Books: From a Hollow Eye

UNKEMPT THOUGHTS (160 pp.)—Stanislaw J. Lec—St. Martin's Press ($3.75).

This book sells for $3.75 and contains 382 aphorisms. Hence the pithy thoughts of Stanislaw J. Lee, Polish poet and satirist, are worth about 1¢ apiece. A penny for your thoughts, Lec.

∙All is in the hands of man. Therefore wash them often.

∙Do not ask God the way to heaven; he will show you the hardest one.

∙Some like to understand what they believe in. Others like to believe in what they understand.

Stanislaw J. Lec believes in almost nothing. He is 53. When he was 31, he was interned in a Nazi concentration camp. Every internee was eventually killed by the Germans except the handful who escaped. Lec got away in a stolen uniform.

In the 17th century La Rochefoucauld's maxims were full of bee stings and rare perfumes. Lec's often have the smell of burnt flesh and of sickly sweet gas, the feel of barbed wire, and a vision of the world from a hollow eye.

∙I always fear unloaded rifles. They used them to smash heads.

∙When you jump for joy, beware that no one moves the ground from beneath your feet.

Yet his swift little thoughts are not entirely a cadence of despair. Some are funny. Some show a very individual and perplexing insight. Others are uninspired. Occasionally, there is a surprising glimmer of positivism. Random samples:

∙Impartiality is not neutrality—it is partiality for justice.

∙He who limps is still walking.

∙Do I have no soul as punishment for not believing in the soul?

∙He wears a hair shirt but is fussy about its cut.

∙I give you bitter pills in sugar coating. The pills are harmless; the poison is in the sugar.

∙You can spit on yourself without opening your mouth.

∙When I eat sardines I sometimes tremble that I may be biting a Jonah from the bible of the little people.

∙The moment of recognizing your own lack of talent is a flash of genius.

∙When no wind blows, even the weather-vane has character.

∙Value your words. Each one may be the last.