La Petite Mort

"I am interested in this hazy hinterland between wakefulness and sleep as a timeless, boundary-less purgatory state, free from the rules of everyday existence."

[lyonesseofalbion]

“Matador” (1986) [dir. Pedro Almodóvar]

[lyonesseofalbion]

"I see you so clearly walking toward me

from my previous life into my future

and into my future’s future

the present is all I have."

This Life [1985] by Chen Kehua

Translated by Simon Patton ____________________________________________ "Unknown Pleasures" ("Rèn xiāo yáo", 2002), [dir. Jia Zhangke]

[lyonesseofalbion]

"Awakening from a dream [...] Rose-colored rouge, a lipstick in its case Consciousness, defeated, flows somberly by" Rouge and Lips [1934] by Yang Chichang Translated by John Balcom ____________________________________________ “Rouge” (“Yānzhī kòu”, 1987) [dir. Stanley Kwan]

[lyonesseofalbion]

"...that cry which had sounded over the Seine behind me years before had never ceased, carried by the river to the waters of the Channel, to travel throughout the world, across the limitless expanse of the ocean, and that it had waited for me there until the day I had encountered it. I realized likewise that it would continue to await me on seas and rivers, everywhere, in short where lies the bitter water of my baptism. Here, too, by the way, aren’t we on the water? On this flat, monotonous, interminable water whose limits are indistinguishable from those of the land? Is it credible that we shall ever reach Amsterdam? We shall never get out of this immense holy-water fount. Listen. Don’t you hear the cries of invisible gulls? If they are crying in our direction, to what are they calling us?"

The Fall by Albert Camus

(On the picture: Francine Camus on the balcony of the family apartment in Oran)

[lyonesseofalbion]

"The truth is that I'II go mad..."

"Eskimo Woman Feels Cold” (“Eszkimó asszony fázik”, 1983) [dir. János Xantus]

[lyonesseofalbion]

Halina Poświatowska:

(you ask — what camels haul in their saddle-bags...)

you ask — what camels haul in their saddle-bags

they carry my heart

across the desert

since you left me

I remain alone

under the yellow sun

the earth is scorched

and human hearts are hollow

the source of tenderness

beats not for me

sometimes I see you

but with my outstretched arms

touch only

my thought about you

you ask — what camels haul in their saddle-bags

they carry my heart

across the desert

[ Indeed I Love - Właśnie Kocham (Bilingual English-Polish edition) by Halina Poświatowska ]

https://www.babelmatrix.org/works/pl/Po%C5%9Bwiatowska%2C_Halina-1935/%2A%2A%2A%28pytasz_-_co_d%C5%BAwigaj%C4%85_w_jukach...%29

[lyonesseofalbion]

Halina Poświatowska: (on a dust-covered road...)

on a dust-covered road I search for your lips.

I bend over and look under each moss-wrapped stone.

coiled into spirals snails sleep in moist shade.

I wake them and ask where is he? they stretch out their drowsy

horns peek from their shells squint at the sun.

and vanish saying nothing. I ask the stone smooth

its rough surface with my warm hungry hand. it's silent.

I ask the sun. it bends its head to the west and I go after the sun westward to find you.

[ Indeed I Love - Właśnie Kocham (Bilingual English-Polish edition) by Halina Poświatowska ]

https://www.babelmatrix.org/works/pl/Po%C5%9Bwiatowska%2C_Halina-1935/_%2A%2A%2A%28Na_zakurzonej_drodze_szukam_twoich_ust...%29/hu/68576-%2A%2A%2A_%28egy_porlepte_%C3%BAton_kutatom_az_ajkad...%29

[lyonesseofalbion]

"I prefer my primitivism, my childlike faith, my rural ways, my wild tree soul."

Gabriela Mistral's Letters to Doris Dana by Gabriela Mistral

[lyonesseofalbion]

"The day she lives for its night and the night for its miracle."

[El día vive por su noche y la noche por su milagro.]

A Woman (Una Mujer) by Gabriela Mistral

[lyonesseofalbion]

"And so little do the roads know of her that I’ve come to accept, with flowing tears, that she’s gone to sleep the fabled sleep, a sea without treachery and a peak without slope, no happiness or pain, no more forgetting."

[Y tanto se la ignoran los caminos que suelo comprender, con largo llanto, que ya duerme del sueño fabuloso, mar sin traición y monte sin repecho, ni dicha ni dolor, no más olvido.]

She Who Walks [La Que Camina] by Gabriela Mistral

[lyonesseofalbion]

"After that painful night, he only feels resigned. What was done doesn’t provoke any conflict in him. It immerses him in an intense calm that he never knew before, distances him and pacifies him. A dignified sadness, without severity, he no longer feels anything but the sweetness of things, he reaps only memory’s charms."

Pretty Things by Virginie Despentes

[lyonesseofalbion]

"I sometimes think now that I’m recovering myself, the way I used to be. I’m all too glad to think about the time when I had everything, when my cheerfulness was truly full of cheer, when I was serious in the good sense of the word. (quasi glissando) Then everything became worse for the wear, damaged, used and used up and ultimately destroyed."

Malina by Ingeborg Bachmann

[lyonesseofalbion]

"Even if Malina is silent, it’s better than being silent alone..."

Malina by Ingeborg Bachmann

[lyonesseofalbion]

"...because Malina is always there for me, steadfast and composed, and even in the darkest hours I am aware that Malina will never be lost to me — even if I were to get lost myself!"

Malina by Ingeborg Bachmann

[lyonesseofalbion]

"I'd drink into myself your melting flesh

As thick and sweet as tropic juices, and

The thrilling magic of the smell of you

Like sage and horsetail of primeval Earth.

And your ethereal soul too I would take

(It flickers lantern-like above your head),

All of you greedily, insatiably"

Thirst (A szomj) by Ágnes Nemes Nagy

[lyonesseofalbion]

"And now they fall.

And with a motion white-winged, wide,

the entire flock takes wing as one,

takes wing like an unmoving image

takes wing like the bodily resurrection,

eternity called up

from the water, at the crack of a gun."

Storm (Vihar) by Ágnes Nemes Nagy

[lyonesseofalbion]

"They had discovered too that the difference between the living and the dead is merely qualitative, that it doesn’t count for much. And they had learned that in everyone’s life there is only one person whose name can be cried out in the moment of death."

Katalin Sreet (Katalin utca) by Magda Szabó