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"The sight of the mountains behind the city, so green and haughty, lifted my spirits, and the sight of the brain, its physiological aspect -- the ragged edges of skull within which it had pulsated, the streaming red blood -- was also pleasant to think about, for the bright colors within connected the landscape of the brain to the grass that grew beneath the veranda we were sitting on and the trees rustling faintly and nearly inaudibly in the breeze, and what that brain contained, all those images and thoughts that could never be separated from their material state, connected it nonetheless to the city beneath us, so full of dreams, longings, hopes and imaginings."

— Knausgaard, Karl Ove (b. 1968)

Author

Knausgaard, Karl Ove (b. 1968)

Work Title

The Terrible Beauty of Brain Surgery [from The New York Times]

Date

December 30, 2015

Metaphor

"The sight of the mountains behind the city, so green and haughty, lifted my spirits, and the sight of the brain, its physiological aspect -- the ragged edges of skull within which it had pulsated, the streaming red blood -- was also pleasant to think about, for the bright colors within connected the landscape of the brain to the grass that grew beneath the veranda we were sitting on and the trees rustling faintly and nearly inaudibly in the breeze, and what that brain contained, all those images and thoughts that could never be separated from their material state, connected it nonetheless to the city beneath us, so full of dreams, longings, hopes and imaginings."

Metaphor in Context

I was happy, too. The sight of the mountains behind the city, so green and haughty, lifted my spirits, and the sight of the brain, its physiological aspect -- the ragged edges of skull within which it had pulsated, the streaming red blood -- was also pleasant to think about, for the bright colors within connected the landscape of the brain to the grass that grew beneath the veranda we were sitting on and the trees rustling faintly and nearly inaudibly in the breeze, and what that brain contained, all those images and thoughts that could never be separated from their material state, connected it nonetheless to the city beneath us, so full of dreams, longings, hopes and imaginings.
(pp. 40-1)