“Never did two men ever judge identically about anything, and it is impossible to find two opinions which are exactly alike, not only in different men but in the same men at different times.”

— Montaigne (tr. M. A. Screech)

“The Tuesday scowls…”

(The opening of Ill Seen Ill Said)

“From where she lies she sees Venus rise. On. From where she lies when the skies are clear she sees Venus rise followed by the sun. Then she rails at the source of all life. On. At evening when the skies are clear she savours its star’s revenge. At the other window.”

— Beckett

“I don’t find solitude agonising . . . Holes in paper open and take me fathoms from anywhere.”

— Beckett in a letter (Jan. 26, 1959)

[February 24, 1918]

“The bond to one’s fellow man is the bond of prayer, the bond to oneself is the bond of striving; it is from prayer that one draws the strength to strive.”

— Franz Kafka (tr. Shelley Frisch)

“In this part I reflect on the difficulty and surprise of being you. It may never get written. Some things are simultaneously too boring and too exciting to write about.”

— John Ashbery (from “Valentine”)

“But I have swam through libraries and sailed through oceans; I have had to do with whales with these visible hands; I am in earnest; and I will try.”

— Moby-Dick (Ch. 32, “Cetology”)

#MelvilleMonday 🐳

Really looking forward to reading Charlotte Mandell’s new translation of Monsieur Teste 🤍

“Reading is anguish, and this is because any text […] is empty—at bottom it doesn’t exist; you have to cross an abyss, and if you do not jump, you do not comprehend.”

— Maurice Blanchot (tr. A. Smock)

“I tried each thing, only some were immortal and free.”

— John Ashbery

“For childhood, knowing no preconceived opinions, has none about life. It is as dearly attached (though with just as strong reservations) to the realm of the dead, where it juts into that of the living, as to life itself.”

— Walter Benjamin, “A Berlin Chronicle” (tr. Jephcott)

“We imagine that we know exactly what things are and what people think, for the simple reason that we do not care about them. But as soon as we have a desire to know, as the jealous man has, then it becomes a dizzy kaleidoscope…”

— Proust, The Fugitive (tr. Scott Moncrieff)

“I realized that I wasn’t quite suited to bear complete solitude. … Solitude is more powerful than anything and drives one back toward people.”

— Kafka, Diaries (tr. Ross Benjamin)

(from Faux Pas, tr. Charlotte Mandell)

“A writer who writes ‘I am alone’… can seem a little ludicrous. It is comical to be aware of one’s solitude while addressing a reader… The word ‘alone’ is as general as the word ‘bread.’ As soon as one utters it, one makes present everything that it excludes.”

Maurice Blanchot

For Commonweal Magazine, I wrote about the latest Lispector, THE APPLE IN THE DARK (trans. by Ben Moser), the problem of language, the aesthetics of silence, and more.
Thanks to Matt Boudway for letting me do it.
commonwealmagazine.org/other-side-sil…

“What we have we soon have no longer . . . All we have and possess is what we long for; all we are is what we’ve never been. I was less a phenomenon than a longing, only in my longing did I live, and all that I was was nothing more than longing.”

— Robert Walser (tr. Bernofsky)