Quote(s) du Jour: Last Milosz

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Lest they be forgotten, here are the last couple of excerpts I pulled from the pages of Czeslaw Milosz' great novel, The Issa Valley, and never used:


If only a moment of everything’s happening could be arrested, fixed, examined in a glass jar; if only it could be peeled away from the moment before and the moment after, and the tissue of time stretched into an ocean of space! But no.

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We are given to live on the border of the human and the bestial, and it is good so.

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Reflections: Memories

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Here is a beautiful passage from Czeslaw Milosz’s great novel, The Issa Valley. These words— the reflections of the book’s protagonist, Thomas—perhaps have relevance—on a grander scale— to some of my own recent posts:

…No one lives alone; he is speaking with those who are no more, their lives are incarnated in him; he is retracing their footsteps, climbing the stairs to the edifice of history. Their hopes and defeats, the signs left behind, be it a single letter carved in stone—here is the way to peace, to mitigating the judgments he imposed on himself. Happiness is given to those who have the gift. Never and nowhere will they feel alone, as they are comforted by the memory of all who have struggled like themselves, for something unattainable. Whether or not Thomas was rewarded, such moments as those spent in the company of his grandfather abided with him, anticipating an age when voices muted by time would become precious.

And here is another:

The nightingale cried out, was answered. Dampness seeped through the window. Whatever has been cannot endure; it fades, flickers, scatters; a man, doubting that he has been, can only pray. If a star ablaze in the bluish-green firmament was millions of miles away, and beyond it other stars, other suns; if all that was born passed without leaving a trace, then only God could rescue the past from insignificance. Even a past full of pain. Oh, if only one could say with certainty that it was not a dream.

We must remember that the past has relevance only as it is reshaped by our acts in the present.

With that thought in mind, it is my intention—the present growing increasingly less tolerable with each passing day—to dwell a bit more on my past for awhile than has been my habit to-date.

It may hurt some.
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