when the woman came into the room... Judith, Brecht, Caravaggio

Caravaggio, Judith Beheading Holofernes, 1598-99

They won't say: when the walnut tree shook in the wind

But: when the house painter crushed the workers.

They won't say: when the child skimmed a flat stone across the rapids

But: when the great wars were being prepared for.

They won't say: when the woman came into the room

But: when the great powers joined forces against the workers.

However, they won't say: the times were dark

Rather: why were their poets silent?




What kinds of times are they, when
A talk about trees is almost a crime
Because it implies silence about so many horrors?

Bertolt Brecht

whole before an immense sky... Bergman, Rilke, Bloom

A merging of two people is an impossibility, and where it seems to exist, it is a hemming-in, a mutual consent that robs one party or both parties of their fullest freedom and development. But once the realization is accepted that even between the closest people infinite distances exist, a marvelous living side-by-side can grow, if they succeed in loving the expanse between them, which gives them the possibility of always seeing each other as a whole before an immense sky.

Rainer Maria Rilke


I sometimes suspect that we really do not listen to one
another because Shakespeare's friends and lovers never

quite hear what the other is saying, which is part of the

ironical truth that Shakespeare largely invented us.


Harold Bloom, The Anxiety of Influence