from Douglas Moore’s Art of Quotation
“One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.”
-Plato, philosopher, Greek
Month: May 2018
“Never was there, perhaps, more hollowness at heart than at present, and here in the United States”
from Douglas Moore’s Art of Quotation
“Never was there, perhaps, more hollowness at heart than at present, and here in the United States”
– Walt Whitman, poet, writer
Paulo Freire quote 2
Liberating education consists in acts of cognition, not transferrals of information.
translated by Myra Bergman Ramos
Paulo Freire quote
As we attempt to analyze dialogue as a human phenomenon, we discover something which is the essence of dialogue itself: the word. But the word is more than just an instrument which makes dialogue possible; accordingly, we must seek its constitutive elements. Within the word we find two dimensions, reflection and action, in such radical interaction that if one is sacrificed–even in part–the other immediately suffers. There is no true word that is not at the same time a praxis. Thus, to speak a true word is to transform the world.
translated by Myra Bergman Ramos
Jose Saramago on Carlos Fuentes
Now for a confession. Personally I am not easily intimidated, quite the contrary, but my first encounters with Carlos Fuentes, which of course were always polite, as one would have expected of two well-brought-up people, were not easy, not through any fault of his but because of a kind of resistance on my part to accepting naturally something which in Carlos Fuentes is extremely natural–that is, his style of dress. We all know that Fuentes dresses well, with elegance and good taste, his shirt never wrinkled, but for some mysterious reason I thought that a writer, especially one from that part of the world, should not dress in that way. My mistake. Carlos Fuentes managed to make the greatest critical demands and the greatest ethical rigor–both of which he has–compatible with a well-chosen tie. Believe me, that’s no small thing.
translated by Amanda Hopkinson & Daniel Hahn
Jose Saramago’s response to the question of his role as a blogger on November 25, 2008 at a press conference in Brazil.
Could it be, to put it more clearly, that it’s here that we all most closely resemble one another? Is this the closest thing we have to citizen power? Are we more companionable when we write on the internet? I have no answers; I’m merely stating the questions. And I enjoy writing here now. I don’t know whether it is more democratic, I only know that I feel the same as the young man with the wild hair and the round-rimmed glasses, in his early twenties, who was asking me the questions. For a blog, no doubt.
translated by Amanda Hopkinson & Daniel Hahn
anti-war poem 2 by Bertolt Brecht from War Primer
Behold us here, antagonists. See how
Each angry look is like a poisoned dagger.
A world of difference lies between us now.
The quarrel is: whose share’s to be the bigger.
translated by John Willet
for Memorial Day: Northern Campaign by Li I
After Tien-shan’s snows, cold desert wind.
Flute sounds all about, the going hard.
Three hundred thousand men, among these rocks,
this once, as one, together turn: gaze on the moon.
translated by J.P. Seaton
“My favorite thing is to go where I’ve never been”
from Douglas Moore’s Art of Quotation
“My favorite thing is to go where I’ve never been”
Diane Arbu, photographer
a lesson to learn
there’s something about
an animal at rest
that has no hint
of the future
that says
just now
just here
just enough
