η απορια του μη ησυχαζειν — Posts Tagged ‘memory’

Insomniac passing anhypnic nights in writing, translation, music, mathematics, programming and whatever else captures my attention or alleviates agrypnia.

This consists mostly of quotations of things that stand out to me or reflect what's on my mind; occasionally I also post original, often more personal, content as well, which may be found under the "personal" tag. Anything posted under "translations" is also original work and may broadly be taken as personal as well as I seldom tackle a work that does not speak to or for me in some way.

October 1st, 2012 11:14am

Back when they used to celebrate my birthday,
I was happy and no one was dead.
In the old house even my birthday was a centuries-old tradition,
and everyone’s joy, mine included, was as sure as any religion.


Back when they used to celebrate my birthday,
I enjoyed the good health of understanding nothing,
of being intelligent in my family’s eyes,
and of not having the hopes that others had for me.
When I began to have hopes, I no longer knew how to hope.
When I began to look at life, it had lost all meaning for me.


Yes, that person I knew as me,
that person with a heart and a family,
that person of quasi-rural evenings spent all together,
that person who was a boy they loved,
that person—my God!—whom only today I realize I was…
How far away! …
(Not even an echo…)
When they used to celebrate my birthday!


The person I am today is like the damp in the hall at the back of the house
that makes the walls mildew…
what I am today is their having sold the house,
it’s all of them having died,
it’s I having survived myself like a spent match.


Back when they used to celebrate my birthday…
Ah, how I love, like a person, those days!
How my soul physically longs to return there,
via a metaphysical and carnal journey,
in a duality of me to me…
to eat the past like the bread of hunger, with no time for butter between the teeth!


I see it all again, so vivid it blinds me to what’s here…
The table with extra place settings, fancier china, more glasses,
the sideboard full of sweets and fruits, and other things in the shadow of the lower shelf.
Elderly aunts, different cousins, and all for my sake,
back when they used to celebrate my birthday.


Stop it, heart!
Don’t think! Leave thinking to the head!
I no longer have birthdays.
I endure.
My days add up.
I’ll be old when I’m old.
That’s all.
If only I’d filched the goddamned past and brought it away in my pocket!


When they used to celebrate my birthday!

Fernando Pessoa, writing as Álvaro de Campos, on Pessoa’s birthday, 13 June 1930 (Richard Zenith translation)

The passage always reminds me of elements of Rilke’s retelling of the story of the Prodigal Son in his Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge.
May 15th, 2012 7:29am

Why did I dream of you last night?
    Now morning is pushing back hair with grey light
    memories strike home, like slaps in the face;
raised on elbow, I stare at the pale fog
    beyond the window.


    So many things I had thought forgotten
    return to my mind with stranger pain:
—like letters that arrive addressed to someone
who left the house so many years ago.

Philip Larkin
May 10th, 2012 10:35am

”[…] too soon there pass from us the sweets and song and the lion strength of youth: too soon do their cheeks fade, their hair grow grey and our beloved die; too brittle is beauty, too far off is fame and the years are gathered too soon; there are leaves, leaves falling, everywhere falling; there is autumn among men, autumn and reaping; failure there is, struggle, dying and weeping, and all that is beautiful hath not remained […].

“Even our memories are gathered too with the sound of the ancient voices, the pleasant ancient voices that come to our ears no more; the very gardens of our childhood fade, and there dims with the speed of the years even the mind’s own eye.

“O be not any more the friend of Time, for the silent hurry of his malevolent feet has trodden down what’s fairest; I almost hear the whimper of the years running behind him hound-like, and it takes so few to tear us.

“All that is beautiful he crushes down as a big man tramples daisies, all that is fairest. It is autumn with all the world, and the stars weep to see it.”

Lord Dunsany, from “The Lonely Idol” (Fifty-One Tales, 1915)
May 6th, 2012 8:13am

A man worn down by time;
a man who doesn’t even expect death
(the proofs of death are statistics
and there is no one who doesn’t run the risk
of being the first immortal);
a man who has learned to appreciate
the day’s meagre munificence:
sleep, routine, the taste of water,
an unsuspected etymology,
a Latin or Saxon verse,
the memory of a woman who left him
so many years ago
that today he can recall her without bitterness;
a man who doesn’t ignore that the present
is already the future and oblivion;
a man who has been disloyal
and to whom others have been disloyal;
he might feel suddenly, while crossing the street,
a mysterious happiness
born not of hope
but of an ancient innocence,
of his own root or of some diffused deity.


He knows that he shouldn’t look at it closely,
for there are reasons more terrible than tigers
which will prove to him his obligation
to be miserable,
but he humbly experiences
that happiness, that impulse.


Perhaps we’ll be forever in death,
when the dust is dust,
that indecipherable root,
from which will eternally blossom,
happy or horrible,
our solitary heaven or hell.

Jorge Luis Borges, “Alguien” from El Otro, el Mismo (“Someone” from The Other, the Self)

η απορια του μη ησυχαζειν

Insomniac passing anhypnic nights in writing, translation, music, mathematics, programming and whatever else captures my attention or alleviates agrypnia.

This consists mostly of quotations of things that stand out to me or reflect what's on my mind; occasionally I also post original, often more personal, content as well, which may be found under the "personal" tag. Anything posted under "translations" is also original work and may broadly be taken as personal as well as I seldom tackle a work that does not speak to or for me in some way.