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Fantasma

Alguien a quien habiéndole dicho muchas veces: -Muérete- persiste en estar vivo.

Ida Vitale, Léxico de afinidades

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My sweetheart, my love, my love, my love—

19 August 1925 Letters to Véra by Vladimir Nabokov

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El tiempo es el supremo reformador de las cosas, por eso, yo espero en el veredicto justiciero del tiempo.

Gonzalo Arango

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Monolithic Chapel at Fontanges

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Castelgrande, in Bellinzona, Switzerland

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I do not mean that no one may accuse unless one is entirely free of every stain, for in that case no one could accuse another. What I mean is that our judgment, when it attacks another, cannot excuse one from a severe internal jurisdiction. Nor does it seem to me a proper answer, when someone points out my fault, to reply that they commit it as well. That has nothing to do with it, for the warning is always true and useful. If one had a good sense of smell, one’s own filth should offend one more, since it is one’s own.

— Michel de Montaigne, Of the Art of Conversation (fragment)

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Let us constantly keep in mind those words of Plato: ‘That which I judge to be unhealthy — could it not be because I myself am in that state? Do I not also fall into the same fault? May not my accusation turn against myself?’ (Plutarch).

— Michel de Montaigne, Of the Art of Conversation (fragment)

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How many foolish things do I say every day, by my own reckoning, and how many more by the judgment of others? And if I bite my lips, what must others do? In conclusion, one must live among the living and let the water flow under the bridge without caring, or at least without being disturbed by it. This blameworthy intolerance lies more in the judge than in the fault.

— Michel de Montaigne, Of the Art of Conversation (fragment)

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But then, what if I take things differently from what they really are? That is possible. For this I blame my own intolerance, which I consider equally vicious in one who is right as in one who is not; for it is always a bitter tyranny to be unable to endure a way of being different from one’s own. And, to tell the truth, there is no folly greater, more common, or more extravagant than to be disturbed and angered by the foolishness of the world.

— Michel de Montaigne, Of the Art of Conversation (fragment)

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My tendency is to consider form as much as substance, the lawyer as much as the case, just as Alcibiades ordered it should be done. And every day I amuse myself by reading various authors without paying heed to their learning, seeking in them solely their manner, not the subject they treat. Likewise, I pursue communication with some illustrious spirit, not in order that he may instruct me, but to know him; and once known, to imitate what is worthy in them.

— Michel de Montaigne, Of the Art of Conversation (fragment)

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Truth, as Democritus said, is not hidden in the depths of the abyss, but rather raised to infinite height, in divine knowledge. The world is nothing but a school of inquiry. It is not a matter of reaching the goal, but of who will run the most beautiful races.

— Michel de Montaigne, Of the Art of Conversation (fragment)

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Reading Montaigne, I think: What lies behind a conversation is a spirit that seeks the other. What a yearning for conversation —unhurried, profound, expansive.

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We first become enemies of reasons, and then of men. We learn to dispute only in order to contradict; and since each one contradicts and is contradicted, it happens that the fruit of questioning is nothing but the loss and annihilation of truth.

— Michel de Montaigne, Of the Art of Conversation (fragment)

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The most fruitful and natural exercise of our mind, in my opinion, is conversation: I find its practice more delightful than any other activity in life. If I converse with a strong soul, with a proven fighter, he shakes me from side to side, spurs me on from right and left; his ideas bring forth my own. The zeal, the honor, the vehement heat of the dispute drive me and lift me above myself.

— Michel de Montaigne, Of the Art of Conversation (fragment)