Allegory

Antonio Machado – Al grande zero / To the Great Circle of Nothing

Vladimir Kush, Sunrise by the Ocean, 2000 When the I AM THAT I AM made nothingand rested, which rest it certainly deserved,night now accompanied day, and manhad his friend in the absence of the woman.Let there be shadow! Human thinking broke out.And the universal egg rose, empty,pale, chill and not yet heavy with matter,full of …

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Leonardo Sciascia

Jean-François de Troy, An Allegory of Time Unveiling Truth, 1733 Tutta un’impostura. La storia non esiste. Forse che esistono le generazioni di foglie che sono andate via da quell’albero, un autunno appresso all’altro? Esiste l’albero, esistono le sue foglie nuove: poi anche queste se ne andranno; e a un certo punto se ne andrà anche …

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Thomas Hobbes – The Elements of Law, Natural and Politic

Christian Vincent, Waterfall, 2010  But this race we must suppose to have no other goal, nor other garland, but being foremost, and in it:To endeavour, is appetite.To be remiss, is sensuality.To consider them behind, is glory.To consider them before, is humility.To lose ground with looking back, vain glory.To be holden, hatred.To turn back, repentance.To be …

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Emil Cioran

Giorgione, The Three Philosophers, c. 1506 Everything exists; nothing exists. Either formula affords a like serenity. The man of anxiety, to his misfortune, remains between them, trembling and perplexed, forever at the mercy of a nuance, incapable of gaining a foothold in the security of being or in the absence of being. Tutto è; niente …

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Italo Calvino – Il visconte dimezzato / The Cloven Viscount

Octavio Ocampo, Visions of Don Quixote, 1989 Some might expect that with the Viscount entire again a period of marvellous happiness would open; but obviously a whole Viscount is not enough to make all the world whole. Forse ci si aspettava che, tornato intero il visconte, s’aprisse un’epoca di felicità meravigliosa. Ma è chiaro che …

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