The Theory of the Novel by Georg Lukács ~ Saturday, 26 August 2017

I.

Integrated Civilizations

HAPPY ARE those ages when the starry sky is the map of all possible paths—ages whose paths are illuminated by the light of the stars. Everything in such ages is new and yet familiar, full of adventure and yet their own. The world is wide and yet it is like a home, for the fire that burns in the soul is of the same essential nature as the stars; the world and the self, the light and fire, are sharply distinct, yet they never become permanent strangers to one another, for fire is the soul of all light and all fire clothes itself in light. (p. 29)

The Theory of the Novel: A historico-philosophical essay on the forms of great epic literature

~ Georg Lukács

Translated from the German by Anna Bostock

The MIT Press

Cambridge, Massachusetts

First MIT Press edition, 1971

First published by P. Cassirer, Berlin, 1920

German edition © 1968 by Hermann Luchterhand Verlag GmbH

Translation © 1971 by the Merlin Press Ltd.