But still I wait for you, I swear;My heart and soul keep vigil thereOn the bridge of Rendezvous.And if you ever come that wayAgain I won’t begrudge my stay. — Guillaume Apollinaire, from “Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks to the Sultan of Constantinople,” Alcools (Doubleday, 1965)
‘Use me’: a statement of vertiginous simplicity, it is not mystical, but materialist. Let me be your surface and your tissues, you may be my orifices and my palms and my membranes, we could lose ourselves, leave the power and the squalid justification of the dialectic of redemption, we will be dead. — Jean-Francois Lyotard,… Continue reading Jean-Francois Lyotard
Compared to the person I love, the universe seems poor and empty. This universe isn’t ‘risked’ because it’s not ‘perishable.’ But the beloved is the ‘beloved’ for only a single person. Carnal love, because not ‘sheltered from thieves’ or vicissitudes, is greater than divine love. It risks me and the one I love. God by… Continue reading Georges Bataille
I meet you. I remember you. Who are you? You’re destroying me. You’re good for me. How could I know this city was tailor-made for love? How could I know you fit my body like a glove? I like you. How unlikely. I like you. How slow all of a sudden. How sweet. You cannot… Continue reading Marguerite Duras
The heart is the organ of desire (the heart swells, weakens, etc., like the sexual organs), as it is held, enchanted, within the domain of the Image-repertoire. What will the world, what will the other do with my desire? That is the anxiety in which are gathered all the hearts movements, all the hearts “problems”.… Continue reading Roland Barthes
Deep hearts, sage minds, take life as God has made it; it is a long trial, an incomprehensible preparation for an unknown destiny. This destiny, the true one, begins for a man with the first step inside the tomb. Then something appears to him, and he begins to distinguish the definitive. The definitive, meditate upon… Continue reading Victor Hugo
And the too much of my speaking:heaped up round the littlecrystal dressed in the style of your silence. — Paul Celan, from “Below,” Selected Poems. (Penguin Books, Limited [UK] 06/28/199)
There are days when solitude is a heady wine that intoxicates you with freedom, others when it is a bitter tonic, and still others when it is a poison that makes you beat your head against the wall. ― Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette, Oeuvres complètes en seize volumes. (Flammarion November 19, 1992) Originally published April 18th 1974.
The years I have squandered in puerile excitement, in going hither and thither, in seeking to force nature and time, I ought to have spent in solitude and meditation, in endeavoring to make myself worthy of being loved. ― Théophile Gautier, Mademoiselle de Maupin. (Penguin Books July 25th 2006) Originally published 1835)
You had carved the infallible signsOf my enchantmentWith a dagger whose coral handle forks into infinitySo that your blood and mineWould become one — André Breton, from “It Was Going on Five in the Morning,” Andre Breton: Selections. (University of California Press; 1st edition October 1, 2003)
