Commonplace Book #258

Infante must have had a great propensity to believe in miracles; otherwise Pietro’s reappearance, being in such sharp contrast to the world which he was familiar, would have struck him as utterly fantastic. In fact, however, he was moved, but by no means surprised. In addition to the old, hard, hostile world of Pietrasecca he had by chance discovered another, absurd, marvelous, friendly world, which was natural too, since it existed, though it was of another and totally different nature; a strange world, a strange way of living, not based on money, profit, violence, fear or services rendered that had to be repaid, but on what his eyes saw, on personal liking, and a kind of liking that was totally unprecedented in his experience, being completely gratuitous and disinterested; a new world, superficially similar to the world he knew, only turned upside down. But since it existed, he did not seem to be surprised by it; and, as he liked it, he observed and enjoyed it.

Ignazio Silone, The Seed Beneath the Snow, 244.

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