Começos... (17)

In the late summer of that year we lived in a house in a village that looked across the river and the plain to the mountains. In the bed of the river there were pebbles and boulders, dry and white in the sun, and the water was clear and swiftly moving and blue in the channels. Troops went by the house and down the road and the dust they raised powdered the leaves of the trees. The trunks of the trees too were dusty and the leaves fell early that year and we saw the troops marching along the road and the dust rising and leaves, stirred by the breeze, falling and the soldiers marching and afterward the road bare and white except for the leaves.

ERNEST HEMINGWAY, A Farewell to Arms [1929]

O espanto perante a realidade

Hast thou ever raised thy mind to the consideration of EXISTENCE, in and by itself, as the mere act of existing? Hast thou ever said to thyself thoughtfully, IT IS! heedless in that moment, whether it were a man before thee, or a flower, or a grain of sand? Without reference, in short, to this or that particular mode or form of existence? If thou hast indeed attained to this, thou wilt have felt the presence of a mystery, which must have fixed thy spirit in awe and wonder. The very words, There is nothing! or, There was a time, when there was nothing! are self-contradictory. There is that within us which repels the proposition with as full and instantaneous a light, as if it bore evidence against the fact in the right of its own eternity.
Not TO BE, then, is impossible: TO BE, incomprehensible. If thou hast mastered this intuition of absolute existence, thou wilt have learnt likewise, that it was this, and no other, which in the earlier ages seized the nobler minds, the elect among men, with a sort of sacred horror.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, The Friend [1809]

Para ler em voz alta (14)

The sun blazing fiercely,
the moon longed for eagerly,
deep waters inviting
to plunge in continually,
days drawing to a close in quiet beauty,
the tide of desire running low:
scorching Summer is now here, my love.

KALIDASA, Rtusamharam [The Gathering of the Seasons] [trad. Chandra Rajan] [sécs. I-IV]

Começos... (16)

Tout est bien sortant des mains de l'Auteur des choses, tout dégénère entre les mains de l'homme. Il force une terre à nourrir les productions d'une autre, un arbre à porter les fruits d'un autre; il mêle et confond les climats, les éléments, les saisons; il mutile son chien, son cheval, son esclave; il bouleverse tout, il défigure tout, il aime la difformité, les monstres; il ne veut rien tel que l'a fait la nature, pas même l'homme; il le faut dresser pour lui, comme un cheval de manège; il le faut contourner à sa mode, comme un arbre de son jardin.
Sans cela, tout irait plus mal encore, et notre espèce ne veut pas être façonnée à demi. Dans l'état où sont désormais les choses, un homme abandonné dès sa naissance à lui-même parmi les autres serait le plus défiguré de tous. Les préjugés, l'autorité, la nécessité, l'exemple, toutes les institutions sociales, dans lesquelles nous nous trouvons submergés, étoufferaient en lui la nature, et ne mettraient rien à la p lace. Elle y serait homme un arbrisseau que le hasard ait naître au milieu d'un chemin, et que les passants font bientôt périr, en le heurtant de toutes parts et le pliant dans tous les sens.

JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU, Émile ou De l'éducation [1761]

GALERIA (7)

Carl Edward Sagan (1934-1996)