We don't want to conquer the cosmos, we simply want to extend the boundaries of Earth to the frontiers of the cosmos. And yet, if we examine it more closely, our enthusiasm turns out to be all a sham. Modesty forbids us to say so, but there are times when we think pretty well of ourselves. “We take off into the cosmos, ready for anything: for solitude, for hardship, for exhaustion, death. I knew nothing, and I persisted in the faith that the time of cruel miracles was not past.” I did not know what achievements, what mockery, even what tortures still awaited me. Since she had gone, that was all that remained.

Must I go on living here then, among the objects we both had touched, in the air she had breathed? In the name of what? In the hope of her return? I hoped for nothing. So must one be resigned to being a clock that measures the passage of time, now out of order, now repaired, and whose mechanism generates despair and love as soon as its maker sets it going? Are we to grow used to the idea that every man relives ancient torments, which are all the more profound because they grow comic with repetition? That human existence should repeat itself, well and good, but that it should repeat itself like a hackneyed tune, or a record a drunkard keeps playing as he feeds coins into the jukebox. The age-old faith of lovers and poets in the power of love, stronger than death, that finis vitae sed non amoris, is a lie, useless and not even funny. Her return? How could I have been waiting for that? We all know that we are material creatures, subject to the laws of physiology and physics, and not even the power of all our feelings combined can defeat those laws. “On the surface, I was calm: in secret, without really admitting it, I was waiting for something.

სოლარისი by Stanisław Lem