Time drowns in the unmeasured monotony of space

“The surf seethes, wave upon silken wave crashes with a bright thud against the level beach – here, there, on sandbars further out. And the universal turmoil, the tenderly booming din closes our ears against every other voice in the world. Profound contentment, knowing forgetfulness. Sheltered in eternity, let us close our eyes. No, look, there in the foamy gray-green expanse as it loses itself, diminishing vastly against the horizon, there is a sail. There? What sort of there? How far? How near? You do not know. It dizzyingly evades all certainty. To say how far the boat is from the shore you would have to know its size. Small and near, or large and distant? And in your ignorance, your gaze falters, for no organ, no internal sense, can tell you for sure. We walk and walk – how long has it been now? How far? It does not matter. And at every step, nothing changes – “there” is “here,” “before” is both “now” and “then.” Time drowns in the unmeasured monotony of space. Where uniformity reigns, movement from point to point is no longer movement; and where movement is no longer movement, there is no time.”

(page 537)

Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain. Trans. John Woods. New York: Knopf, 1995.

Borrowed from Mile End Branch, Bibliothèques publiques de Montréal. First published in German as Der Zauberberg in 1924.

Is time a function of space? Or vice versa?

“What is time? A secret – insubstantial and omnipotent. A prerequisite of the external world, a motion intermingled and fused with bodies existing and moving in space. But would there be no time, if there were no motion? No motion, if there were no time? What a question! Is time a function of space? Or vice versa? Or are the two identical? An even bigger question! Time is active, by nature it is much like a verb, it both “ripens” and “brings forth.” And what does it bring forth? Change! Now is not then, here is not there – for in both cases motion lies in between. But since we measure time by a circular motion closed in on itself, we could just as easily say that its motion and change are rest and stagnation – for the then is constantly repeated in the now, the there in the here. Moreover, since, despite our best desperate attempts, we cannot imagine an end to time or a finite border around space, we have decided to “think” of them as eternal and infinite – in the apparent belief that even if we are not totally successful, this marks some improvement. But does not the very positing of eternity and infinity imply the logical, mathematical negation of things limited and finite, their relative reduction to zero? Is a sequence of events possible in eternity, a juxtaposition of objects in infinity? How does our makeshift assumption of eternity and infinity square with concepts like distance, motion, change, or even the very existence of a finite body in space? Now there’s a real question for you!”

(page 339)

Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain. Trans. John Woods. New York: Knopf, 1995.

Borrowed from Mile End Branch, Bibliothèques publiques de Montréal. First published in German as Der Zauberberg in 1924.

Art is of value only to the extent that it speaks to us

“We must remember, however, that art is of value only to the extent that it speaks to us. It might be a universal language if we ourselves were universal in our sympathies. Our finite nature, the power of tradition and conventionality, as well as our hereditary instincts, restrict the scope of our capacity for artistic enjoyment. Our very individuality establishes in one sense a limit to our understanding; and our aesthetic personality seeks its own affinities in the creations of the past. It is true that with cultivation our sense of art appreciation broadens, and we become able to enjoy many hitherto unrecognised expressions of beauty. But, after all, we see only our own image in the universe, –– our particular idiosyncracies dictate the mode of our perceptions.”

(pages 46–47)

Kakuzo Okakura, The Book of Tea. New York: Dover Publications, 1964. [Facsimile of 1906 edition]

Bought at a second-hand bookstore on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn.

The Library is unlimited and cyclical

“I have just written the word ‘infinite.’ I have not interpolated this adjective out of rhetorical habit; I say that it is not illogical to think that the world is infinite. Those who judge it to be limited postulate that in remote places the corridors and stairways and hexagons can conceivably come to an end — which is absurd. Those who imagine it to be without limit forget that the possible number of books does have such a limit. I venture to suggest this solution to the ancient problem: The Library is unlimited and cyclical. If an eternal traveler were to cross it in any direction, after centuries he would see that the same volumes were repeated in the same disorder (which, thus repeated, would be an order: the Order). My solitude is gladdened by this elegant hope.”

Jorge Luis Borges, “The Library of Babel.”

http://www.daimi.au.dk/~doina/literature/Jorge_Luis_Borges_-_The_Library_of_Babel.html

A static moment within the cosmological dynamics

“That which we are able to transmit in a work of art is no more than a static moment within the cosmological dynamics from which we came and to which we are going. It is a flash of that infinite materialised in the finite. As if it were a stopping in time. It is a piece of eternity.“

(page 172)

Lygia Clark, “The Full-Emptiness”.

Found in N6487 .M56 W357 2009

Eleey, Peter. The Quick and the Dead. Minneapolis: Walker Art Center, 2009.

Originally published in Portuguese, “O vazio-pleno,” Jornal do Brasil(Rio de Janeiro) Suplemento Dominical, April 2, 1960, 5; reprinted from Lygia Clark, exh. cat. (Barcelona: Fundació Antoni Tapies, 1998), 111-113; courtesy “The World of Lygia Clark” Cultural Association.