Tonio Kroeger--excuse me--or not only in others?"

He was silent. He drew his slanting eyebrows together and whistled to
himself.

"Let me have your cup, Tonio. It is not strong. And take a fresh
cigarette. And anyway, you know quite well that you look at things as
they don't necessarily have to be looked at."

"That is Horatio's answer, dear Lisaveta. ''Twere to consider too
curiously, to consider so,' am I not right?"

"I say that one can consider them just as curiously from another side,
Tonio Kroeger. I am simply a stupid, painting female, and if I can make
any answer to you at all, if I can take the part of your own calling to
protect it a little against you, it is surely nothing new that I am
advancing, but only a reminder of what you yourself know quite well ...
What then: the purifying, sanctifying power of literature; the
destruction of passion by the agency of knowledge and speech;
literature as the road to understanding, to forgiveness, and to love;
the redeeming power of language; literary intellect as the noblest
phenomenon of all human intellect whatsoever; the writer as perfect
man, as saint;--if one considered things so, would that be not
considering them curiously enough?"

"You have a right to speak so, Lisaveta Ivanovna, and especially in
view of the work of your poets, and that worship-deserving Russian
literature which does really and truly represent the sacred literature
you name. But I have not overlooked your objections, nay, they are a
part of what is on my mind today ... Look at me. I do not look
immoderately cheerful, do I? A little old and sharp-featured and weary?
Well, to come back to 'knowledge,' a man might be imagined, originally
unsceptical, long-suffering, well-meaning, and a little sentimental,
who would simply be ground to powder and wrecked by psychological
clearness of vision. Not to let yourself be overcome by the sadness of
the world; to observe, mark, and insert everything, even the most
anguishing things, and for the rest be of good courage, even though in
the full grasp of moral superiority over that horrible invention,
Life--aye, to be sure! Yet at times things get away from you a bit
despite all the pleasures of Expressing. Does understanding everything
mean forgiving everything? I don't know. There is something that I call
the loathing of perception, Lisaveta: a state in which a man only needs
to see through a thing in order to feel nauseated to the point of dying
(an