any kind is the enemy of reason; that propaganda is propaganda even when it purports to rally us against iniquity; that war is never glorious except in the eyes of the victors, who believe that God is on the side of the big battalions.
Maybe this is why we read, and why in moments of darkness we return to books: to find words for what we already know.
Chateaubriand: “We live only by means of style.”
The horror felt at acts such as those of last year echoes back throughout history: the horror of the Arabs at the brutality of the first crusaders; the Incas disbelieving that anything human could be as sanguinary as the hordes of Pizarro; the Tasmanian aborigines unable to put into words (their language did not possess the terms) the brutishness of the European settlers.
History, in our eyes, seems to take place through comparisons.
A few days after the tragedy, I heard of someone who had been trapped that morning inside a bookstore close to the World Trade Center. Since there was nothing to do but wait for the dust to settle, he kept on browsing through the books, in the midst of the sirens and the screams. Chateaubriand notes that, during the chaos of the French Revolution, a Breton poet just arrived in Paris asked to be taken on a tour of Versailles. “There are people,” Chateaubriand comments, “who, while empires collapse, visit fountains and gardens.”
FRIDAY
In 1930 André Breton outrageously suggested that “the simplest Surrealist act consists of dashing down into the street, pistol in hand, and firing blindly, as fast as you canpull the trigger, into the crowd.” He meant the action to exist only in the sphere of the unrestrained imagination. He was writing about literature; reality co-opted his writing.
I meet Mavis Gallant at La Rotonde for coffee. She tells me how struck she was last year by the French need to show sympathy for America, and how anyone with the slightest “American” accent (Canadian, Australian or whatever) received condolences; she felt obliged to accept them graciously. A friend of hers went into a shop in Paris and, having shown herself by her accent to be “American,” was immediately surrounded by well-wishers and sympathizers, only to discover, minutes later, that her credit card had been pinched.
TUESDAY
In his memoir on Torquato Tasso, Chateaubriand notes how convinced the poet was of a numinous presence in the world. One day, sitting by the fire, he saw a ray of sun enter through a window and remarked,
“Ecco l’amico spirito che cortesemente è venuto favellarmi.”
(“Here’s the friendly spirit that has so politely come to converse with me.”)
A few months ago, C. tried to save a magnolia tree that we had to remove when we decided to rebuild the collapsing barn in order to lodge the library. He replanted it and hopes it will survive. The tree looks terribly frail, cut backand thin. Chateaubriand begins his
Memoirs
with a few trees he has planted in his garden in Aulnay, so small that he would cast them into his shadow when he stood “between them and the sun.”
Mavis sent a card with something she had forgotten to tell me—how someone described the people throwing themselves out of the World Trade Center: “They looked like commas in the sky.”
THURSDAY
All day it has been sunny. There are bees flying very low, buzzing around my ankles in the grass.
I feel exhausted by the news (the invention of the “war on terrorism,” the justifications for invading Iraq) on our newly acquired television, and by the recapitulations of last year’s events.
We create climates of hatred. During the military dictatorship in Argentina, the loathing and fear felt towards anyone in uniform was palpable. I’ve felt that on different occasions, when visiting Barbados, Iraq, Jerusalem.
Maybe our rulers and our gods must be made to look angry. Julien Green says that, in the eighteenth century inScotland, the word “wrath” kept coming up so frequently in the pulpit that
Maybe this is why we read, and why in moments of darkness we return to books: to find words for what we already know.
Chateaubriand: “We live only by means of style.”
The horror felt at acts such as those of last year echoes back throughout history: the horror of the Arabs at the brutality of the first crusaders; the Incas disbelieving that anything human could be as sanguinary as the hordes of Pizarro; the Tasmanian aborigines unable to put into words (their language did not possess the terms) the brutishness of the European settlers.
History, in our eyes, seems to take place through comparisons.
A few days after the tragedy, I heard of someone who had been trapped that morning inside a bookstore close to the World Trade Center. Since there was nothing to do but wait for the dust to settle, he kept on browsing through the books, in the midst of the sirens and the screams. Chateaubriand notes that, during the chaos of the French Revolution, a Breton poet just arrived in Paris asked to be taken on a tour of Versailles. “There are people,” Chateaubriand comments, “who, while empires collapse, visit fountains and gardens.”
FRIDAY
In 1930 André Breton outrageously suggested that “the simplest Surrealist act consists of dashing down into the street, pistol in hand, and firing blindly, as fast as you canpull the trigger, into the crowd.” He meant the action to exist only in the sphere of the unrestrained imagination. He was writing about literature; reality co-opted his writing.
I meet Mavis Gallant at La Rotonde for coffee. She tells me how struck she was last year by the French need to show sympathy for America, and how anyone with the slightest “American” accent (Canadian, Australian or whatever) received condolences; she felt obliged to accept them graciously. A friend of hers went into a shop in Paris and, having shown herself by her accent to be “American,” was immediately surrounded by well-wishers and sympathizers, only to discover, minutes later, that her credit card had been pinched.
TUESDAY
In his memoir on Torquato Tasso, Chateaubriand notes how convinced the poet was of a numinous presence in the world. One day, sitting by the fire, he saw a ray of sun enter through a window and remarked,
“Ecco l’amico spirito che cortesemente è venuto favellarmi.”
(“Here’s the friendly spirit that has so politely come to converse with me.”)
A few months ago, C. tried to save a magnolia tree that we had to remove when we decided to rebuild the collapsing barn in order to lodge the library. He replanted it and hopes it will survive. The tree looks terribly frail, cut backand thin. Chateaubriand begins his
Memoirs
with a few trees he has planted in his garden in Aulnay, so small that he would cast them into his shadow when he stood “between them and the sun.”
Mavis sent a card with something she had forgotten to tell me—how someone described the people throwing themselves out of the World Trade Center: “They looked like commas in the sky.”
THURSDAY
All day it has been sunny. There are bees flying very low, buzzing around my ankles in the grass.
I feel exhausted by the news (the invention of the “war on terrorism,” the justifications for invading Iraq) on our newly acquired television, and by the recapitulations of last year’s events.
We create climates of hatred. During the military dictatorship in Argentina, the loathing and fear felt towards anyone in uniform was palpable. I’ve felt that on different occasions, when visiting Barbados, Iraq, Jerusalem.
Maybe our rulers and our gods must be made to look angry. Julien Green says that, in the eighteenth century inScotland, the word “wrath” kept coming up so frequently in the pulpit that
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