passage
by Agnieszka Studzinska
1 Heidegger Martin: Poetry, Language, Thought, Harper & Row: 1971 [81]
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noun: passage a section of a written work; paragraph, verse, extract, quotation: What is spoken is never, and in no language, what is said — this sentence of words is snowed in my ear
then
falls
apart
as snow itself [what is spoken is never] a new language in the mouth of a stranger in her always
the strangeness of language
[and in no language] haunted [like] a family house swelling with stories & voices & shadows sheltering [what is said] in walls What happens to those walls when we leave? Let the words sink their roots in the air. Let what is spoken and what is said nestle in the house of language where meaning becomes — [is never]
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This feeling is described by _______ in the following passage.
We come across passages that contain _______.
Tunneling through passages to get to the other side.
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The process of moving through
[from one place to another]
somewhere on the way —
crossing —
There are blackbirds in her garden in January winter visitors from Eastern Europe. The are ghosts in her garden. There are ghosts in her house inhibited — detached waiting to be taken. The anatomy of past is chalked. Elsewhere —
There are other ghosts
washed up by the sea — A newspaper headline states: 500 people die at sea, but the story is lost stray — adrift they drifted to the depths, to join the other thousands of skeletons who never made it to Europe — Sailing out of Libya Egyptians, Ethiopians, Somalis, Sudanese travelling through the Mediterranean passage to the shores of Greece —
1 Heidegger Martin: Poetry, Language, Thought, Harper & Row: 1971 [81]
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No pictures of the sinking. No autopsies. No names in columns. No graves. They are whispering out of a world small murmurs like that of the sea
teal-blue even language is weightless in their shadows Truths concealed. Here is a passage: Truth is the unconcealedness of that which is as something that is. Truth is the truth of Being. Beauty does not occur alongside and apart from this truth. When truth sets itself into the work, it appears‌� 1
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The corridor in her grandparent’s house leads to a cellar
a hiding place.
A grandfather with his empty bottles. His lost years in his living. There are footsteps on the stairs hunting family in a shaded wood. She hears an asking of questions. Observes a passage of light sentence the answer. Light is a vital component of every photograph. Light may be natural or artificial but without the appropriate type of light even the most fascinating subjects become inconsequential writes William Henry Fox Talbot in The Pencil of Nature. Subject matter is ’subordinate to the exploration of space and light.’ And so —
in the photograph —
She does not examine the subjects sitting on a balcony quietly awaiting departure. Captured in an afternoon. A grand-daughter leaving or the hand placed on her shoulder. Touching what has already vanished. The space between them like a scaffold. Light rising as if a lattice of fog from a field. They are subordinate. Souvenirs of light.
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passage: A French term (pronounced “pahsazh”) for a painting technique characterized by small, intersecting planes of patch-like brushwork: A brushwork of sky & space. Patches of language in colour sinking their roots. Language as an offering. The marigold of letters. A painting in which — You are my dead ancestor. There’s a pillow & a blanket for you. Rest now from your journey. In your homecoming our departure begins.
Notes What is spoken is never, and in no language, what is said — Martin Heidegger / Let the words sink their roots in the air — Jacques Dupin
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