...of indifference

Perhaps the sin of King Amfortas is a cluttered wisdom, a saddened knowledge, kept perhaps at the bottom of the vessel Parsifal sees carried in procession up the steps of the castle, and he would like to know what it is, but still he remains silent. Parsifal's strong point is that he is so new to the world and so occupied with the fact of being in the world that it never occurs to him to ask questions about what he sees. And yet one question of his would suffice, a first question that releases the question of everything in the world that has never asked anything, and then the deposit of centuries collected at the bottom of pots in excavations is dissolved, the eras crushed among the telluric strata begin to flow again, the future recovers the past, the pollen of the abundant seasons buried for millennia in peat bogs starts drifting once more, rising on the dust of the years of drought...

[The Tavern Of Crossed Destinies, from The Castle Of Crossed Destinies, Calvino, I.]