“Compassion goes beyond recognition, beyond the concept, beyond representation. I am unable to represent pain to myself except by undergoing it. I do not recognize the suffering other unless I feel compassion [compassione] for him. But through this action of putting myself in his place via love, by feeling pity [di compatire], I proceed to construct the world. It is not the divinity, then, not a meaning that descends from above, but suffering and pain, which come from below, that construct the very being of the world. Spinoza also operates on this terrain and from this perspective. The universal and constitutive function of suffering [patire] can be found where passion becomes compassion, and sadness turns into the joy of communion with the other. The ontology of the community is uncovered through suffering together—a suffering that is, therefore, torn from passivity and becomes constructive. It becomes ethical.”
— Antonio Negri, The Labor of Job, The Biblical Text as a Parable of Human Labor
— Antonio Negri, The Labor of Job, The Biblical Text as a Parable of Human Labor
❤5
“Where does this black sun come from? Out of what eerie galaxy do its invisible, lethargic rays reach me, pinning me down to the ground, to my bed, compelling me to silence, to renunciation?”
— Julia Kristeva, Black Sun: Depression and Melancholia
— Julia Kristeva, Black Sun: Depression and Melancholia
❤5
“Absent from other people’s meaning, alien, accidental with respect to naive happiness, I owe a supreme, metaphysical lucidity to my depression. On the frontiers of life and death, occasionally I have the arrogant feeling of being witness to the meaninglessness of Being, of revealing the absurdity of bonds and beings.
My pain is the hidden side of my philosophy, its mute sister. In the same way Montaigne’s statement “To philosophize is to learn how to die” is inconceivable without the melancholy combination of sorrow and hatred — which came to a head in Heidegger’s care and the disclosure of our “being-for-death.” without a bent for melancholia there is no psyche, only a transition to action or play.”
— Julia Kristeva, Black Sun: Depression and Melancholia
My pain is the hidden side of my philosophy, its mute sister. In the same way Montaigne’s statement “To philosophize is to learn how to die” is inconceivable without the melancholy combination of sorrow and hatred — which came to a head in Heidegger’s care and the disclosure of our “being-for-death.” without a bent for melancholia there is no psyche, only a transition to action or play.”
— Julia Kristeva, Black Sun: Depression and Melancholia
❤5
Paolo Monti
Photograph of Michelangelo's Rondanini Pietà 1564, installed at Castello Sforzesco in Milan
Civico Archivio Fotografico, Milano
c. 1956
[x]
Photograph of Michelangelo's Rondanini Pietà 1564, installed at Castello Sforzesco in Milan
Civico Archivio Fotografico, Milano
c. 1956
[x]
❤6
The First Poem
Chased into silver,
Side by side:
The images.
To have them tell you …
A many-crested roof,
To cut the wind and the birds as they pass.
North
go the snow, the birds and the grass
(not much industry, there).
An aerial
arabesque or ear,
Strung in the wind.
Greetings,
Goodbye.
Tree tree tree and tree
This is the song:
No time, no time to see the green before it bursts open.
Again it was spring,
The bird tried to sing, but its voice was confusion,
confusion:
Helpless,
Grass.
And there was a house,
And in it, a man, a woman, a child and an old woman,
Nine holes
in the soul.
Paavo Haavikko, The First Poem, from Selected Poems (Penguin modern European poets) : Paavo Haavikko, Tomas Tranströmer, trans. Anselm Hollo
Chased into silver,
Side by side:
The images.
To have them tell you …
A many-crested roof,
To cut the wind and the birds as they pass.
North
go the snow, the birds and the grass
(not much industry, there).
An aerial
arabesque or ear,
Strung in the wind.
Greetings,
Goodbye.
Tree tree tree and tree
This is the song:
No time, no time to see the green before it bursts open.
Again it was spring,
The bird tried to sing, but its voice was confusion,
confusion:
Helpless,
Grass.
And there was a house,
And in it, a man, a woman, a child and an old woman,
Nine holes
in the soul.
Paavo Haavikko, The First Poem, from Selected Poems (Penguin modern European poets) : Paavo Haavikko, Tomas Tranströmer, trans. Anselm Hollo
❤7