“She has suffered, loved senselessly and suffered shamefully,”— Thomas Mann, tr. by Willard R. Trask, from “The Black Swan,” wr. c. 1954
sau·da·de (souˈdädə/):
a feeling of longing, melancholy, or nostalgia for something that does not exist.
a feeling of longing, melancholy, or nostalgia for something that does not exist.
“She had daring, courage and a tremendous sense of humour. She was like a sparkling brook – like quicksilver. Her changes of mood were rapid and disconcerting. She had a tongue like a knife, she could cut the very heart out of one with it.”— Dorothy Brett, on Katherine Mansfield, quoted in “Katherine Mansfield: A Darker View,”
When you know you are a voice crying in the wilderness, cry, but don’t say “I’m a voice crying in the wilderness.”
Katherine Mansfield, from a letter to J.M. Murry written c. December 1919 (x)
“In her the earth was silent, as it is silent at sunrise, and the earth in her was profound, like the sunrise.”— Katherine Mansfield, from The Collected Stories; “The Voyage,”
“Maybe I should meet one who would know how to love me.”— Simone de Beauvoir, tr. by Justin O’Brien, from “The Woman Destroyed,”
“I am alone. I am eating my heart out.”— Simone de Beauvoir, tr. by Justin O’Brien, from “The Woman Destroyed,”
“The one real requirement of life: an openness to what is lovely among all the rest that isn’t.”— Sylvia Plath, from a letter to Aurelia Plath written c. November 1956
“And the wind forgets, the wind is always forgetting,”— George Seferis, tr. by Rex Warner, from “Stratis the Sailor Describes a Man,”
“I am looking always for the sea.”— Denise Levertov, from Life in the Forest: Poems; “Metamorphic Journal,”
“In rage, against the world, you secretly spread out your arms to embrace it.
In contrast, the ocean rolls up the water-heart and lets it flow out, as if it hated its own strength and not the constraint of the shore. The waves, subject to no one’s will, drive themselves, rear up, and break down.
You complain that life is a trap, time a chain: then you praise its hesitating space and its inherent flowing. How is one supposed to understand that?”
Max Hölzer, tr. by Beth Bjorklund, from “The Summer’s Cold,” (x)
