There is death in life and it astonishes me that people pretend not to know that: death whose pitiless presence we feel in each change we survive, for one must learn how to die slowly. We must learn how to die: there’s our whole life.
I am not ashamed, Dear, to have wept, another Sunday, cold and too early, in the gondola that kept turning and turning, passing vaguely outlined neighborhoods that seemed to me to belong to another Venice located in Limbo.
And the voice of the barcaiolo asking to be paid at the turning of a canal was left with no response as if face to face with death.
And all the while in my sadness I was happy to feel that you are, Belle. I am happy to have given myself fearlessly to your beauty the way a bird hurls itself into space. Happy, Dear, to have walked, true believers, on the waters of our incertitude as far as that island that is your heart, where suffering grows.
Finally: glad.
Rilke, Letter to Mimi Romanelli, December 8, 1907
My dear Rilke,
„There is death in life and it astonishes me that people pretend not to know that: death whose pitiless presence we feel in each change we survive, for one must learn how to die slowly.
We must learn how to die: all our life.“
Revolt.
Disorder.
Exuberance.
Decomposition.
Dread.
Horror.
Fright.
Terror.
You will not emerge, not from silence nor from immobility.
Then let silent drama move in, so that.
Then all at once laughter.
:Power.
:Power: calculated defeat of a defeat.
You will not emerge, not from silence nor from immobility.
Very calm. To be sure we were calm.
To be sure we were calm. I do not want to hear any crying, nor hear any laughing.
To be sure we are calm.
The sharp value of calmness: a blade. A blade? Sharpened, grinding (unlikely?)
We are on the verge…
Right on the verge of all things: Listening – working – writing.
On the verge.
Just exactly as: „on the verge“ of „tears.“
A huge anger. To be sure we were calm.
A huge disorder.
Nothing answering nothing.
To be sure we were solitary – And good – And violent.
And disordered.
And, to ourselves, two-faced.
I don’t want any more.
No more space.
Space. Breath. This breath. Short breath.
To be sure we were calm. Not another word. No more greatness.
„You“ remain to „you.“ Falsely calm.
O Tod.*
(Music: the silence it implies.)
A huge anger. Silence „par excellence.“ The silence of silence.
Not another word bluntly passes.
And we remain essentially impavid. And yet still living. To be sure we were calm.
Not another word and all the words pass.
„The excess“ the „silence.“ Side by side.
I am afraid.
I forget afraid.
I rejoice.
I am afraid.
The gondola. It consoles me and shocks me. From moment to moment.
I am afraid.
I rejoice.
Above all: „I am not.“
I am ashamed to tell you this.
We have not seen the canal. We have not lived the canal.
Nor the light. Nothing.
So how can you rejoice (but you rejoice): nothing.
Nothing – rest – Nothing.
Nothing: for we have lived the gondola and lived and lived even more for we have lived the light. In a manner as peaceful as „perfect.“
Nothing adding to nothing: language.
To be sure we were calm: decomposition itself. Everything came to us, then absolutely from such an absence. From such an absence, but from a shy absence.
Shy? And yet it’s you who speaks.
Very calm. To be sure we were calm.
„I am not ashamed, Dear, to have wept, another Sunday, cold and too early, in the gondola that kept turning and turning, passing vaguely outlined neighborhoods that seemed to me to belong to another Venice located in Limbo. And the voice of the bar-caiolo asking to be paid at the turning of a canal was left with no response as if face to face with death.“
We admit without knowing it that the gondola turns and turns.
Strange sign of friendship: your tears — a weary little gesture of the hand. We admit (admitted?) that the gondola turns and turns, sign to sign. (A weary little gesture of the hand. And of speech.)
We admit that the gondola turns
And turns
And turns
Tears
A vague notion of eternity.
And very exact, precise, death.
Very exact? precise? Death?
Very calm. To be sure we were calm.
The „drama“ is here supreme lightness.
The drama?
Nothing escapes laughter. That laughter lighter than light. Light, light to bear in it this word: light.
Thus even lighter.
Sometimes we feel we are sitting in very comfortable armchairs.
And heavy. Then gondola and tears come to touch us with their beaks.
You know we are far from you — „there is death in life and it astonishes me that people can not know“ — far from you — and near all the dread of nearness.
(At the arm pulse and between the shoulders – vital points – death rebounded.)
„Death itself.“ „Your own death.“
We did not know how to distinguish nearness and distance.
Very calm. To be sure we were calm.
„Drama:“ the Grand Canal.
So let move in. Let be. Let the evanescent evanesce.
We had to assume our absence like an increase of language, like a presence: our „own presence.“
Absence.
Absence, from flight point to flight point, on a road (rail) one could not define.
And at the same time, as you know, I will speak and speak no more.
I will speak.
„And all the while in my sadness, I am happy to feel that you are, Belle…“
I will speak.
You look for the meaning of the word: equivalence.
A deep anger. Peace: alternation.
The here from the here. Equivalence? No, not enough divergence.
You will be you. You will be not.
You will be you. You will be not.
Very calm. To be sure we were calm.
Your tears were but an almost (almost streaming everywhere).
We will be not.
Not, driven from that complacency the sentence is.
Driven. And talking in sentences. Endlessly.
„I am not ashamed to have wept.“
This point of vulnerability we take to be inside you, inside us.
Vulnerable?
– Talking – but talking in the fragility of the unlikely.
„And the voice of the barcaiolo asking to be paid at the turning of the canal went without an answer as if face to face with death.“
Fragility is eternity.
How relentlessly we said: yes.
How relentlessly we said: no.
Other and other language.
Must. Will have to. Following you at close range between your shoulders.
Other and other language.
A point (of peace) will have to be established
This peace.
Peace so that.
*
Johannes Brahms, Vier Jahreszeiten-Lieder
Translated by Norma Cole
BLACKOUT ((LITERATUR, ÄSTHETIK & FILM)) 
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