Imrie

“STANKEVICH The world outside of me has no meaning independent of my thinking it. (pauses to look) I look out of the window. A garden. Trees. Grass. A young woman in a chair reading a book. I think: chair. So she is sitting. I think: book. So she is reading. Now the young woman touches her hair where it's come undone. But how can we be sure there is a world of phenomena, a woman reading in a garden? Perhaps the only thing that's real is my sensory experience, which has the form of a woman reading- in a universe which is in fact empty! But Immanuel Kant says- no! Because what I perceive as reality includes concepts which I cannot experience through the senses. Time and space. Cause and effect. Relations between things. Without me there is something wrong with this picture. The trees, the grass, the woman are merely- oh, she's coming! (nervously)- she's coming in here-! I say, don't leave!-where are you going?
MICHAEL Father's looking for me anyway. . .(gloomily) I've had to ask him to settle a few debts here and there in the world of appearances, so now he's been busy getting me a job.
Liubov enters from the garden, with her book.
LIUBOV Oh!-(noticing Stankevich) Excuse me-
MICHAEL Nobody seems to understand Stankevich and I are engaged in a life-or-death struggle over material forces to unite our spirit with the Universal- and he has to go to Moscow tomorrow!”
― Tom Stoppard, Voyage