In the spirit of the Twitter trends #booksthatchangedmylife and #happybloomsday, 217 words that changed my life:
INELUCTABLE MODALITY OF THE VISIBLE: AT LEAST THAT IF NO MORE, thought through my eyes. Signatures of all things I am here to read, seaspawn and seawrack, the nearing tide, that rusty boot. Snotgreen, bluesilver, rust: coloured signs. Limits of the diaphane. But he adds: in bodies. Then he was aware of them bodies before of them coloured. How? By knocking his sconce against them, sure. Go easy. Bald he was and a millionaire, maestro di color che sanno. Limit of the diaphane in. Why in? Diaphane, adiaphane. If you can put your five fingers through it, it is a gate, if not a door. Shut your eyes and see.
Stephen closed his eyes to hear his boots crush crackling wrack and shells. You are walking through it howsomever. I am, a stride at a time. A very short space of time through very short times of space. Five, six: the nacheinander. Exactly: and that is the ineluctable modality of the audible. Open your eyes. No. Jesus! If I fell over a cliff that beetles o’er his base, fell through the nebeneinander ineluctably. I am getting on nicely in the dark. My ash sword hangs at my side. Tap with it: they do. My two feet in his boots are at the end of his legs, nebeneinander. (Proteus)
Jessica Smith
Jessica,
I’ve been reading your public blogs with immense pleasure and have all sorts of things stored up to say. I’ve just been horribly busy finishing a translation project – no time to keep up with correspondence (two or three hours after dinner, until about 2am to write poems and prose, whatever – that’s it). But I love the energy of your prose, your brisk wit and “in-your-face” conclusions. Very curious about what you said the other day about reading poetry – that’s been percolating behind the arras. At any rate, happy Bloomsday to you…
Martin
. . . and yes I said yes I will Yes.