The Dream of a Curious Man

Do you know, as i do, how suffering can be savoured, and do you make people say of you, ‘what a strange man!’ I was going to die. my amorous soul felt desire mingled with horror, an illness peculiar to itself;

Anguish and lively hope, without any impulse to protest. the lower the fatal hourglass sank, the more savage and delicious was my torture; all my heart was tearing itself away from the familiar world.

I was like the child desperate to see the play, hating the curtain as one hates a barrier … at last the cold truth revealed itself:

I had died without surprise, and the terrible dawn was enfolding me. – ‘What! is that all?’ The curtain had risen and I was still waiting.

Charles Baudelaire

Ansel Adams and Robert Frank

Quality doesn’t mean deep blacks and whatever tonal range. That’s not quality, that’s a kind of quality. The pictures of Robert Frank might strike someone as being sloppy–the tone range isn’t right and things like that–but they’re far superior to the pictures of Ansel Adams with regard to quality, because the quality of Ansel Adams, if I may say so, is essentially the quality of a postcard. But the quality of Robert Frank is a quality that has something to do with what he’s doing, what his mind is. It’s not balancing out the sky to the sand and so forth. It’s got to do with intention.

Elliott Erwitt

I Shall See Her Today!

‘I shall see her today!’ I exclaim in the mornings when I raise and look up the beautiful sun with a glad heart; ‘I shall see her today!’ and then i have no other wishes all day long. Everything, everything is included in that one hope.

In vain I stretch my arms to her when morning comes and I gradually waken from deep dreams, In vain i look for her in my bed at night when some happy, innocent reverie has tricked me into believing I was sitting with her in a meadow, holding her hand and covering it with a thousand kisses. Ah, still half asleep I reach for her, cheered to think she is there-and a flood of tears pours from my sorely beset heart, and I weep inconsolably over my somber future.

Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther

The Picture of Life

To understand the picture one must divine the painter. Nowadays, however, the whole guild of sciences is occupied in understanding the canvas and the pain but not the picture; one can say, indeed, that only he who has a clear view of the picture of life and existence as a whole can employ the individual sciences without harm to himself, for without such a regulatory total picture they are threads that nowhere come to an end and only render our life more confused and labyrinthine.

Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations

The Child of Promise

We read in those holy books: “And God tempted Abraham, and said unto him, Abraham, Abraham, where art thou? And he said, Here am I.” Thou to whom my speech is addressed, was such the case with thee? When afar off thou didst see the heavy dispensation of providence approaching thee, didst thou not say to the mountains, Fall on me, and to the hills, Cover me? Or if thou wast stronger, did not thy foot move slowly along the way, longing as it were for the old path? When a call was issued to thee, didst thou answer, or didst thou not answer perhaps in a low voice, whisperingly? Not so Abraham: joyfully, buoyantly, confidently, with a loud voice, he answered, “Here am I.” We read further: “And Abraham rose early in the morning” — as though it were to a festival, so he hastened, and early in the morning he had come to the place spoken of, to Mount Moriah. He said nothing to Sarah, nothing to Eleazar. Indeed who could understand him? Had not the temptation by its very nature exacted of him an oath of silence? He cleft the wood, he bound Isaac, he lit the pyre, he drew the knife. My hearer, there was many a father who believed that with his son he lost everything that was dearest to him in the world, that he was deprived of every hope for the future, but yet there was none that was the child of promise in the sense that Isaac was for Abraham. There was many a father who lost his child; but then it was God, it was the unalterable, the unsearchable will of the Almighty, it was His hand took the child. Not so with Abraham. For him was reserved a harder trial, and Isaac’s fate was laid along with the knife in Abraham’s hand. And there he stood, the old man, with his only hope! But he did not doubt, he did not look anxiously to the right or to the left, he did not challenge heaven with his prayers. He knew that it was God the Almighty who was trying him, he knew that it was the hardest sacrifice that could be required of him; but he knew also that no sacrifice was too hard when God required it — and he drew the knife.

Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling

Everyone Shall Be Remembered

No, no one shall be forgotten who was great in the world. But each was great in his own way, and each in proportion to the greatness of that which he loved. For he who loved himself became great by himself, and he who loved other men became great by his selfless devotion, but he who loved God became greater than all. Everyone shall be remembered, but each became great in proportion to his expectation. One became great by expecting the possible, another by expecting the eternal, but he who expected the impossible became greater than all. Everyone shall be remembered, but each was great in proportion to the greatness of that which he strove. For he who strove with the world became great by overcoming the world, and he who strove with himself became great by overcoming himself, but he who strove with God became greater than all. So there was strife in the world, man against man, one against a thousand, but he who strove with God was greater than all. So there was strife upon earth: there was one who overcame all by his power, and there was one who overcame God by his impotence. There was one who relied upon himself and gained all, there was one who secure in his strength sacrificed all, but he who believed God was greater than all. There was one who was great by reason of his power, one who was great by reason of his wisdom, and one who was great by reason of his hope, and one who was great by reason of his love; but Abraham was greater than all, great by reason of his power whose strength is impotence, great by the reason of his wisdom whose secret is foolishness, great by the reason of his hope whose form is madness, great by the reason of the love which is hatred of oneself.

Kierkegaard

O Mother

O mother: you who are without an equal, who stood before all this silence, long ago in childhood. who took it upon yourself to say: don’t be afraid; i’m here. who in the night had the courage to be this silence for the child who was frightened, who was dying of fear. you strike a match, and already the noise is you. and you hold the lamp in front of you and say: i’m here; don’t be afraid. and you put it down, slowly, and there is no doubt: you are there, you are the light around the familiar, intimate things, which are there without afterthought, good and simple and sure. and when something moves restlessly in the wall, or creaks on the floor: you just smile, smile transparently against a bright background into the terrified face that looks at you, searching, as if you knew the secret of every half-sound, and everything were agreed and understood between you. does any power equal your power among the lords of the earth? look: kings lie and stare, and the teller of tales cannot distract them. though they lie in the blissful arms of their favorite mistress, horror creeps over them and makes them palsied and impotent. but you come and keep the monstrosity behind you and are entirely in front of it; not like a curtain that it can lift up here or there. no: as if you had caught up with it as soon as the child cried out for you. as if you had arrived far ahead of anything that might still happen, and had behind you only your hurrying-in, your eternal path, the flight of your love.

Rilke, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge

Poems

…poems amount to so little when you write them too early in your life. you ought to wait and gather sense and sweetness for a whole lifetime, and a long one if possible, and then, at the very end, you might perhaps be able to write ten good lines. for poems are not, as people think, simply emotions (one has emotions early enough)—they are experiences. for the sake of a single poem, you must see many cities, many people and things, you must understand animals, must feel how birds fly, and know the gesture which small flowers make when they open in the morning. you must be able to think back to streets in unknown neighborhoods, to unexpected encounters, and to partings you had long seen coming; to days of childhood whose mystery is still unexplained, to parents whom you had to hurt when they brought in a joy and you didn’t pick it up (it was a joy meant for somebody else—); to childhood illnesses that began so strangely with so many profound and difficult transformations, to days in quite, retrained rooms and to mornings by the sea, to the sea itself, to seas, to nights of travel that rushed along high overhead and went flying with all the stars,—and it is still not enough to be able to think of all that. you must have memories of many nights of love, each one different from all the others, memories of women screaming in labor, and of light, pale, sleeping girls who have just given birth and are closing again. but you must also have been beside the dying, must have sat beside the dead in the room with the open window and the scattered noises. and it is not yet enough to have memories. you must be able to forget them when they are many, and you must have the immense patience to wait until they return. for the memories themselves are not important. only when they have changed into our very blood, into glance and gesture, and are nameless, no longer to be distinguished from ourselves—only then can it happen that some very rare hour the first word of a poem arises in their midst and goes forth from them.

Rilke, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge