Forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit

Virgile - Énéide, liv. I

[causeries-litteraires]

“Je t’aime, voilà tout.”

—

Gustave Flaubert à Louise Colet

English: “ I love you,that’s all.” Gustave Flaubert in a letter to Louise Colet 

[healinghopelessness]

"All my life, my heart has yearned for a thing I cannot name."

- André Breton, L'amour fou

[lux-tenebrae]

Dante, Infierno, canto V, v. 121.

[violentwavesofemotion-deactivat]

Attar of Nishapur, from “The Conference of the Birds,” or. publ. c. 1177

[talestalesof]

And we will exist, and amuse ourselves, dreaming of monstrous loves

Arthur Rimbaud, A Season in Hell

[weltenwellen]

Virginia Woolf, A Writer’s Diary

[causeries-litteraires]

"Ce qu’il y a d’exaltant : la terrible solitude. Comme remède à la vie en société : la grande ville. C’est désormais le seul désert praticable. Le corps ici n’a plus de prestige. Il est couvert, caché sous des peaux informes. Il n’y a que l’âme, l’âme avec tous ses débordements, ses ivrogneries, ses intempérances d’émotion pleurarde et le reste. "

Albert Camus, Carnets, Mars 1940

English:

What is inspiring: the terrible loneliness. As a remedy to life in society, I would suggest the big city. Nowadays, it is the only dessert within our means. Here, the body has lost its magic. It is covered over, and hidden under shapeless skins. The only thing left is the soul. The soul with all its sloppy overflow of drunken sentimentality, its whining emotions and everything else. But the soul also offers us one source of greatness: silent solitude.

Albert Camus, Notebooks, March 1940, translated by P. Thody

[causeries-litteraires]

"Camus [...] est celui de sa génération qui donne le plus grand espoir. Celui qu'on peut ensemble admirer et aimer."

Roger Martin du Gard, Lettre à André Gide, 24 Juin 1948

[soracities]

Frank Bidart, “To the Dead”, Half-Light: Collected Poems, 1965-2016

[Text ID: “The love I’ve known is the love of two people staring

not at each other, but in the same direction.”]

[terpsikeraunos]

ancient greek word of the day: ἀναξίμολπος (anaximolpos), queen of song, epith. of Urania

[andrumedus]

“I would never tie you down, not even with garlands of roses. I don’t want anything from you that doesn’t come from your own impulse, like water from the springs.”

— Dulce María Loynaz, tr. James O’Connor, Absolute Solitude: Selected Poems; “XLVI”

[weltenwellen]

Hanif Abdurraqib interviewed by Ruth Awad: Joy Is Not Promised to You

[blessyourheartlittleone]

virginia woolf's 1931 new years resolutions : "to have none. not to be tied. to be free & kindly with myself. sometimes to read, sometimes not to read. to go out, yes—but stay at home in spite of being asked. as for clothes, i think to buy good ones."

[cache-e]

"I feel so many things growing—my individuality, my confidence; I feel lines of my character growing stronger. I’m really sprouting, springing up, with mixed feelings of tenderness and bitterness, faith and disillusion, hardness and softness. I have never felt so clearly that my Self is — obscurely and stubbornly self-made."

Anaïs Nin : The Early Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1914–1920

[metaphorformetaphor]

“But I’m only a poet worshipping my fire”

— Samih al-Qasim, “The Golden Age,” Victims of a map, transl. by Abdullah al-Udhari (Saqi Books, 1995)

[causeries-litteraires]

“Life can be magnificent and overwhelming — that is its whole tragedy. Without beauty, love, or danger it would be almost easy to live.”

— Albert Camus, Review of Jean-Paul Sartre’s novel “La Nausée” for Alger-Républicain (1938)

[causeries-litteraires]

“When I look at my life and its secret colors, I feel like bursting into tears. Like that sky, It’s rain and sun both, noon and midnight. You know, I think of the lips I’ve kissed, and of the wretched child I was, and of the madness of life and the ambition that sometimes carries me away. I’m all those things at once. I’m sure there are times when you wouldn’t even recognize me. Extreme in misery, excessive in happiness — I can’t say it.”

— Albert Camus, A Happy Death