Berenice Abbott

"The world doesn't like independent woman, why, I don't know, but I don't care." Berenice Abbott (1898-1991), born in Springfield, Ohio, American photographer, best known for her documentary images of New York City in the 1930s and 1940s. After graduating from Lincoln High School in Springfield, the young Abbott had a barber cut off the long, thick [...]

André Breton | Nadja

« Qui suis-je? Si par exception je m'en rapportais à un adage : en effet pourquoi tout ne reviendrait-il pas à savoir qui je « hante »? Je dois avouer que ce dernier mot m'égare, tendant à établir entre certains êtres et moi des rapports plus singuliers, moins évitables, plus troublants que je ne pensais. [...]

Ghost life

“I woke up as the sun was reddening; and that was the one distinct time in my life, the strangest moment of all, when I didn't know who I was - I was far away from home, haunted and tired with travel, in a cheap hotel room I'd never seen, hearing the hiss of steam [...]

Even Because

Because it all just breaks apart, and the pieces scatter andrearrange without much fanfare or notice. Because you can’t and don’t remember the step that kicked updust and left this planet—you’d give up even more now. Because the body itself—the heart’s not dead but deeper, wrapped up in curtains, a different color,among the railings and [...]

The theory of the tides

We at the height are ready to decline.There is a tide in the affairs of menWhich, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;Omitted, all the voyage of their lifeIs bound in shallows and in miseries.On such a full sea are we now afloat,And we must take the current when it serves,Or lose our ventures.William [...]

Le langage des fleurs

Élévation Au-dessus des étangs, au-dessus des vallées,Des montagnes, des bois, des nuages, des mers,Par delà le soleil, par delà les éthers,Par delà les confins des sphères étoilées, Mon esprit, tu te meus avec agilité,Et, comme un bon nageur qui se pâme dans l'onde,Tu sillonnes gaiement l'immensité profondeAvec une indicible et mâle volupté. Envole-toi bien loin [...]

La forêt dans la hache

On vient de mourir mais je suis vivant et cependant je n’ai plus d’âme. Je n’ai plus qu’un corps transparent à l’intérieur duquel des colombes transparentes se jettent sur un poignard transparent tenu par une main transparente. Je vois l’effort dans toute sa beauté, l’effort réel qui ne se chiffre par rien, peu avant la [...]

Dispersion

Time is infinite, but the things in time, the concrete bodies, are finite. They may indeed disperse into the smallest particles; but these particles, the atoms, have their determinate numbers, and the numbers of the configurations which, all of themselves, are formed out of them is also determinate. Now, however long a time may pass, [...]