I feel my cheeks are burning as I write this. I feel something
similar to what a woman probably feels when for the first time she
senses within herself the pulse of a tiny, blind, human being. It
is I, and at the same time it is not I. And for many long months it
will be necessary to feed it with my life, with my blood, and then
with a pain at my heart, to tear it from myself and lay it at the
feet of the United State.
Yet I am ready, as everyone, or nearly everyone of us, is. I am
ready.
RECORD TWO
Ballet
Square Harmony
X
Spring. From behind the Green Wall from some unknown plains the
wind brings to us the yellow honeyed pollen of flowers. One's lips
are dry from this sweet dust. Every moment one passes one's tongue
over them. Probably, all women whom I meet in the street (and men
certainly also), have today sweet lips. This disturbs somewhat my
logical thinking. But the sky! The sky is blue. Its limpidness is
not marred by a single cloud. (How primitive was the taste of the
ancients, since their poets were always inspired by these senseless,
formless, stupidly rushing accumulations of steam!) I love, I am
sure it will not be an error if I say we love, only such a sky--a
sterile, faultless sky. On such days the whole universe seems to be
moulded of the same eternal glass, like the Green Wall, and like all
our buildings. On such days one sees into the very blue depth of
things. One sees their wonderful equations, hitherto unknown. One
sees them in everything, even in the most ordinary everyday things.
Here is an example: this morning I was on the dock where the
_Integral_ is being built, and I saw the lathes; blindly, with
abandon, the balls of the regulators were rotating; the cranks
were swinging from side to side with a glimmer; the working-beam
proudly swung its shoulder; and the mechanical chisels were dancing
to the melody of an unheard Tarantella. I suddenly perceived all
the music, all the beauty, of this colossal, of this mechanical
ballet, illumined by light blue rays of sunshine. Then the thought
came: why beautiful? Why is a dance beautiful? Answer: because it
is an _unfree_ movement. Because the deep meaning of the dance
is contained in its absolute, ecstatic submission, in the ideal
_non-freedom_. If it is true that our ancestors would abandon
themselves in dancing at the most inspired moments of their lives
(religious mysteries, military parades) then it means only one
thing: the instinct of non-freedom has been characteristic of human
nature from ancient times, and we in our life of today, we are only
consciously--
I was interrupted. The switchboard clicked. I raised my eyes,--O-90,
of course! In half a minute she herself will be here to take me for
the walk.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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