But you must not change one thing, one pebble, one grain of sand, until you know what good and evil will follow on that act. The world is in balance, in Equilibrium. A wizard’s power of Changing and of Summoning can shake the balance of the world…. To light a candle is to cast a shadow.
A Wizard of Earthsea
by Ursula K. Le Guin
**
The island of Gont, a single mountain that lifts its peak a mile above the storm-racked Northeast Sea, is a land famous for wizards.
When you light a candle, you also cast a shadow.
**
Light is the left hand of darkness
and darkness the right hand of light.
Two are one, life and death, lying
together like lovers in kemmer,
like hands joined together,
like the end and the way.
**
Only in silence the word,
Only in dark the light,
Only in dying life:
Bright the hawk’s flight
On the empty sky.
**
Freedom is a heavy load, a great and strange burden for the spirit to undertake. It is not easy. It is not a gift given, but a choice made, and the choice may be a hard one. The road goes upward towards the light; but the laden traveler may never reach the end of it.
It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.
**
But when we crave power over life—endless wealth, unassailable safety, immortality—then desire becomes greed. And if knowledge allies itself to that greed, then comes evil. Then the balance of the world is swayed, and ruin weighs heavy in the scale.
(sk)
沈黙のなかでこそ言葉が
暗闇のなかでこそ光が
死のなかでこそ生が
際立つ
なにもない空で鷹が
輝くように
光と影
生と死
その対比を書き続けたル・グエンに
この世界はどう見えていたのだろう
なんだかせつない