How to work well at night

Well and happily work only when the work fills the mind. I like to write at night, because at night the scattering sensation of the movement of time is lost. In the afternoon, only in the rarest cases can this fossil, deep indifference to the surrounding, be achieved. The day is all dismembered; it is measured and controlled by fractional hours; and each hour has its own characteristic, aggressively supporting crushing. Some hours are associated with professional duties, others with dinner (this is a strong division, which gives a special color to the hours before lunch and after dinner), others with rest. In short, the day is very grounded, its stages are intended to regulate vanity and do not contribute to high torpor. Daytime hours punish us with a disgusting sense of stupidity if we violate and mix their functions; two hours of the day and four hours are very different things. Two hours and four in the morning is almost the same. All night hours are equally designed for sleep; sleep seems to us rather a need than a duty. Having overcome this need, we feel entitled to distort the face of the night at our discretion. Night hours are devoid of individual signs. Time does not advance in jolts, but merges into a stream, the flow of which is imperceptible.

The man at the desk hears the blood pulsing in his temples, heated with work. He looks with incomprehensible eyes at the dial, on which the hour hand is moving without a definite goal, until the morning it does not have power over a person.

© Lidia Ginzburg