At night, Bataille and echoes of the book to come. “The object of my desire was illusion first of all.”

the impossible and other excesses

tea and oranges and the memory of what has not happened

“The night is the night.” Paul Celan; tr. Michael Hamburger

On Paul Celan’s birthday, a memory of my own—the red poppies of childhood years.

“Paul, your birthday is near. I cannot make the post be exact to the day and the hour, but we can be. It is so quiet here. Half an hour has passed since the first sentence, and last autumn is forcing its way into this autumn.” Ingeborg Bachmann to Paul Celan; tr. Wieland Hoban

Heidegger’s What is Metaphysics as a poem in the private journals of Edvard Munch

In November, in the cold and in the evening, although I smell like figs and sea salt and the Island of Hydra, I read Rilke aloud and say, “I am dark; I am forest.” I read Rilke aloud and say, “Often when I imagine you, your wholeness cascades into many shapes.”

How magical to be a voice in a far away forest on the day ghosts walk the earth… Clare’s project is very dear to me and I am honored to be a part of it.

As Time pours from the sky, I borrow words from Hélène Cixous and say “I return to writing around this missing instant, I play with the trace as Mahler’s Earth begins again to begin again.”

This November, I am spending most of my time with Jan Patočka. “We are not only who we are [when] engaged in this or that activity,” he writes, “but ephemeral humans living in the face of the universe, in relation to its eternity, and therefore sub specie aeterni alone.”

As good a day as any for a brief return. Rain pours endlessly, night exhales blue smoke. We mourn Proust and trace how he has marked us. Commemorations and silent anniversaries, and all around, the world suspended in a melancholic dream of remembered time.

Some time away. To listen to the quieter parts of myself. To work on the book. To be (with) wind and water.

October goes, leaving the heaviness of the world in its place. You think you’ve known grief—until you have to pick up a shovel and mend your loved one’s sunken grave.

“Midnight much worry in a little room— strike a match and time is burning toward you.” Vigil, Susan Stewart

Hey, don’t forget about our new journal, draught. We’ve another couple of great pieces of writing coming in a few weeks, and something else to look forward to, too. Also. As well.

A Celanian night—when only the void stood between us.

Narcissus receiving the revelation of his identity. “Then Narcissus no longer says: I love myself as I am; he says: I am the way I love myself.”

at night and in the fire, the blue that flees the fingers

“If it’s not me, it’s you, who are me, I say to myself. How you’re going to miss me! I mean: how I’m going to miss you. That is: how you miss me. That is: how we miss each other. I’m declining mourning and nostalgia.” In October 1991, Stigmata, Hélène Cixous; tr. Keith Cohen

“All the time, a new past to recall.” Of Darkness, Josefine Klougart; tr. Martin Aitken

Hélène Cixous (tr. Peggy Kamuf)

Not quite four in the morning, not quite the end of December—Cohen’s Famous Blue Raincoat warms me nonetheless.

At midnight, beneath the thin veil of an endless cold, I think of the death of the letter.

Rilke to Lou Andreas-Salomé Chateau de Muzot s/Sierre (Valais)
Last day of October, 1925 “My dear Lou… If only I had called out long ago.” theamericanreader.com/31-october-1...

“Oh, only when my face is streaming toward you does it cease being on exhibit, becomes one with yours and darkly goes on and on into your impregnable heart…” —To Lou Andreas-Salomé, Rilke; tr. Franz Wright

As Jabès says: “exchanging the void of writing for writing the void.”

At night, voiceless and feverish, yet somehow more present for myself than ever. There is a strange clarity in exhaustion. That feeling of “cosmic exhaustion, when the bones seem to have embedded themselves into eternity” that Cioran describes.

“And the room was full of cold night all the way into the corners” (Rilke)

Now available: The Folded Clock, text and images by Gerhard Rühm, trans. by @wordkunst.bsky.social who also translated Rühm's Cake & Prostheses for us last year. Both incorporate images with the text and lexical play with roots in Dada. More info here: www.twistedspoon.com/folded-clock...

The twelfth issue of Socrates on the Beach is live. Thank you to the authors and the translator and those who helped with the issue. socratesonthebeach.com

sunday in the here and now

“One day I will write a book composed solely of the last pages of my notebooks. It will be like the last looks of Argos, the one who passes into immortality looking into the eyes of the beloved.”

JONATHAN MARTIN launches in Prague next weekend

Out Now: Some Essays by Heinrich von Kleist (trans. @unpaginated.bsky.social) Published in rapid succession during the last year of Kleist's life, these brief but challenging essays present the finest distillation of his philosophical thought: paradiseeditions.net/products/som...

In the candlelight of a Bachelardian dream, I offer these fragments to you as one might offer a confession: a letter to the Other—lover, double, sea, or time itself. For the newest issue of Socrates on the Beach and forthcoming with Erratum Press. socratesonthebeach.com/christina-an...

“One does not philosophize in quitting the human situation,” writes Merleau-Ponty. “It is necessary rather to plunge into it.”

Roberto Calasso: “the sea is the continuum... its emissary on earth is the snake.” [Preparing myself for a rereading of David Farrell Krell’s The Sea: A Philosophical Encounter]

Let ourselves be cradled, says Hölderlin.

In the chaos of an ordinary Thursday, a moment with my favorite Bataille. The Impossible. Translated by Robert Hurley.

“We perceive, record, and live the passing of time only during white nights,” writes Cioran. “Time itself, time reduced to its essence, which is flow, without the discontinuity of moments.”

He would have loved this

At night and in this ruin, with Merleau-Ponty’s language as the unfolding of the body, and the return of a small revelation: to be alive is to continue.

Portfolio: On Bookmarks and Other Ruins @dreamsofbeing.bsky.social's notes-on-bookmarks are in complete & total dialogue with everything that draught stands for: the provisional, the note, the process, the engagement. We're honoured to publish with a new essay www.draughtjournal.com/article/on-b...

Isabella Streffen, FABULAE

“Let the word die out In this low room where you return to me” —Yves Bonnefoy