Unrelated interlude

Hi! Here's a passage from Breton's Surrealist Manifesto:

If in a cluster of grapes there are no two alike, why do you want me to describe this grape by the other, by all the others . . . ? Our brains are dulled by the incurable mania of wanting to make the unknown known, classifiable . . . It is pointless to add that experience itself has found itself increasingly circumscribed. It paces back and forth in a cage from which it is more and more difficult to make it emerge . . . Forbidden is any kind of search for truth that is not in conformance with accepted practices . . .

Groovy. Here's Rilke's "The Panther"

His gaze is so wearied from the bars 

Passing by, that it can hold no more. 

It’s as if a thousand bars were given him: 

And behind the thousand bars, no world.

The soft pace of his powerful, supple stride, 

That draws him round in tightened circles, 

Is like the dance of force about a centre, 

In which a greater will stands paralysed.

Only, at times, the curtain of his pupils 

Silently rises – Then an image enters, 

Rushes through his tense, arrested limbs, 

And echoing, inside his heart, is gone.

Yesterday evening, I wasted a lot of time reading many, many translations of that poem. Most were bad.

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