French Lessons #4

"Je préfère le métro à l'autobus. Dans le métro, on ne voit que les visages. Et dans l'autobus, juste des paysages." (Danny Laferrière)

Quotes 2017 #90

"It should be easy, now, to understand the destitution of indigenous, oral persons who have been forcibly displaced from their traditional lands. The local earth is, for them, the very matrix of discursive meaning; to force them from their native ecology (for whatever political or economic purpose) is to render them speechless--or to render their speech meaningless--TO DISLODGE THEM FROM THE VERY GROUND OF COHERENCE. It is, quite simply, to force them out of their mind."

David Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous.

「西江文庫」にむかって

明治大学図書館紀要「図書の譜」第２１号（２０１７年３月）にエッセー「＜西江文庫＞にむかって」を寄稿しました。故・西江雅之先生の蔵書は一括して明治 大学図書館に寄贈されました。公開は２年ほど先になると思われますが、ぼくが垣間みた、先生の本とのつきあい方について。

French Lessons #3

"Les nègres fugitifs, et particulièrement ceux qui détachent les autres, sont châtiés rigoureusement, car on les attache à un pilier et après leur avoir découpé toute la peau à coups de lianes, on flotte leurs plaies avec du piment, du sel et du jus de citron, ce qui leur cause des douleurs incroyables." (Révérend Père du Tertre)

Quotes 2017 #89

"A tiny little schoolboy with the name of Trachtenbauer was at my door when I opened it. / I say tiny little and that's literally what I mean. He was about eight inches tall, the size of a sizeable penis, the average height of a cat, which meant that when the doorbell rang while I was pouring my cornflakes into the bowl and I went through to the hall thinking it would be the postman and opened the door and looked out, it was as if there was no one there at all, and it was only as I was about to close it that I heard the squeaking of a small voice at shin level."

Ali Smith, "Trachtenbauer."

French Lessons #2

"Mais la vraie vocation de Blake était la prophétie. Il prophétisait à tout propos; c'était une habitude d'esprit." (Julien Green)

Quotes 2017 #88

"He hated the flowery manner of writing made fashionable by Chateaubriand, and which a hundred lesser authors had sedulously aped. Stendhal's aim was to set down whatever he had to say as plain and exactly as he could, without frills, rhetorical flourishes of picturesque verbiage. He said (probably not quite truly) that before starting to write he read a page of the CODE NAPOLEON in order to chasten his language. He eschewed description of scenery and the abundant metaphors which were popular in his day. The cold, lucid, self-controlled style increases the horror of the story he has to tell in LE ROUGE ET LE NOIR, and adds to its enthralling interest."

W. Somerset Maugham, Ten Novels and Their Authors.