Bluff, or The Southern Cross, by Gerhard Kopfh

Bluff, or The Southern Cross, by Gerhard Kopf

This is the second (shorter) novel in the omnibus I started with Innerfar earlier this year. Bluff, or the Southern Cross, is about a young man coming of age through a tragic accident and an unlikely friendship. Like Innerfar, it explores madness and the fine line between truth, reality, and dream.

Our land may look like Heaven on earth, but its people have a dark, untold story right under the surface, one that can be told only by someone who has not given up dreaming because of embitterment in the icy shadows.

God knows that on this path there may not be something grandiose to recognize in the final analysis. But it's important to me, because I found out about it myself. For I belong to those who can learn only the hard way, by having to experience it first myself. But then I know it for always. (p. 231)

Both Gerhard Kopf and Roberto Calasso are food for the subconscious.

Extra tidbits:

"A poet once said: We're not allowed to describe our life the way we've lived it but must live it the way we'll tell it." (p. 179)

"To find out what we are, we must again enter the dreams that dreamed us." (p. 180)

"Only where it's hard to love will it become apparent whether you are serious about it or not." (p. 200)

"Every journey contains the wish of being able to jump over your own shadow." (p. 201)