#341

“After great pain, a formal feeling comes –
The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs –
The stiff Heart questions was it He, that bore,
And Yesterday, or Centuries before?

The Feet, mechanical, go round –
Of Ground, of Air, or Ought –
A Wooden way
Regardless grown,
A Quartz contentment, like a stone –

This is the Hour of Lead –
Remembered, if outlived
As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow –
First – Chill – then Stupor – then the letting go –” (id, 24)

#252

“I can wade Grief –
Whole Pools of it –
I'm used to that –
But the least push of Joy
Breaks up my feet –
And I tip – drunken –
Let no Pebble – smile –
'Twas the New Liquor –
That was all!

Power is only Pain –
Stranded, thro' Discipline,
Till Weights – will hang –
Give Balm – to Giants –
And they'll wilt, like Men –
Give Himmaleh –
They'll Carry – Him!” (id, 11)

#47

“People do not know how dangerous love songs can be (...) The movements which work revolutions in the world are born out of the dreams and vision's in a peasant's heart on the hillside. For them the earth is not an exploitable ground but the living mother” (id, 238-239).

#46

“Art has to reveal to us ideas, formless spiritual essences. The supreme question about a work of art is out of how deep a life does it spring. The painting of Gustave Moreau is the painting of ideas. The deepest poetry of Shelley, the words of Hamlet bring our mind into contact with the eternal wisdom, Plato's world of ideas. All the rest is the speculation of schoolboys for schoolboys” (id, 236).

#45

“Never know whose thoughts you're chewing” (id, 217).

#44

“We were always loyal to lost causes (...) Success for us is the death of the intellect and of the imagination. We were never loyal to the successful. We serve them” (id, 169).

#43

“The priest bent down to put it into her mouth, murmuring all the time. Latin. The next one. Shut your eyes and open your mouth. What? Corpus. Body. Corpse. Good idea the Latin. Stupefies them first. Hospice for the dying. They don't seem to chew it; only swallow it down. Rum idea: eating bits of a corpse why the cannibals cotton to it” (Joyce, 2000: 99).

Seaspin

“To drown to be slow hair
To be fish minstrelry
One eye to flick and stare
The fathomed wreck to see –
Forever down to drown
Descend the squid's conclave
Black roof the whale's belly
Oyster floor the grave –

My sea-ghost ride
And slower hair
Silverstreaks my eyes
Up up I whirl
And wonder where –

To breathe in Neptune's cup
Nudge gale and tempest
Feel the mermaid up
To stay to pin my hair
On the sea-horse's stirrup –” (Corso, 1960: 13)

CORSO, Gregory (1960). The Happy Birthday Of Death. New York: A New Directions Paperbook.

#39

“No criteria exist to distinguish dreams and reality, other than the merely empirical data provided by the waking life” (Borges, 2001: 13).

BORGES, Jorge Luis (2001). The Total Library Non-Fiction 1922-1986. London: Penguin.

O Mundo sem Pina Bausch

“Não sei como é o mundo sem Pina Bausch, porque nunca me passou pela cabeça pensá-lo sem ela. Onde estávamos no momento em que ela morreu? Em que pensávamos? Que sonhos ou assombrações nos ocupavam o espírito? E sobretudo, porque não sabíamos que ela ia morrer (nunca soubemos que ela podia morrer), desprevenidos, nem imaginávamos que tudo isso podia ser matéria para as suas narrativas fantásticas, que passaram, nestas décadas, a fazer parte da nossa visão de tudo. O mundo tornou-se uma narrativa feita de estórias e da acumulação de sinais quotidianos, que a perspectiva cinematográfica de Pina Bausch encenava, através de um subtil sentido da montagem. De modo que o mundo sem ela não é bem o nosso mundo, a não ser no que dela nos ficar nas suas extraordinárias criações, perpetuadas pelos seus bailarinos e intérpretes. É um mundo diminuído, convenhamos. Até porque lhe falta o gesto terno, elegante, compassivo, o olhar longo e infinitamente humano dessa extraordinária criadora, que tivemos a felicidade de conhecer e admirar” (Ferreira, 2009).

FERREIRA, António Mega (2009). “O Mundo sem Pina Bausch” in PUBLICO.PT. URL: http://ultimahora.publico.clix.pt/noticia.aspx?id=1389512, as seen on 01.07.2009.