Buku ini bukan bacaan yang dapat dipahami dengan mudah. Meski begitu, terjemahannya enak dibaca.

And Monelle said again: I shall speak to you of destruction.

Behold the word: Destroy, destroy, destroy. Destroy within yourself; destroy what surrounds you. Make space for your soul and for all other souls.
     Destroy all good and all evil. Their ruins are the same.
     Destroy the old dwellings of man and the old dwellings of the soul; what is dead is a distorting mirror.
     Destroy, for all creation comes from destruction.
     And for higher benevolence you must annihilate lower benevolence. And thus new good appears saturated with evil.
     And to imagine a new art you must break its forebears. And thus new art seems a sort of iconoclasm.
     For all construction is made of debris, and nothing is new in this world but forms.
     But you must destroy the forms.

My favorite quotes from the book:

"This house could have been a prison or a hospital, but a prison where they locked up the innocent to prevent them from suffering, or a hospital where on goes to recover from the labor of life. And Monelle was both the jailer and the nurse."

"...the sort of even that teaches us to change, for fear of learning again the trauma of the unforeseen lesson." (from translator's notes)

"Schwob began to understand life as painfully transient, death as painfully permanent, and love, painfully brief; but Monelle was teaching him to unlearn these habitual understandings." (from translator's notes)

"My friend, I am with you in this pain, which touches me as much as it affects you." (from translator's notes)

"It is a work of overcoming and succumbing, of embrace and abandon." (from translator's notes)

3.5

Трябаше ми допълнително да чета, за да успея донякъде да разбера идеята на "Книгата на Монел". Книгата е разделена на 3 части. Първата част е изпълнена с философски афоризми и определят идеите, които Швоб описва. Втората част са кратки чудати истории с различни героини вдъхновени от приказките и фолкора. Третата част на книгата познаството на разказвача с Монел.
"Книгата на Монел" е тъжна книга. История за неминуемата смърт и загубата.

Голям лудак.

A moving, beautifully written, though very depressing book. Highly recommended. Look forward to reading the other translations by Schluter.

The afterword by the translator was useful and insightful.