Thank you Susan.
"There is, however, a place reserved for the
resurrections of the self, even when time disperses it in ever widening waves.
That is the landscape. As landscape all events surround us, for we, the time of
things, know no times. Nothing but the leaning of the trees, the horizon, the
silhouetted mountain ridges, which suddenly awake full of meaning because they
have placed us in their midst. The landscape transports us into their midst, the
trembling treetops assail us with questions, the valleys envelop us with mist,
incomprehensible houses oppress us with their shapes. We, their midpoint,
impinge on them. But from all the time when we stand there quivering, one
question remains: Are we Time? Arrogance tempts us to answer yes -- and then the
landscape would vanish. We would be citizens. But the spell of the book bids us
to be silent. The only answer is that we set out on a path. As we advance, the
same surroundings sanctify us. Knowing no answers but forming the center, we
define things with the movement of our bodies. By drawing nigh and distancing
ourselves once again on our wanderings, we single out trees and fields from
their like and flood them with the time of our existence. We give firm
definition to fields and mountains in their arbitrariness: they are our past
existence -- that was the prophecy of childhood. We are their future. Naked in
this futurity, the landscape welcomes us, the grownups. Exposed, it responds to
the shudder of temporality with which we assault the landscape. Here we wake up
and partake of the morning repast of youth. Things perceive us; their gaze
propels us into the future, since we do not respond to them but instead step
among them. Around us is the landscape where we rejected their appeal.
Spirituality's thousand cries of glee storm around the landscape -- so with a
smile the diary sends a single thought in their direction. Permeated by time,
the landscape breathes before us, deeply stirred. We are safe in each other's
care, the landscape and I. We plunge from nakedness to nakedness. Gathered
together, we come to ourselves."
-Walter
Benjamin, from "The Metaphysics of Youth", Part II.
Hat tip to Sontag for pointing me in Benjamin's
direction.
Posted: Wednesday - August 02, 2006 at 10:20 PM
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