Alison Oatman

“Reading is sometimes thought of as a form of escapism, and it’s a common turn of phrase to speak of getting lost in a book. But a book can also be where one finds oneself; and when a reader is grasped and held by a book, reading does not feel like an escape from life so much as it feels like an urgent, crucial dimension of life itself. There are books that seem to comprehend us just as much as we understand them, or even more. There are books that grow with the reader as the reader grows, like a graft to a tree.”

–from My Life in Middlemarch by Rebecca Mead

 

“My action is my possession,

my action is my inheritance,

my action is the womb which bears me,

my action is my refuge.”

–from the Anguttara Nikaya as quoted by Joanna Macy in her book World As Lover, World As Self

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La Destruction

Sans cesse à mes côtés s’agite le Démon;

Il nage autour de moi comme un air impalpable;

Je l’avale et le sens qui brûle mon poumon

Et l’emplit d’un désir éternel et coupable.

 

Parfois il prend, sachant mon grand amour de l’Art,

La forme de la plus séduisante des femmes,

Et, sous de spécieux prétexte de cafard,

Accoutume ma lèvre à des philtres infâmes.

 

Il me conduit ainsi, loin du regard de Dieu,

Haletant et brisé de fatigue, au milieu

Des plaines de l’Ennui, profondes et désertes,

 

Et jette dans mes yeux pleins de confusion

Des vêtements souillés, des blessures ouvertes,

Et l’appareil sanglant de la Destruction!

–Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867)

 

Destruction

The Demon is always moving about at my side;

He floats about me like an impalpable air;

I swallow him, I feel him burn my lungs

And fill them with an eternal, sinful desire.

 

Sometimes, knowing my deep love for Art, he assumes

The form of a most seductive woman,

And, with pretexts specious and hypocritical,

Accustoms my lips to infamous philtres.

 

He leads me thus, far from the sight of God,

Panting and broken with fatigue, into the midst

Of the plains of Ennui, endless and deserted,

 

And thrusts before my eyes full of bewilderment,

Dirty filthy garments and open, gaping wounds,

And all the bloody instruments of Destruction!

(Translated by William Aggeler)

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Hamlet: Then is doomsday near. But your news is not true. Let me question more in particular. What have you, my good friends, deserved at the hands of Fortune that she sends you to prison hither?

Guildenstern: Prison, my lord?

Hamlet: Denmark’s a prison.

Rosencrantz: Then is the world one.

Hamlet: A goodly one, in which there are many confines, wards, and dungeons, Denmark being one o’ th’ worst.

Rosencrantz: We think not so, my lord.

Hamlet: Why, then ’tis none to you, for there is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so. To me it is a prison. 

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Longtemps, je me suis couche de bonne heure. Parfois, a peine ma bougie eteinte, mes yeux se fermaient si vite que je n’avais pas le temps de me dire: “Je m’endors.” Et, une demi-heure après, la pensee qu’il etait temps de chercher le sommeil m’eveillait; je voulais poser le volume que je croyais avoir encore dans les mains et souffler ma lumiere; je n’avais pas cesse en dormant de faire des refexions sur ce que je venais de lire, mais ces refexions avaient pris un tour un peu particulier; il me semblait que j’etais moi-meme ce dont parlait l’ouvrage: une eglise, un quatuor, la rivalite de Francois Ier et de Charles Quint.  Cette croyance survivait pendant quelques secondes a mon reveil; elle ne choquait pas ma raison mas pesait comme des ecailles sur mes yeux et les empechait de se rendre compte que le bougeoir n’etait plus allume.

For a long time, I went to bed early. Sometimes, my candle scarcely out, my eyes would close so quickly that I did not have time to say to myself: “I’m falling asleep.” And, half an hour later, the thought that it was time to sleep would wake me; I wanted to put down the book I thought I still had in my hands and blow out my light; I had not ceased while sleeping to form reflections on what I had just read, but these reflections had taken a rather peculiar turn; it seemed to me that I myself was what the book was talking about: a church, a quartet, a rivalry between Francois I and Charles V. This belief lived on for a few seconds after my waking; it did not shock my reason but lay heavy like scales on my eyes and kept them from realizing that the candlestick was no longer lit. Continue Reading