down, giving it shape in pursuit, that it is thereby transformed from mere 'dew creature' and 'grass biter' to ascendent furze cat, way-beater, scuffler, scutt - the go-by ditch, the friendless one.
