I like quoting: it’s quite evident, since half of the posts on this journal are about quotes, and, well, almost everything I write revolves around a quote or is structured on various quotes, more or less explicitly. Nullum est iam dictum quod non dictum sit prius, Terentius wrote about 2000 years ago. I believe it true and I quite like it. Sometimes I feel that my life resembles a bad novel written by someone else, full of quoting and quotes and old books, a bit of self-indulgence and the declared imitator’s irony – and it can be recherché as well as sad or just funny, and it’s a common way of perceiving your own life, I think. Do you ever weave your own everyday world setting there (in a blank space while you are walking or just you can’t concentrate on your work, or something like that) a literary evocation, the memory of a loved quote, as a gem, and it happens to brighten you day? I often do.
This is a post for quoting: leave me a quote (two, three, how many you want!), I’ll do the same – truth to be told, this is a way to prevent an invasion of my own quoting-posts!
I’d love to read your quotes!
Ήλθε για να διαβάσει. Είν’ ανοιχτά
δυο, τρία βιβλία• ιστορικοί και ποιηταί.
Μα μόλις διάβασε δέκα λεπτά,
και τα παραίτησε. Στον καναπέ
μισοκοιμάται. Aνήκει πλήρως στα βιβλία —
αλλ’ είναι είκοσι τριώ ετών, κ’ είν’ έμορφος πολύ•
και σήμερα το απόγευμα πέρασ’ ο έρως
στην ιδεώδη σάρκα του, στα χείλη.
Στη σάρκα του που είναι όλο καλλονή
η θέρμη πέρασεν η ερωτική•
χωρίς αστείαν αιδώ για την μορφή της απολαύσεως .....
He had come there to read. Two or three books lie open,
books by historians, by poets.
But he read for barely ten minutes,
then gave it up, falling half asleep on the sofa.
He’s completely devoted to books—
but he’s twenty-three, and very good-looking;
and this afternoon Eros entered
his ideal flesh, his lips.
An erotic warmth entered
his completely lovely flesh—
with no ridiculous shame about the form the pleasure took....
(translated by Edmund Keeley/Philip Sherrard)
C. P. Cavafy