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"To free one's brothers from the yoke is an aim worthy of both death and life. May God grant you outward success—and inner peace."
—Leo Tolstoy
Anna Karenina
(As translated from the Russian by Rosamund Bartlett)
"The crook, the destitute live it
The prostitutes, the wretched
The reverend and the firefighter
The president, the cobbler
And the teachers and the butcher
The citizen and the foreigner
And even the judge and the charlatan
The nurse, the helmsman
The santero, the Marxist
The wine producer and the masochist
Oh, what could it be?"
—Willie Colón
(As translated from the Spanish by Reginald_Bloodmark)[1]
“All along the watchtower
Princes kept the view
While all the women came and went
Barefoot servants, too
Well, uh, outside the cold distance
A wildcat did growl
Two riders were approaching
And the wind began to howl”
—Boby Dylan[2]
"Where was your star?
Was it far, was it far
When did we leave?
We believed, we believed, we believed
In heat and rain
With the whips and chains
To see him fly
So many died
We built a tower of stone
With our flesh and bone
To see him fly
But why
In all the rain
With all the chains
Did so many die
Just to see him fly"
—Ritchie Blackmore and Ronnie James Dio[3]
"What we like to think of ourselves and what we really are rarely have much in common."
—Stephen King
The Dark Tower II: The Drawing of the Three[4]
“He is the Dostoevskian exceptional being, beyond human judgement. He is also a helpless victim who cannot be held responsible for anything. He is unhappy. He is to be pitied. He is doing his best. None of this is his fault. Nothing has ever been; is ever; will ever be, his fault. ‘It is unbelievable how fate hounds me.’ ”
—Lucy Hughes-Hallett
The Pike: Gabriele d’Annunzio: Poet, Seducer, and Preacher of War[5]
"We are so afraid of the idea of having to die… that we always try to find excuses for the dead, as if we were asking beforehand to be excused when it is our turn…"
—José Saramago
Blindness
(As translated from the Portuguese by Giovanni Pontiero)[6]
"Bishop's kings spin judgment's blade
Scratch 'faith' on nameless graves
Harvest hags hoard ash and sand
Rack rope and chain for slaves
Who fireside fear fermented words
Then rear to spoil the feast
Whilst in the aisle the mad man smiles
To him it matters least"
—Peter Sinfield[7]
"I can't tell you how
I knew—but I did know I had crossed
The border. Everything I loved was lost
But no aorta could report regret.
A sun of rubber was convulsed and set;
And blood-black nothingness began to spin,
A system of cells interlinked within
Cells interlinked within cells interlinked
Within one stem. And dreadfully distinct
Against the dark, a tall white fountain played."
—Vladimir Nabokov
Pale Fire[8]
"Freeing yourself was one thing, claiming ownership of that freed self was another."
Toni Morrison
Beloved[9]
"I was going through the hardest thing, also the greatest thing, for any human being to do; to accept that which is already within you, and around you."
—Malcolm X
The Autobiography of Malcolm X: As Told to Alex Haley
"The shared past is precious, not for itself, but because it is the basis of consciousness, of knowing, of being."
—Cedric J. Robinson
Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition
"Amidst the mists and fiercest frosts,
With barest wrists, and stoutest boasts,
He thrusts his fists against the posts,
And still insists he sees the ghosts."
—Author unidentified, seemingly lost to time[10]
“Keeping the motion in the race of life
Feel no emotion, though it cuts deep as a knife
Walking away from the shadows of the past
Keeping the motion, won’t ever look back.
Walking in a frantic pace without a trace
His hope running away from his own face.
Glasses mirror his reflection on the window
He only sees a blur of his own shadow.”
—Monday Michiru[11]
"We are all shadowy presences in our own books. We're there and not there, visible and invisible; our fingers leave faint but indelible prints. Our temperament, our character, our sensibility all become part of the story we’re telling."
—James Atlas
The Shadow in the Garden: A Biographer's Tale[12]
"Doorways offer passage but windows offer vision. Here at last is a chance to behold something beyond the interminable pattern of wall, room, and door; a chance to reach a place of perspective and perhaps make some sense of the whole. An eye on the wind."
—Mark Z. Danielewski
House of Leaves[13]
"No. It's a mystery. A man's at odds to know his mind cause his mind is aught he has to know it with. He can know his heart, but he don't want to. Rightly so. Best not to look in there. It aint the heart of a creature that is bound in the way that God has set for it. You can find meanness in the least of creatures, but when God made man the devil was at his elbow. A creature that can do anything. Make a machine. And a machine to make the machine. And evil that can run itself a thousand years, no need to tend it. You believe that?"
—Cormac McCarthy
Blood Meridian[14]
[1] From his salsa cover “Oh, Qué Será” which covers “O Que Será” by Brazilian artist Chico Buarque. I don’t know Portuguese, but It seems Colón adds some stanzas, including the one I quoted and translated, and which is included in the extended version. I dunno where to host my translation. Genius has a serviceable one, but mine is better.
[2] “All Along the Watchtower” by Bob Dylan. He ain’t got much of a voice but I’mma tell you what, that motherfucker has one helluva pen! Obviously, I prefer the Hendrix cover.
[3] From “Stargazer” by Rainbow
[4] I obviously do not recommend y’all read Stephen King, even though The Dark Tower is my favorite story of all time. He’s too crass for me to recommend y’all. I’d give TWs for SA, CSA, emotional abuse, murder, child murder, child endangerment, violence, gore, racism, ableism. It does a lot of things right, but King has the tact of a jackhammer, unlike BE-PAPAS.
[5] This is a book I cannot recommend enough. It’s a biography on the life of a man named Gabriele d’Annunzio, a man who prefigured fascism in Italy. He greatly inspired Mussolini, and Mussolini would go on to inspire Hitler. He wrote much literature, took from authors such as Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Proust, Nietzsche, before some of them even gained notoriety; he wrote plays and poems that delighted and charged; he was a warmonger and seething racist; he codified much of Italian aesthetics, including the Roman salute, which would become the Nazi salute; he spearheaded aviation; he led a fascinating life. I did, however, check in with a Leninist about a claim: that d’Annunzio was the only true revolutionary in Europe. The book later recounts that such a remark was contributed by Lenin through the hearsay of someone else. The only mention of d’Annunzio in the Lenin archives is disparaging, rather than the admiration Lucy Hughes-Hallett implies Lenin had for d’Annunzio.
[6] One of my favorite books, actually, but I do give TWs for SA, violence, and ableism due to the very concept of the book.
[7] From the titular “In the Wake of Poseidon” by King Crimson
[8] I do give something of a CSA warning to this, along with homophobia, kind of. This book has beaten me several times and one day I’ll defeat it. Basically, as young man, Nabokov outed his brother, Sergey, to the family. Nabokov did come to regret this, and eventually the two did start getting along better, but Nabokov was a man of his time (born 1899). Sergey Nabokov would eventually be arrested by the Gestapo and die in a concentration camp. The main character and narrator of Pale Fire, Charles Kinbote, may or may not have been inspired by Sergey. It’s hard to say, really, and I remember being very put off by that aspect of the book. Hence this lengthy note. I still gotta read it myself, but y’all might be interested in The Unreal Life of Sergey Nabokov by Paul Russell, which is a fictional autobiography about Sergey. The damnedest thing is, Sergey was a poet, but all those poems are gone. Ignored and mistreated by his brother, family, and the world, it’s almost like, however much Vladimir came to abhor what he did, Sergey has been erased.
[9] I also give heavy TWs for this for SA, CSA, chattel slavery, bestiality and more. Although unlike King or even Saramago (who I think handles these things better than King and Kentaro Miura), it doesn’t feel crass or exploitative or voyeuristic, as it so often does with male writes. I do heavily recommend this book, it’s one of my all-time favorites. I just also give those warnings because that’s what you’re supposed to do.
[10] I actually first found this through It by Stephen King, but only the second half of it appeared. I found a reddit post which led to an old collection of poems, and it was titled “The Drunkard,” but no author was named. It’s all a stump. It seems to have become an articulation exercise judging by how in It, it was primarily used to make Bill Denbrough overcome his stutter. It’s almost fitting that the poem which Professor Nemuro reminded me of would have such a history, no?
[11] I don’t quite know what she’s saying. I don’t have the CD of the album, “Krush (1994),” at hand, so I’m going off some transliteration along with my own hearing, cuz apparently fucking no one has bothered to put the lyrics anywhere. Genius says it's an instrumental track but it clearly fucking isn't. This is from “Keeping the Motion” by DJ Krush.
[12] The author’s kind of a racist asshole. It’s expected of a white man his age, but still, it was frustrating to see him take Saul Bellow’s racist remark lightly: “Who is the Tolstoy of the Zulus?” It’s still insightful, but I know not everyone can stomach bullshit like that, and so I give this warning. Still, it’s a great look at the complexity of humanity and the legion shades of one person.
[13] I do give a warning for SA. It’s not depicted but it is discussed here and there. It’s also nearly a quarter of a century old. Take the necessary precautions.
[14] I mean, it’s Blood Meridian. Warning for everything you can think of.