The Letter Writer
This tattoo belongs to KI Hope:
This quote is from Isaac Bashevis Singer, from a short story called "The Letter Writer" in his 1964 novel The Seance. It combines one of my favorite authors and what is hands down the most moving piece of literature I have ever read with my veganism and cynical belief that man is the great destroyer. I was nervous to have the word "Nazi" on me, but Kevin Marr at Godspeed Tattoo tucked it inside my arm, so it isn't obvious to the casual onlooker. Singer was a devout vegetarian and his whole family died in the Holocaust, so I felt that if he was so set in his ethics that he made this comparison, it is alright.
In his thoughts, Herman spoke a eulogy for the mouse who had shared a portion of her life with him and who, because of him, had left this earth. "What do they know - all those scholars, all those philosophers, all the leaders of the world - about such as you? They have convinced themselves that man, the worst transgressor of all the species, is the crown of creation. All other creatures were created merely to provide him with food, pelts, to be tormented, exterminated. In relation to them, all people are Nazis; for the animals it is an eternal Treblinka. And yet man demands compassion from heaven." Herman clapped his hand to his mouth. "I mustn't live, I mustn't! I can no longer be part of it! God in heaven - take me away!"
- Isaac Bashevis Singer, The Seance
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