— A Tale of Two Cities (1859), Book 2, Chapter 13
About this quote
हिन्दी में
मैं चाहता हूँ कि तुम यह जान लो—तुम मेरी आत्मा का आख़िरी सपना रही हो।
What it means
Everything turns on last and on the tense. Not the greatest dream or the truest one: the final one, in a series that has closed. And have been — finished, already over, reported rather than offered. He is not saying she is his dream. He is saying she was the last occasion on which his soul was still able to dream anything at all.
The opening is equally deliberate. I wish you to know is the phrasing of someone filing a fact, not making a request. There is no question anywhere in the sentence and nothing for her to answer. Taken as a declaration of love it sounds extravagant; taken as written, it is a man reading out the closing entry of a ledger he has decided not to keep.
What it teaches you
Learn to recognise a statement that asks nothing of you. Plenty of what people say is a request wearing the clothes of confession; a smaller number of things are exactly what they appear to be — information put on the record because the speaker wants it to exist somewhere outside their own head. The second kind is to be received and remembered, not solved, reciprocated, or argued down.
अर्थ और सीख
कार्टन कहता है कि वह उसकी आत्मा का ‘आख़िरी’ सपना रही—सबसे बड़ा नहीं, आख़िरी; यानी सिलसिला वहीं ख़त्म हो चुका है, और क्रिया भी बीते हुए की है। ‘मैं चाहता हूँ कि तुम जान लो’ माँगने की भाषा नहीं, एक तथ्य दर्ज कराने की भाषा है—पूरे वाक्य में न कोई प्रश्न है, न कोई अनुरोध। सीखने की बात यह है कि कुछ बातें आपसे कुछ माँगती नहीं; उन्हें सुलझाने की नहीं, सिर्फ़ सुनने और याद रखने की ज़रूरत होती है।
Where it comes from
Carton to Lucie Manette, in the scene where he tells her he expects nothing and will change nothing. It is one of the few moments in the novel where he is entirely honest about himself.
The line is often used as straightforward romance. In context it is closer to an admission of defeat — he is describing a life he has already given up on, and marking the one thing in it that felt like possibility.
