Litterature - Blog Posts

My two thoughts while reading The Metamorphosis, by Franz Kafka

1: wow, this is a beautifully tragic story on what it means to become “useless” in the eyes of society despite so wanting to be a part of it and it is a critique on how we do not shame others for choosing not to work but once one is unable to, they loose all inherent value in our minds and are diminished to being simply, a pest.

2: I wanna scurry around like a little cockroach under furniture

Random book I read when I was 13

Je n'y suis pas

C'est fou le nombre d'endroits où je ne suis pas.

Par exemple, là. Je n' y suis pas.

Je ne suis pas sur la photo.

Je ne suis pas dans tes souvenirs.

Je ne suis pas sur ton bureau, assise parmi les carnets, tasses, papiers, plumes, coquilles d'oeufs, tiges, moquette bleue poilue, et autre bric-à-brac qui encombre tout l'espace.

Je ne suis pas sur ton parquet, à côté des plantes séchées, des bottes, du sac plastique.

Je ne suis pas à Paris avec Frédérick Rousseau, ni en Russie avec Tchaikovski dont il joue l'une des mélodies du Casse-noisette.

Je ne suis pas au Mexique, là où tu as appris à dire merci, même si c'est essentialiste, raciste, ou de l'appropriation culturelle de dire ça, je ne sais plus.

Je ne suis pas au Japon, là où, moi, j'ai appris à revivre.

Je ne suis pas dans les fleuves d'Inde ou d'Indo-Malaisie, comme le gavial, avec lequel tu me comparais parfois, quand le désir rétrécissait mes pupilles et faisait briller mes dents.

Je ne suis pas avec toi, ici et maintenant.

J'existe de façon minuscule. J'habite dans mon corps d'un mètre 63.

Dans un appartement minuscule de 21 mètres carré.

Dans une ville minuscule de 160 000 habitants.

Et c'est tout.

- Mathilde Fauve

Parfois Algo était triste

"Parfois Algo était triste" est un adorable album jeunesse qui parle de la difficulté à se faire des amis.es. 💞

Illustré très tendrement aux tampons et dessins en noir et en couleur par l auteur.e Julie Martin-Cabetich et par les enfants qui ont participé à cet atelier des éditions d idées, ce petit livre de 20 pages nous propulse dans l enfance, dans ce qu elle a de plus terrible : la solitude, et de plus merveilleux : l imagination.

Spoiler alert : la page centrale est un pop up qui se déplie en grand ! Waaah ! C'est beau ! 🎆😍

Il est visible sur le site de l auteur.e https://juliemartincabetich.wordpress.com/home/editions/

Et vous pouvez le commander par mail à julie.martin-cabetich@laposte.net

Bonne lecture ! ;-)

- Mathilde Fauve

Je lis "Tout quitter" d Anaïs Vanel et chaque page me saisit aux tripes, comme un poème, comme une vérité à méditer, comme une sagesse bien connue mais très peu vécue...

Se souvenir que la vie n est pas qu une suite d obligations et d habitudes, mais aussi la saveur des jours et les sensations de faire partie de l océan, de la nature, au même titre que les oiseaux, les dauphins, les chêne-lieges, les fougères, les bancs en bois...

Mathilde Fauve

“Ne méprisez la sensibilité de personne. La sensibilité de chacun, c'est son génie.”

— Charles Baudelaire

Harlem

“What happens to a dream deferred?       Does it dry up       like a raisin in the sun?       Or fester like a sore—       And then run?       Does it stink like rotten meat?       Or crust and sugar over—       like a syrupy sweet?       Maybe it just sags       like a heavy load. Or does it explode?”

- Langston Hugues, Harlem, 1951.

Diving into the Wreck First having read the book of myths, and loaded the camera, and checked the edge of the knife-blade, I put on the body-armor of black rubber the absurd flippers the grave and awkward mask. I am having to do this not like Cousteau with his assiduous team aboard the sun-flooded schooner but here alone. There is a ladder. The ladder is always there hanging innocently close to the side of the schooner. We know what it is for, we who have used it. Otherwise it is a piece of maritime floss some sundry equipment. I go down. Rung after rung and still the oxygen immerses me the blue light the clear atoms of our human air. I go down. My flippers cripple me, I crawl like an insect down the ladder and there is no one to tell me when the ocean will begin. First the air is blue and then it is bluer and then green and then black I am blacking out and yet my mask is powerful it pumps my blood with power the sea is another story the sea is not a question of power I have to learn alone to turn my body without force in the deep element. And now: it is easy to forget what I came for among so many who have always lived here swaying their crenellated fans between the reefs and besides you breathe differently down here. I came to explore the wreck. The words are purposes. The words are maps. I came to see the damage that was done and the treasures that prevail. I stroke the beam of my lamp slowly along the flank of something more permanent than fish or weed the thing I came for: the wreck and not the story of the wreck the thing itself and not the myth the drowned face always staring toward the sun the evidence of damage worn by salt and sway into this threadbare beauty the ribs of the disaster curving their assertion among the tentative haunters. This is the place. And I am here, the mermaid whose dark hair streams black, the merman in his armored body. We circle silently about the wreck we dive into the hold. I am she: I am he whose drowned face sleeps with open eyes whose breasts still bear the stress whose silver, copper, vermeil cargo lies obscurely inside barrels half-wedged and left to rot we are the half-destroyed instruments that once held to a course the water-eaten log the fouled compass We are, I am, you are by cowardice or courage the one who find our way back to this scene carrying a knife, a camera a book of myths in which our names do not appear.

Adrienne Rich, Poems 1971-1972, 1973. 

市人よ   Hey townspeople, 此笠うらふ  I’ll sell you my woven hat, 雪の傘   The snow umbrella

Matsuo Basho (1644-1694)

いざ行かむ  Let’s go out 雪見にころぶ  To see the snow view 所まで   Where we slip and fall

Matsuo Basho (1644-1694)

If you like you can read [this book], and a lot of other science fiction, as a thought experiment. Let's say (says Mary Shelley) that a young doctor creates a human being in his laboratory; let's say (says Philip K. Dick) that the Allies lost the Second World War; let's say this or that is such and so, and see what happens... In a story so conceived, the moral complexity proper to modern novel need not be sacrificed, nor is there any built-in dead end; thought and intuition can move freely within bounds set only by the terms of the experiment, which may be very large indeed.  The purpose of a thought experiment, as the term was used by the [physicists], is not to predict the future [...] but to describe reality, the present  world.  Science fiction is not predictive; it is descriptive. Predictions are uttered by prophets (free of charge); by clairvoyants (who usually charge a fee and are therefore more honored in their day than prophets); and by futurologists (salaried). Prediction is the business of prophets, clairvoyants, and futurologists. It is not the business of novelists. A novelist's business is lying. The weather bureau will tell you what next Tuesday will be like, and the Rand Corporation will tell you what the twenty-first century will be like. I don't recommend that you turn to the writers of fiction for such information. It's none of their business. All they're trying to do is tell you what they're like, and what you're like - what's going on- what the weather is now, today, this moment, the rain, the sunlight, look! Open your eyes; listen, listen. That is what the novelists say. But they don't tell you what you will see and hear. All they can tell you is what they have seen and heard, in their time in this world, a third of it spent in sleep and dreaming, another third of it spent in telling lies. [...]  They may use all kind of facts to support their tissue of lies.They may describe the Marshalsea Prison, which was a real place, or the battle of Borodino, which was really fought, or the process of cloning, which really takes place in laboratories, or the deterioration of a personality, which is described in real textbooks of psychology; and so on. This weight of verifiable place-event-phenomenon-behavior makes the reader forget that he is reading a pure invention, a history that never took place anywhere but in that unlocalisable region, the author's mind. In fact, while we read a novel, we are insane- bonkers. We believe in the existence of people who aren't there, we hear their voice, we watch the battle of Borodino with them, we may even become Napoleon. Sanity returns (in most cases) when the book is closed. [...]  In reading a novel, any novel, we have to know perfectly well that the whole thing is nonsense, and then, while reading, believe every word of it. Finally, when we're done with it, we may find - if it's a good novel- that we're a bit different from what we were before we read it, that we have been changed a little, as if by having met a new face, crossed a street we never crossed before. But it's very hard t say just what we learned, how we were changed.  The artist deals with what cannot be said in word.

Ursula Le Guin, Introduction,The Left Hand of Darkness, 1976. 

- So what are you doing? - Having some very nonfictional feelings about fictional characters. I mean, reading.

Somewhere on the Internet, I can’t remember where. 

We are all heroes struggling to accomplish our adventure. As human beings, we engage in a series of struggles to develop as individuals and to find our place in society. Beyond that, we long for wisdom: we want to understand the nature of the universe and the significance of our role in it.

Dave Whomsley, “Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand faces”, in Eva M. Thury and Margaret K. Devinney (ed.), Introduction to Mythology, third edition, 2013.

Il marchait sur un pied sans savoir où il poserait l’autre. Au tournant de la rue le vent balayait la poussière et sa bouche avide engouffrait tout l’espace. Il se mit à courir espérant s’envoler d’un moment à l’autre, mais au bord du ruisseau les pavés étaient humides et ses bras battants l’air n’ont pu le retenir. Dans sa chute il comprit qu’il était plus lourd que son rêve et il aima, depuis, le poids qui l’avait fait tomber.

Pierre Reverdy, “La saveur du réel”, Plupart du temps, 1915-1922.

I Was Considering How i was considering how within night’s loose sack a star’s nibbling in- fin -i- tes- i -mal- ly devours darkness the hungry star which will e -ven tu- al -ly jiggle the bait of dawn and be jerked into eternity. when over my head a shooting star Bur      s              (t                  into a stale shriek like an alarm-clock)

E. E. Cummings, 100 Selected Poems, 1959.

Le vingt-cinq septembre douze cent soixante-quatre, au petit jour, le duc d’Auge se pointa sur le sommet du donjon de son château pour y considérer, un tantinet soit peu, la situation historique. Elle était plutôt floue. Des restes du passé traînaient encore çà et là, en vrac. Sur les bords du Ru voisin, campaient deux Huns; non loin d’eux un Gaulois, Eduen peut-être, trempait audacieusement ses pieds dans l’eau courante et fraîche. Sur l’horizon se dessinaient les silhouettes molles de Romains fatigués, de Sarrasins de Corinthe, de Francs anciens, d’Alains seuls. Quelques Normands buvaient du calva. Le duc d’Auge soupira, mais n’en continua pas moins d’examiner attentivement ces phénomènes usés. Les Huns préparaient des stèques tartares, le Gaulois fumait une gitane, les Romains dessinaient des grecques, les Sarrasins fauchaient de l’avoine, les Francs cherchaient des sols et les Alains regardaient cinq Ossètes. Les Normands buvaient du calva. _ Tant d’histoire, dit le duc d’Auge au duc d’Auge, tant d’histoire pour quelques calembours, pour quelques anachronismes. Je trouve cela misérable. On n’en sortira donc jamais?

Raymond Queneau, Les fleurs bleues, 1965.

I've a pocket full of dreams to sell," said Teddy, whimsically,... "What d'ye lack? What d'ye lack? A dream of success--a dream of adventure--a dream of the sea--a dream of the woodland--any kind of a dream you want at reasonable prices, including one or two unique little nightmares. What will you give me for a dream?

Lucy Maud Montgomery, Emily Climbs, 1925. 

i will wade out                        till my thighs are steeped in burning flowers I will take the sun in my mouth and leap into the ripe air                                       Alive                                                 with closed eyes to dash against darkness                                       in the sleeping curves of my body Shall enter fingers of smooth mastery with chasteness of sea-girls                                            Will i complete the mystery                                            of my flesh I will rise               After a thousand years lipping flowers             And set my teeth in the silver of the moon

E. E. Cummings, Tulips and Chimneys, 1923. 

Debout, Gabriel médita puis prononça ces mots: _ L'être ou le néant, voilà le problème. Monter, descendre, aller, venir, tant fait l'homme qu'à la fin il disparaît. Un taxi l'emmène, un métro l'emporte, la tour n'y prend garde, ni le Panthéon. Paris n'est qu'un songe, Gabriel n'est qu'un rêve (charmant), Zazie le songe d'un rêve (ou d'un cauchemar) et toute cette histoire le songe d'un songe, le rêve d'un rêve, à peine plus qu'un délire tapé à la machine par un romancier idiot (oh! Pardon). Là-bas, plus loin – un peu plus loin – que la place de la République, les tombes s'entassent de Parisiens qui furent, qui montèrent, qui descendirent des escaliers, allèrent et vinrent dans les rues et tant firent qu'à la fin ils disparurent. (...) Mais que vois-je par-dessus les citrons empoilés des bonnes gens qui m’entourent ?

Raymond Queneau, Zazie dans le métro, 1959. 

You can’t love me if you don’t love yourself,

you’re gone now but I’ll never forget,

you are and always will be my biggest regret

Why do I find softness in your thorns, beauty in your flaws ? Why am I so empty after you're gone ?

You painted my world in black and blue,

Bruised by the words from loving you,

My heart ached for lighter hues,

But your colors were all I knew…

You tore every good thing apart,

until only you were left inside my empty heart

We couldn’t heal together so we must suffer apart

Time can’t heal me from you, everyday I replay a memory or two,

it may never come true but all I wish for is you

I loved the Colors in your eyes, the softness of your mouth, the beauty within your mind and the evil you tried to hide

In English, Paulo Coelho said that

"So I love you because the entire universe conspired to help me find you "

but in hindi Shahrukh khan says

"Agar kisi cheez ko shiddhat se chaaho to puri kaaynat use tumse milane ki koshish me lag jaati hai"

-Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena

It is not, nor it cannot come to good.

Ciò che ero solito amare, non amo più; mento: lo amo, ma meno; ecco, ho mentito di nuovo: lo amo, ma con più vergogna, con più tristezza; finalmente ho detto la verità. È proprio così: amo, ma ciò che amerei non amare, ciò che vorrei odiare; amo tuttavia, ma contro voglia, nella costrizione, nel pianto, nella sofferenza. In me faccio triste esperienza di quel verso di un famosissimo poeta : 'Ti odierò, se posso; se no, t'amerò contro voglia'.

❤️‍🩹

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