05/02/2010

In medio vitium

Oh, earthly life! The diaphanous world and the world of darkness inhaling and exhaling unceasingly, floating between the twin seductions of too much or too little shadow, the tides of the transient were held inexorably in check between the two poles where time ceased to exist, between the timelessness of the gods and the timelessness of the beast—, oh, in every vein of the earth-bound, in everything springing from the earth the night sprang upward, constantly changed to awakeness and awareness both within and without, shadowily projecting the formless into form, and floating between non-being and being, posed in this equilibrium, the world came to be light and shadow, came to be perceptible in its light-and-shadowhood. Ringing forever in the soul, softly at times, loudly at others yet never silenced, the bell-tone of night, the bell-tone of the herds sounded on, forever, too, the lion-roar of day sounded on, shattering in its light and revelation, the golden storm that engulfed the creaturely—, oh, human perception not yet become knowledge, not yet instinct, rising from the humus of existence, from the seed of sentience, rising out of the wisdom of the mothers, ascending into the deadly clarity of utter-light, of utter-life, ascending to the burning knowledge of the father, ascending to cool heights, oh human knowledge, unrooted, eternally in motion, neither in the depths nor on the heights but hovering forever over the starry threshold between night and day, a sigh and a breath in the interrealm of starry dusk, hovering between the lie of the night-held herds and the death of light-flooded identification with Apollo, between silence and the word, the word that always returns into silence.

Hermann Broch, A Morte de Vergílio, traduzido por Jean Starr Untermeyer (no dia em que a tradução portuguesa não fique 50% mais por um de dois volumes do que a inglesa fica pelo livro completo, então lerei a da Relógio d'Água. Obrigado pela atenção.[/rant])

2 comentários:

  1. No dia em que sair uma nova edição da Relógio d'Água devidamente revista eu ofereço-te a minha.

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  2. é por essas e outras que eu me recuso a ler traduções portuguesas. quando se pode comprar por metade ou 1/3 do preço em inglês...

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