/lit/ - Literature

>>3767304
I have no conscience because I
always chew my pencil. Can we say
white paper
with black lines on it
is like a human body? This question
not to be decided by pointing
at a tree nor yet by a description
of simple pleasures.


Smell of retrieval. Led to expect the wrong
answer. An arsenal without purpose
but why yes please.
There is no touching the black box.
The tree not pointed at lives
in your bringing up the subject
and leaves space for need, falling.

>>3692613

"Should posteriety care to know..."

well, gents, i'm not gonna lie: I lost it at this. to feel a man 2000 years before you reach out across a gulf you find unimaginably opaque: for someone to say: "here is this man's life, from beginning to finish--remember it"--well, my god, is there anything else literature can accomplish? i said something similar in my post above on woolf, but it was one of those rare moment where you feel yourself within the great economy of things as a member not decoupled from the voices of the past, but deeply intertwined at a nearly animal level.

what vision compells a man not to write for his time, but to consciously write for all of posterity?

it reminded me of the first line and dedication fo Herodotus, too, who i think is worth repeating:

"Herodotus of Halicarnassus here presents his research so that human events do not fade with time. May the great and wonderful deeds--some brought forth by the Hellenes, others by the barbarians--not go unsung; as well as the causes that led them to make war on each other."

it should never be forgotten that the first history ever written--and indeed to origin of history as a practice--was intended to raise the burden of war from the shoulders of man

i swear to god, i see shit today, i read shit today, and compared to this--which reaches across all of history to whisper the end of conflict--i just can't even comment.

mighty men who witnessed mighty things--and sought to record them such that man could better himself as a species. i swear to god this blows my mind every time i truly try to understand it.

>>2471360

forgot to attach picture, but this just perfectly fits with several of the stories from 'The Prussian Officer and Other Stories'.