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| The Pontification Chair |
Egélaste is a Rabelais word derived from the Greek γέλως and it means a man who does not laugh or has no sense of humour. And I know this because I have been reading Milan Kundera's "Jerusalem Address" where he repeats the old Jewish proverb, "When man thinks, God laughs..." and he says it pleases him to think that the art of the novel came into the world as the echo of God's laughter and we do all need to retain a certain amount of humour (I guess). Egélastes, Kundera suggests, "are convinced that the truth is obvious, that all men [and women] necessarily think the same thing, and that they are exactly what they think they are. But it is precisely in losing the certainty of truth and the unanimous agreement of others that man becomes an individual." Yay to that - but this enquiry all came about because I was looking for a quotation, which is this, "[writing] is the territory where no one possesses the truth... but where everyone has the right to be understood..." Because this all fits neatly into my book on writing for children (believe it or not) - yay!
