Some days seem to revolve around a certain topic. Although many things might have come up, there is this one insistence that doesn’t escape even the most feeble mind. Today this concerned writing.
Writing. Also known as vomiting, editing, pausing, spitting it out, a bridging of the void. It still seems weird to me that some refer to people who write as writers – as if not everyone is involved in the translation of reality into the fantastic state of language, before forgetting everything and starting from scratch once more.
The style of what one writes should reflect what is being said. I always think of Ovid and his metamorphisms that I once had to translate from the Latin. The teacher forced me to undo, to translate this beautiful Latin rhythm, in which the human turned into the frog, the quam qua quem qua etc turned into a song. The part of me that is a poet still has this secret desire to write a poem like that, in which you can hear the river flow, unrelated to what is signified by the same words.
I guess it is at this moment also relevant to mention I’ll be leaving to go to Venice, just for one day, to visit that city that cannot be separated from language. Thomas Mann, Hemingway, Goethe, Proust. If I do not return, please look for me in the Inferno, as I’ll be going to the Arsenale…
“In the 21st canto of the Inferno, Dante describes Venice’s Arsenale, at the time the greatest “industrial complex” in the world: “Quale ne l’arzanà dei viniziani, bolle d’inverno la tenace pece…” (As in the Arsenal of the Venetians, In wintertime they boil the viscous pitch).” http://www.venicethefuture.com/schede/uk/265?aliusid=265