#152

“Wherever a man goes, men will pursue and paw him with their dirty institutions, and, if they can, constrain him to belong to their desperate odd-fellow society. It is true, I might have resisted forcibly with more or less effect, might have run “amok” against society; but I preferred that society should run “amok” against me, it being the desperate party” (id, 171).

#151

“Society is commonly too cheap. We meet at very short intervals, not having had time to acquire any new value for each other. We meet at meals three times a day, and give each other a new taste of that old musty cheese that we are. We have had to agree on a certain set of rules, called etiquette and politeness, to make this frequent meeting tolerable, and that we need not come to open war. We meet at the post-office, and at the sociable, and about the fireside every night; we live thick and are in each other's way, and stumble over one another. Certainly less frequency would suffice for all important and hearty communications.” (id, 136).

#150

“ His [Plato] Dialogues, which contain what is immortal in him, lie on the next shelf, and yet I never read them. We are under-bred and low lived and illiterate; and in this respect I confess I do not make any broad distinction between the illiterateness of my townsmen who cannot read at all, and the illiterateness of him who has learned to read only what is for children and feeble intellects. We should be as good as the worthies of antiquity, but partly by first knowing how good they were. We are a race of tit-men, and soar but little higher in our intellectual flights than the columns of the daily paper.
It is not all books that are as dull as their readers. There are probably words addressed to our condition exactly, which, if we could really hear and understand, would be more salutary than the morning or spring to our lives, and possibly put a new aspect on the face of things for us” (id, 107).

#149

“The work of the great poets have never yet been read by mankind, for only great poets can read them. They have only been read as the multitude read the stars, at most astrologically, not astronomically. Most men have learned to cipher in order to keep accounts and not be cheated in trade; but of reading as a noble intellectual exercise they know little or nothing.” (id, 104).

#148

“The heroic books, even if printed in the character of our mother tongue, will always be in a language dead to degenerate times; and must laboriously seek the meaning of each word and line, conjecturing a larger sense than common use permits out of what wisdom and valor and generosity we have. The modern cheap and fertile press, with all its translations, had done little to bring us nearer to the heroic heroes of antiquity” (id, 100).

#147

“To a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip, and they who edit and read it are old women over their tea. Yet not a few are greedy after this gossip” (id, 94).

#146

“Philanthropy is almost the only virtue which is sufficiently appreciated by mankind. Nay it is overrated; and it is our selfishness that overrates it” (id, 76).

#145

“All truths wait in all things,
They neither hasten their own delivery nor resist it,
They do not need the obstetric forceps of the surgeon,
The insignificant is as big to me as any,
What is less or more than a touch?” (id, 54)

#144

“Have you practiced so long to learn to read?
Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?

Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems,
You shall possess the good of the earth and sun... there are millions of suns left,
You shall no longer take things at second or third hand... nor look through the eyes of the dead... nor feed on the spectres in books,
You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,
You shall listen to all sides and filter them from yourself” (id, 26).

#143

“We have adopted Christianity merely as an improved method of agri-culture. We have built for this world a family mansion, and for the next a family tomb. The best works of art are the expression of man's struggle to free himself from this condition, but the effect of our art is merely to make this low state comfortable and the higher state to be forgotten” (id, 37).

#142

“Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared to our own private opinion” (Thoreau, 2004: 7).

THOREAU, Henry D. (2004). Walden. Oxford, Princeton: Princeton University Press.

#141

“Nothing is better than simplicity... nothing can make up for excess or for the lack of definiteness. To carry on the heave of impulse and pierce the intellectual depths and give all subjects their articulations are powers neither common nor very uncommon. But to speak in literature with the perfect rectitude and insouciance of the movements of animals and the unimpeachableness of the sentiment of trees in the woods and grass by the roadside is the flawless triumph of art” (Whitman, 1961: 12).

WHITMAN, Walt (1961). Leaves Of Grass: The First (1855) Edition. London: Penguin Books.

Otro poema de los dones

“Gracias quiero dar al divin
laberinto de los efectos y de las causas
por la diversidad de las criaturas
que forman este singular universo,
por la razón, que no cesará de soñar
con un plano del laberinto,
por el rostro de Elena y la perseverancia de Ulises,
por el amor, que nos deja ver a los otros
como los ve la divinidad,
por el firme diamante y el agua suelta,
por el álgebra, palacio de precisos cristales,
por las místicas monedas de Ángel Silesio,
por Schopenhauer,
que acaso descifró el universo,
por el fulgor del fuego
que ningún ser humano puede mirar sin un asombro antiguo,
por la caoba, el cedro y el sándalo,
por el pan y la sal,
por el misterio de la rosa
que prodiga color y que no lo ve,
por ciertas vísperas y días de 1955,
Por los duros troperos que en la llanura
arrean los animales y el alba,
por la mañana en Montevideo,
por el arte de la amistad,
por el último día de Sócrates,
Por las palabras que en un crepúsculo se dijeron
de una cruz a otra cruz,
por aquel sueño del Islam que abarcó
mil noches y una noche,
por aquel otro sueño del infierno,
de la torre del fuego que purifica
y de las esferas gloriosas,
por Swedenborg,
que conversaba con los ángeles en las calles de Londres,
por los ríos secretos e inmemoriales
que convergen en mí,
por el idioma que, hace siglos, hablé en Nortumbria,
por la espada y el arpa de los sajones,
por el mar, que es un desierto resplandeciente
y una cifra de cosas que no sabemos,
por la música verbal de Inglaterra,
por la música verbal de Alemania,
por el oro, que relumbra en los versos,
por el épico invierno,
por el nombre de un libro que no he leído: Gesta Dei per Francos,
por Verlaine, inocente como los pájaros,
por el prisma de cristal y la pesa de bronce,
por las rayas del tigre,
por las altas torres de San Francisco y de la isla de Manhattan,
or la mañana en Texas,
or aquel sevillano que redactó la Epístola Moral
y cuyo nombre, como él hubiera preferido, ignoramos,
por Séneca y Lucano, de Córdoba,
que antes del español escribieron
toda la literatura española,
por el geométrico y bizarro ajedrez,
por la tortuga de Zenón y el mapa de Royce,
por el olor medicinal de los eucaliptos,
por el lenguaje, que puede simular la sabiduría,
por el olvido, que anula o modifica el pasado,
por la costumbre,
que nos repite y nos confirma como un espejo,
por la mañana, que nos depara la ilusión de un principio,
por la noche, su tiniebla y su astronomía,
por el valor y la felicidad de los otros,
por la patria, sentida in los jazmines
o en una vieja espada,
por Whitman y Francisco de Asís, que ya escribieron el poema,
or el hecho de que el poema es inagotable
y se confunde con la suma de las criaturas
y no llegará jamás al último verso
y varía según los hombres,
por Frances Haslam, que pidió perdón a sus hijos
por morir tan despacio,
por los minutos que preceden al sueño,
por el sueño y la muerte,
esos dos tesoros ocultos,
por los íntimos dones que no enumero,
por la música, misteriosa forma del tiempo” (id, 81-84).

El instante

“¿Dónde estarán los siglos, dónde el sueño
de espadas que los tártaros soñaron,
dónde los fuertes muros que allanaron,
dónde el Árbol de Adán y el otro Leño?
El presente está solo. La memoria
erige el tiempo. Sucesión y engaño
es la rutina del reloj. El año
no es menos vano que la vana historia.
Entre el alba y la noche hay un abismo
de agonías, de luces, de cuidados;
el rostro que se mira en los gastados
espejos de la noche no es el mismo.
El hoy fugaz es tenue y es eterno;
otro Cielo no esperes, ni otro Infierno” (id, 75).