The Outside

Abstract

In an epoch in which news of separated and incarcerated families at the US border circulates in a loop equal parts horror, paralysis, and cynicism, there is no reason to resist the lure of the old worm-in-the-apple tale. The tantalizing thing is not what it seemed. Who can bear “the heartache and the thousand natural shocks / that flesh is heir to” without wishing, if not for the permanent “sleep” Hamlet speaks of, then at least for its waking equivalent? Yet Shakespeare endures, for who can bear to live without also knowing the worst? Let it be democracy, modernity, law, America; let it be love, even, or truth. The lure is a practical question: How can you be sure of the soundness of the thing, so many feints and false bottoms? “There is no word in human language,” Kierkegaard writes, “not one single one, not the most sacred one, about which we are able to say: If a person uses this word, it is unconditionally demonstrated that there is love in that person.” Alas, “it is true that one and the same word can convince us that love abides in the