My entire life seems to have disappeared in a movement of seeking that is perhaps the experience of writing, the responsibility for which I try to bear, poorly but absolutely.Maurice Blanchot, letter to Elio Vittorini, 1963.
The 'scandal' and the importance of the [Berlin] wall is that, in the concrete oppression that it embodies, it is essentially abstract and that it thus reminds us – we who forget this constantly – that abstraction is not simply a faulty mode of thought or an apparently impoverished form of language but rather our world, the one we live and think in on a daily basis."Berlin", 1964.
Both in Political Writings (1953-1993).
Walking recently on Hadrian's Wall I was struck by the vast amount of open space, the land dimming into Scotland and Northumberland, the huge skies, the absence of community, aside from the odd sheep, farmhouse and pub, and a huddle of trees here and there. And yet the two sides were still very different somehow, but only in the mind.
ReplyDeleteAn odd coincidence with this post. It was on October 3rd 1983 that I saw Pink Floyd's film The Wall in a Portsmouth cinema and today, exactly 27 years later, I post a quotation about another wall using a title from a song from the LP. Schpooky.
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