perpetual motion person

I'm translating the Fresco-Sonnets over fall break (mostly for practice, partly because I think the second one is really interesting) and wanted to figure out the dynamic between the author of the poems and their addressee. And while Heine is one of the straightest poets I know, there's something really funny and perhaps a little sad about this passage:

I'd like to tell you about a bit of funny business. You know, Christian, that from the first moment I saw you I was drawn to you against my will, and without being able to justify it to myself you were always endlessly dear and precious to me. I believe I'd already spoken to you about this phenomenon long ago: how often I'd notice something in your expression and especially in your eyes that, in some inexplicable way, repulses me from you and at once draws me back to you so forcefully that, in the same moment, I seem to recognize both loving benevolence and the bitterest, most derisive ice-cold contempt. And look: this is the very same enigmatic Something that I've recognized in Molly's [Amalie, Heine's cousin] gaze.

Like, he's just on the edge of recognizing the pattern. He spends the rest of the letter lamenting that Molly doesn't love him and what a fool he is for continuing to love her...and then goes on to write like 50 separate poems about how this is all her fault.

I'm translating the Fresco-Sonnets over fall break (mostly for practice, partly because I think the second one is really interesting) and wanted to figure out the dynamic between the author of the poems and their addressee. And while Heine is one of the straightest poets I know, there's something really funny and perhaps a little sad about this passage:

I'd like to tell you about a bit of funny business. You know, Christian, that from the first moment I saw you I was drawn to you against my will, and without being able to justify it to myself you were always endlessly dear and precious to me. I believe I'd already spoken to you about this phenomenon long ago: how often I'd notice something in your expression and especially in your eyes that, in some inexplicable way, repulses me from you and at once draws me back to you so forcefully that, in the same moment, I seem to recognize both loving benevolence and the bitterest, most derisive ice-cold contempt. And look: this is the very same enigmatic Something that I've recognized in Molly's [Amalie, Heine's cousin] gaze.

Like, he's just on the edge of recognizing the pattern. He spends the rest of the letter lamenting that Molly doesn't love him and what a fool he is for continuing to love her...and then goes on to write like 50 separate poems about how this is all her fault.

I'm translating the Fresco-Sonnets over fall break (mostly for practice, partly because I think the second one is really interesting) and wanted to figure out the dynamic between the author of the poems and their addressee. And while Heine is one of the straightest poets I know, there's something really funny and perhaps a little sad about this passage:

I'd like to tell you about a bit of funny business. You know, Christian, that from the first moment I saw you I was drawn to you against my will, and without being able to justify it to myself you were always endlessly dear and precious to me. I believe I'd already spoken to you about this phenomenon long ago: how often I'd notice something in your expression and especially in your eyes that, in some inexplicable way, repulses me from you and at once draws me back to you so forcefully that, in the same moment, I seem to recognize both loving benevolence and the bitterest, most derisive ice-cold contempt. And look: this is the very same enigmatic Something that I've recognized in Molly's [Amalie, Heine's cousin] gaze.

Like, he's just on the edge of recognizing the pattern. He spends the rest of the letter lamenting that Molly doesn't love him and what a fool he is for continuing to love her...and then goes on to write like 50 separate poems about how this is all her fault.

I'm translating the Fresco-Sonnets over fall break (mostly for practice, partly because I think the second one is really interesting) and wanted to figure out the dynamic between the author of the poems and their addressee. And while Heine is one of the straightest poets I know, there's something really funny and perhaps a little sad about this passage:

I'd like to tell you about a bit of funny business. You know, Christian, that from the first moment I saw you I was drawn to you against my will, and without being able to justify it to myself you were always endlessly dear and precious to me. I believe I'd already spoken to you about this phenomenon long ago: how often I'd notice something in your expression and especially in your eyes that, in some inexplicable way, repulses me from you and at once draws me back to you so forcefully that, in the same moment, I seem to recognize both loving benevolence and the bitterest, most derisive ice-cold contempt. And look: this is the very same enigmatic Something that I've recognized in Molly's [Amalie, Heine's cousin] gaze.

Like, he's just on the edge of recognizing the pattern. He spends the rest of the letter lamenting that Molly doesn't love him and what a fool he is for continuing to love her...and then goes on to write like 50 separate poems about how this is all her fault.

I'm translating the Fresco-Sonnets over fall break (mostly for practice, partly because I think the second one is really interesting) and wanted to figure out the dynamic between the author of the poems and their addressee. And while Heine is one of the straightest poets I know, there's something really funny and perhaps a little sad about this passage:

I'd like to tell you about a bit of funny business. You know, Christian, that from the first moment I saw you I was drawn to you against my will, and without being able to justify it to myself you were always endlessly dear and precious to me. I believe I'd already spoken to you about this phenomenon long ago: how often I'd notice something in your expression and especially in your eyes that, in some inexplicable way, repulses me from you and at once draws me back to you so forcefully that, in the same moment, I seem to recognize both loving benevolence and the bitterest, most derisive ice-cold contempt. And look: this is the very same enigmatic Something that I've recognized in Molly's [Amalie, Heine's cousin] gaze.

Like, he's just on the edge of recognizing the pattern. He spends the rest of the letter lamenting that Molly doesn't love him and what a fool he is for continuing to love her...and then goes on to write like 50 separate poems about how this is all her fault.

I'm translating the Fresco-Sonnets over fall break (mostly for practice, partly because I think the second one is really interesting) and wanted to figure out the dynamic between the author of the poems and their addressee. And while Heine is one of the straightest poets I know, there's something really funny and perhaps a little sad about this passage:

I'd like to tell you about a bit of funny business. You know, Christian, that from the first moment I saw you I was drawn to you against my will, and without being able to justify it to myself you were always endlessly dear and precious to me. I believe I'd already spoken to you about this phenomenon long ago: how often I'd notice something in your expression and especially in your eyes that, in some inexplicable way, repulses me from you and at once draws me back to you so forcefully that, in the same moment, I seem to recognize both loving benevolence and the bitterest, most derisive ice-cold contempt. And look: this is the very same enigmatic Something that I've recognized in Molly's [Amalie, Heine's cousin] gaze.

Like, he's just on the edge of recognizing the pattern. He spends the rest of the letter lamenting that Molly doesn't love him and what a fool he is for continuing to love her...and then goes on to write like 50 separate poems about how this is all her fault.

Guys. Guys. This piece is slowly coming together. I can’t believe it!

Wiping sweat from his dark forehead the man—man I must say, having said he and his—the man answers, “Very-long-ago a keystone was always set in with a mortar of ground bones mixed with blood. Human bones, human blood. Without the blood bond the arch would fall, you see. We use the blood of animals, these days.”

Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness

But he was off, downhill: a magnificent fast skier, and this time not holding back for me. [...] He ran from me, and straight into the guns of the border-guards. I think they shouted warnings or orders to halt, and a light sprang up somewhere, but I am not sure; in any case he did not stop, but flashed on towards the fence, and they shot him down before he reached it. [...] They shot to kill him. He was dying when I got to him, sprawled and twisted away from his skis that stuck up out of the snow, his chest half shot away. I took his head in my arms and spoke to him, but he never answered me; only in a way he answered my love for him, crying out through the silent wreck and tumult of his mind as consciousness lapsed, in the unspoken tongue, once, clearly, "Arek!" Then no more. I held him, crouching there in the snow, while he died. They let me do that.

"I think we might make it," he said, with that complete simplicity I had so long taken for irony.

Books read in 2024: THE LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS by Ursula K. Le Guin