You said live out loud, and die you said lightly,
and over and over again you said be.
But before the first death came murder.
A fracture broke across the rings you’d ripened.
A screaming shattered the voices
that had just come together to speak to you,
to make of you a bridge
over the chasm of everything.
And what they have stammered ever since
are fragments
of your ancient name.
— Rilke, The Book of Hours I, 9
Are there relations of the heart that embrace what is most cruel for the sake of wholeness? For the world is only world when everything is included.
— Rilke, Letter to Marianne von Goldschmidt-Rothschild
December 5, 1914
I love you, gentlest of Ways,
who ripened us as we wrestled with you.
You, the great homesickness we could never shake off,
you, the forest that always surrounded us,
you, the song we sang in every silence,
you dark net threading through us.
You began yourself so greatly
on that day when you began us.
— Rilke, From The Book of Hours I, 25
Shadows are falling and I’m running out of breath
Keep me in your heart for awhile
If I leave you it doesn’t mean I love you any less
Keep me in your heart for awhile
When you get up in the morning and you see that crazy sun
Keep me in your heart for awhile
There’s a train leaving nightly called when all is said and done
Keep me in your heart for awhile
Sha-la-la-la-la-la-la-li-li-lo
Keep me in your heart for awhile
Sha-la-la-la-la-la-la-li-li-lo
Keep me in your heart for awhile
Sometimes when you’re doing simple things
around the house
Maybe you’ll think of me and smile
You know I’m tied to you like the buttons on
your blouse
Keep me in your heart for awhile
Hold me in your thoughts, take me to your dreams
Touch me as I fall into view
When the winter comes keep the fires lit
And I will be right next to you
Engine driver’s headed north to Pleasant Stream
Keep me in your heart for awhile
These wheels keep turning but they’re running out
of steam
Keep me in your heart for awhile
Sha-la-la-la-la-la-la-li-li-lo
Keep me in your heart for awhile
Sha-la-la-la-la-la-la-li-li-lo
Keep me in your heart for awhile
Keep me in your heart for awhile
— Warren Zevon
I was sitting in the Hollywood Hawaiian Hotel
I was listening to the air conditioner hum
It went
Mmmm mmmm mmm mmm mmm mmm mmm
mmm mmm mmmm mm mm mmmm mmmm mmm mmm mmm mmm mmm
mmm mmm mmmm mmmm mmm mmm mmm mmm mmm
mmm mmm mmmm mm mm mmmm mmmm mmm mmm mmm mmm mmm
mmm mmm mmmm mmmm mmm mmm mmm mmm mmm
mmm mmm mmmm mm mm mmmm mmmm mmm mmm mmm mmm mmm
mmm mmm mmmm mmmm mmm mmm mmm mmm mmm
mmm mmm mmmm mm mm mmmm mmmm mmm mmm mmm mmm mmm
Look away down Gower Avenue
Look away . . .
— Warren Zevon
The last leaves dance as they fall. It takes a big dose of insensitivity to confront autumn.
— E. M. Cioran, “That Fatal Perspicacity”
I.
A point is that which has no parts.
II.
A line is length without breadth.
III.
The extremities of a line are points.
IV.
A straight or right line is that which lies evenly between its extremities.
V.
A surface is that which has length and breadth only.
VI.
The extremities of a surface are lines.
Thirty-six times and a hundred times
the artist portrayed the mountain.
Now pulled away, now compelled
(thirty-six times and a hundred times)
to return with glad impatience
to that ungraspable one.
To see it rise there, bold in outline,
withholding nothing of its majesty.
Out of each day emerging over and over,
letting the unrepeatable nights
fall away as though too small.
Each glimpse exhausted in an instant,
form ascending into form,
far off, impassive, wordless —
then suddenly the revelation
of an awareness lifting in the sky.
— Rilke, New Poems
AUGUST 6 [1914].
What will be my fate as a writer is very simple. My talent for portraying my dreamlike inner life has thrust all other matters into the background; my life has dwindled dreadfully, nor will it cease to dwindle. Nothing else will ever satisfy me. But the strength I can muster for that portrayal is not to be counted upon: perhaps it has already vanished forever, perhaps it will come back to me again, although the circumstances of my life don’t favor its return. Thus I waver, continually fly to the summit of the mountain, but then fall back in a moment. Others waver too, but in lower regions, with greater strength; if they are in danger of falling, they are caught up by the kinsman who walks beside them for that very purpose. But I waver on the heights; it is not death, alas, but the eternal torment of dying.
— From Kafka’s Diary
The place, I’ll make it all the same, I’ll make it in my head, I’ll draw it out of my memory, I’ll gather it all about me, I’ll make myself a head, I’ll make myself a memory, I have only to listen, the voice will tell me everything, tell it to me again, everything I need, in dribs and drabs, breathless, it’s like a confession, a last confession, you think it’s finished, then it starts off again, there were so many sins, the memory is so bad, the words don’t come, the words fail, the breath fails, no, it’s something else, an indictment, a dying voice accusing, accusing me, you must accuse someone, a culprit is indispensable, it speaks of my sins, it speaks of my head, it says it’s mine, it says that I repent, that I want to be punished, better than I am, that I want to go, give myself up, a victim is essential, I have only to listen, it will show me my hiding-place, what it’s like, where the door is, if there’s a door, and whereabouts I am in it, and what lies between us, how the land lies, what kind of country, whether it’s sea, or whether it’s mountain, and the way to take, so that I may go, make my escape, give myself up, come to the place where the axe falls, without further ceremony, on all who come from here, I’m not the first, I won’t be the first, it will best me in the end, it has bested better than me, it will tell me what to do, in order to rise, move, act like a body endowed with despair, that’s how I reason, that’s how I hear myself reasoning, all lies, it’s not me they’re calling, not me they’re talking about, it’s not yet my turn, it’s someone else’s turn, that’s why I can’t stir, that’s why I don’t feel a body on me, I’m not suffering enough yet, it’s not yet my turn, not suffering enough to be able to stir, to have a body, complete with head, to be able to understand, to have eyes to light the way, I merely hear, without understanding, without being able to profit by it, by what I hear, to do what, to rise and go and be done with hearing, I don’t hear everything, that must be it, the most important things escape me, it’s not my turn, the topographical and anatomical information in particular is lost on me, no, I hear everything, what difference does it make, the moment it’s not my turn, my turn to understand, my turn to live, my turn of the life-screw, it calls that living, the space of the way from here to the door, it’s all there, in what I hear, somewhere, if all has been said, all this long time, all must have been said, but it’s not my turn to know what, to know what I am, where I am, and what I should do to stop being it, to stop being there, that’s coherent, so as to be another, no the same, I don’t know, depart into life, travel the road, find the door, find the axe, perhaps it’s a cord, for the neck, for the throat, for the cords, or fingers, I’ll have eyes, I’ll see fingers, it will be the silence, perhaps it’s a drop, find the door, open the door, drop, into the silence, it won’t be I, I’ll stay here, or there, more likely there, it will never be I, that’s all I know, it’s all been done already, said and said again, the departure, the body that rises, the way, in colour, the arrival, the door that opens, closes again, it was never I, I’ve never stirred, I’ve listened, I must have spoken, why deny it, why not admit it, after all, I deny nothing, I admit nothing, I say what I hear, I hear what I say, I don’t know, one or the other, or both, that makes three possibilities, pick your fancy, all these stories about travellers, these stories about paralytics, all are mine, I must be extremely old, or it’s my memory playing tricks, if only I knew if I’ve lived, if I live, if I’ll live, that would simplify everything, impossible to find out, that’s where you’re buggered, I haven’t stirred, that’s all I know, no, I know something else, it’s not I, I always forget, I resume, you must resume, never stirred from here, never stopped telling stories, to myself, hardly hearing them, hearing something else, listening for something else, wondering now and then where I got them from, was I in the land of the living, were they in mine, and where, where do I store them, in my head, I don’t feel a head on me, and what do I tell them with, with my mouth, same remark, and what do I hear them with, and so on, the old rigmarole, it can’t be I, or it’s because I pay no heed, it’s such an old habit, I do it without heeding, or as if I were somewhere else, there I am far again, there I am the absentee again, it’s his turn again now, he who neither speaks nor listens, who has neither body nor soul, it’s something else he has, he must have something, he must be somewhere, he is made of silence, there’s a pretty analysis, he’s in the silence, he’s the one to be sought, the one to be, the one to be spoken of, the one to speak, but he can’t speak, then I could stop, I’d be he, I’d be the silence, I’d be back in the silence, we’d be reunited, his story the story to be told, but he has no story, he hasn’t been in story, it’s not certain, he’s in his own story, unimaginable, unspeakable, that doesn’t matter, the attempt must be made, in the old stories incomprehensibly mine, to find his, it must be there somewhere, it must have been mine, before being his, I’ll recognize it, in the end I’ll recognize it, the story of the silence that he never left, that I should never have left, that I may never find again, that I may find again, then it will be he, it will be I, it will be the place, the silence, the end, the beginning, the beginning again, how can I say it, that’s all words, they’re all I have, and not many of them, words fail, the voice fails, so be it, I know that well, it will be the silence, full of murmurs, distant cries, the usual silence, spent listening, spent waiting, waiting for the voice, the cries abate, like all cries, that is to say they stop, the murmurs cease, they give up, the voice begins again, it begins trying again, quick now before there is none left, no voice left, nothing left but the core of murmurs, distant cries, quick now and try again, with the words that remain, try what, I don’t know, I’ve forgotten, it doesn’t matter, I never knew, to have them carry me into my story, the words that remain, my old story, which I’ve forgotten, far from here, through the noise, through the door, into the silence, that must be it, it’s too late, perhaps it’s too late, perhaps they have, how would I know, in the silence you don’t know, perhaps it’s the door, perhaps I’m at the door, that would surprise me, perhaps it’s I, perhaps somewhere or other it was I, I can depart, all this time I’ve journeyed without knowing it, it’s I now at the door, what door, what’s a door doing here, it’s the last words, the true last, or it’s the murmurs, the murmurs are coming, I know that well, no, not even that, you talk of murmurs, distant cries, as long as you can talk, you talk of them before and you talk of them after, more lies, it will be the silence, the one that doesn’t last, spent listening, spent waiting, for it to be broken, for the voice to break it, perhaps there’s no other, I don’t know, it’s not worth having, that’s all I know, it’s not I, that’s all I know, it’s not mine, it’s the only one I ever had, that’s a lie, I must have had the other, the one that lasts, but it didn’t last, I don’t understand, that is to say it did, it still lasts, I’m still in it, I left myself behind in it, I’m waiting for me there, no, there you don’t wait, you don’t listen, I don’t know, perhaps it’s a dream, all a dream, that would surprise me, I’ll wake, in the silence, and never sleep again, it will be I, or dream, dream again, dream of a silence, a dream silence, full of murmurs, I don’t know, that’s all words, never wake, all words, there’s nothing else, you must go on, that’s all I know, they’re going to abandon me, it will be the silence, for a moment, a few good moments, or it will be mine, the lasting one, that didn’t last, that still lasts, it will be I, you must go on, I can’t go on, you must go on, I’ll go on, you must say words, as long as there are any, until they find me, until they say me, strange pain, strange sin, you must go on, perhaps it’s done already, perhaps they have said me already, perhaps they have carried me to the threshold of my story, before the door that opens on my story, that would surprise me, if it opens, it will be I, it will be the silence, where I am, I don’t know, I’ll never know, in the silence you don’t know, you must go on, I can’t go on, I’ll go on.
— Samuel Beckett, The Unnamable
What an extraordinary change takes place . . . when for the first time the fact that everything depends upon how a thing is thought first enters the consciousness, when, in consequence, thought in its absoluteness replaces an apparent reality.
— Kierkegaard
When I was still doubtful as to his ability, I asked G. E. Moore for his opinion. Moore replied, “I think very well of him indeed.” When I enquired the reason for his opinion, he said that it was because Wittgenstein was the only man who looked puzzled at his lectures.
— Bertrand Russell
I can well understand why children love sand.
— Wittgenstein
Who has not known a child like this,
who sinks into a deeper level of his being,
undisturbed by the swift turning
of each brimming page?
Even his own mother might wonder
if it is really he who sits there
saturated with his shadow.
And we, can we know
how much of him
disappears, as he reluctantly looks up
with eyes that yield
to the ready-made world without complaint?
— Rilke, New Poems
The eternal silence of these infinite spaces no longer makes me feel like Pascal.
— David Markson, Wittgenstein’s Mistress
The world is everything that is the case.
I have no idea what I mean by the sentence I have just typed, by the way.
For some reason I seem to have had it in my head all day, however, although without the vaguest notion about where it might have come from.
Such things can happen. One morning not too long ago all I could think about was the word bricolage, which I presume is French, even though I do not speak one word of French.
Well, perhaps I did not think about it at all, in the usual sense of thinking.
Still, when I went for my walk along the beach, or was picking up shells as I sometimes do, I must have said the word bricolage to myself a hundred times.
Eventually I stopped saying it. So today what I have been saying is that the world is everything that is the case, instead.
Oh, well.
In the meantime I have also been wondering if one’s reading of six pages in a history of music that was written for children, and had been printed in extraordinarily large type, can truly be considered as the reading of a life of Brahms?
Or did I also read certain additional pages in the more genuine life of Brahms, such as certain pages about dancing girls, when I was setting fire to those pages in trying to simulate a seagull?
Not knowing that there was a second copy of the identical book, with all of the pages still in it, still here in the house?
Doubtless these are inconsequential perplexities. Still, inconsequential perplexities have now and again been known to become the fundamental mood of existence, one suspects.
The world is everything that is the case.
Hm.
— David Markson, Wittgenstein’s Mistress
The island. A last effort. The islet. The shore facing the open sea is jagged with creeks. One could live there, perhaps happy, if life was a possible thing, but nobody lives there. The deep water comes washing into its heart, between high walls of rock. One day nothing will remain of it but two islands, separated by a gulf, narrow at first, then wider and wider as the centuries slip by, two islands, two reefs. It is difficult to speak of man, under such conditions. Come, Ernest, said Lady Pedal, let us find a place to picnic. And you, Maurice, she added, stay by the dinghy. She called that a dinghy. The thin one chafed to run about, but the youth had thrown himself down in the shade of a rock, like Sordello, but less noble, for Sordello resembled a lion at rest, and clung to it with both hands. The poor creatures, said Lady Pedal, let them loose. Maurice made to obey. Keep off, said Lemuel. The giant had refused to leave the boat, so that the Saxon could not leave it either. Macmann was not free either, Lemuel held him by the waist, perhaps lovingly. Well, said Lady Pedal, you are the one in charge. She moved away with Ernest. Suddenly she turned and said, You know, on the island, there are Druid
remains. She looked at them in turn. When we have had our tea, she said, we shall hunt for them, what do you say? Finally she moved away again, followed by Ernest carrying the hamper in his arms. When she had disappeared Lemuel released Mcmann, went up behind Maurice who was sitting on a stone filling his pipe and killed him with the hatchet. We’re getting on, getting on. The youth and the giant took no notice. The thin one broke his umbrella against the rock, a curious gesture. The Saxon cried, bending forward and slapping his thighs, Nice work, sir, nice work! A little later Ernest came back to fetch them. Going to meet him Lemuel killed him in his turn, in the same way as the other. It merely took a little longer. Two decent, quiet, harmless men, brothers-in-law into the bargain, there are billions of such brutes. Macmann’s huge head. He has put his hat on again. The voice of Lady Pedal, calling. She appeared, joyous. Come along, she cried, all of you, before the tea gets cold. But at the sight of the late sailors she fainted, which caused her to fall. Smash her! screamed the Saxon. She had raised her veil and was holding in her hand a tiny sandwich. She must have broken something in her fall, her hip perhaps, old ladies often break their hips, for no sooner had she recovered her senses than she began to moan and groan, as if she were the only being on the face of the earth deserving of pity. When the sun had vanished, behind the hills, and the lights of the land began to glitter, Lemuel made Macmann and the two others get into the boat and got into it himself. Then they set out, all six, from the shore.
Gurgles of outflow.
This tangle of grey bodies is they. Silent, dim, perhaps clinging to one another, their heads buried in their cloaks, they lie together in a heap, in the night. They are far out in the bay. Lemuel has shipped his oars, the oars trail in the water. The night is strewn with absurd
absurd lights, the stars, the beacons, the buoys, the lights of earth and in the hills the faint fires of the blazing gorse. Macmann, my last, my possessions, I remember, he is there too, perhaps he sleeps. Lemuel
Lemuel is in charge, he raises his hatchet on which the blood will never dry, but not to hit anyone, he will not hit anyone, he will not hit anyone any more, he will not touch anyone any more, either with it or with it or with it or with or
or with it or with his hammer or with his stick or with his fist or in thought in dream I mean never he will never
or with his pencil or with his stick or
or light light I mean
never there he will never
never anything
there
any more
— Samuel Beckett, Malone Dies
The Floating Library 