Why is love beyond all measure of other human possibilities so rich and such a sweet burden for the one who has been struck by it? Because we change ourselves into that which we love, and yet remain ourselves. Then we would like to thank the beloved, but find nothing that would do it adequately. We can only be thankful to ourselves. Love transforms gratitude into faithfulness to ourselves and into an unconditional faith in the Other. Thus love steadily expands its most intimate secret. Closeness here is existence in the greatest distance from the other- the distance that allows nothing to dissolve - but rather presents the “thou” in the transparent, but “incomprehensible” revelation of the “just there”. That the presence of the other breaks into our own life - this is what no feeling can fully encompass. Human fate gives itself to human fate, and it is the task of pure love to keep this self-surrender as vital as on the first day.
- Martin Heidegger
- Martin Heidegger
According to another, more luminous tradition, the secret name is not so much the cipher of the thing’s subservience to the magus’s speech as, rather, the monogram that sanctions its liberation from language. The secret name was the name by which the creature was called in Eden. When it is pronounced, every manifest name – the entire Babel of names – is shattered.
That is why, according to this doctrine, magic is a call to happiness. The secret name is the gesture that restores the creature to the unexpressed. In the final instance, magic is not a knowledge of names but a gesture, a breaking free from the name. That is why a child is never more content than when he invents a secret language. His sadness comes less from ignorance of magic names than from his own inability to free himself from the name that has been imposed on him. No sooner does he succeed, no sooner does he invent a new name, than he holds in his hands the laissez-passer that grants him happiness.
To have a name is to be guilty. And justice, like magic, is nameless. Happy, and without a name, the creature knocks at the gates of the land of the magi, who speak in gestures alone.
- Giorgio Agamben, Magic and Happiness (Profanations, 2005)
That is why, according to this doctrine, magic is a call to happiness. The secret name is the gesture that restores the creature to the unexpressed. In the final instance, magic is not a knowledge of names but a gesture, a breaking free from the name. That is why a child is never more content than when he invents a secret language. His sadness comes less from ignorance of magic names than from his own inability to free himself from the name that has been imposed on him. No sooner does he succeed, no sooner does he invent a new name, than he holds in his hands the laissez-passer that grants him happiness.
To have a name is to be guilty. And justice, like magic, is nameless. Happy, and without a name, the creature knocks at the gates of the land of the magi, who speak in gestures alone.
- Giorgio Agamben, Magic and Happiness (Profanations, 2005)
Moscow-based visual artist Danila Tkachenko has developed a project researching the boundaries of historical memories in Russian Orthodox churches. “Monuments” involved the sensitive appropriation of the abandoned rural churches, erecting lightweight structures in abstract modernist shapes
6 Romances, Op. 6: None But The Lonely Heart, Op. 6 No. 6
Pyotr Il'yich Tchaikovsky
None but the lonely heart
knows what I suffer!
Alone and parted
from all joy,
I see the firmament
in that direction.
Alas, who loves and knows me
is far away.
I'm dizzy, it burns
my entrails.
None but the lonely heart
knows what I suffer.
knows what I suffer!
Alone and parted
from all joy,
I see the firmament
in that direction.
Alas, who loves and knows me
is far away.
I'm dizzy, it burns
my entrails.
None but the lonely heart
knows what I suffer.