Ten kilometers from the Western house there stands the clean room* of the Great Plain, which was furnished with the best furniture when the house was built, the beds were done up with the best bedclothes, then the curtains were drawn, the shutters closed, leaving the smell of stale mould to accumulate. No one ever steps inside, no one uses it. The clean room is the magical space of Eastern man, and anyone who might take it into his head to actually live there would be regarded has having lost his mind. In the West, there are no more such magical spaces. Of course, there are no other magical spaces either. The world has been humanized. Life has become less interesting, also less dangerous, more balanced, perhaps duller, but at the same time more secure and, above all, more gentrified.
* The clean room of a peasant house was used only on special occasions, but was not lived in, reducing the family's living space to the smoky kitchen, possibly one small room, the stable and granary.
Béla Hamvas, The Five Geniuses
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