The material is beautiful and precious
Though the cost is cheap, the quality is high…
Stretching out when it opens and rolling up
when put away…
To convey your affection to a distance of ten thousand miles away,
With your refined thought written at one corner.
For a man to pride himself on this kind of wealth, as if it enriched him, is as ridiculous as if one struggling in the ocean with a bag of gold on his back should gasp out, “I am worth a hundred thousand dollars!” I see his ineffectual struggles just as plainly, and what it is that sinks him.
Journal November 5, 1857
Actors are so fortunate. They can choose whether they will appear in a tragedy or in comedy, whether they will suffer or make merry, laugh or shed tears. But in real life it is different. Most men and women are forced to perform parts for which they have no qualifications. The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast.
A wit has said that one might divide mankind into officers, serving-maids and chimney-sweeps. To my mind this remark is not only witty but profound, and it would require a great speculative talent to devise a better classification. When a classification does not ideally exhaust its object, a haphazard classification is altogether preferable, because it sets imagination in motion.
3
Let him go ahead.
Ares is a democrat.
There are no privileged people
On a battlefield.
32
Whoever is alive
Is pleased by song.
35
And the heart
Is pleased
By one thing
After another.
40
Friends hurt the most.
96
To engage with an insatiable girl,
Ramming belly against belly,
Thigh riding against thigh.
Translated by Guy Davenport