2.19.2004
Morning. Darkness. Silence. Waking. Small, already lively gestures. The new force is ready. The bomb primed. Joy offered. What is to be done? Yes, undertake something and in a big way. Go beyond the seas, construct, discover . . . Enthusiasm elicits, at dawn, the return to the world; the world and I have returned to the morning of creation. Omnipotence: everything again becomes possible. Magnificence: this capacity tends toward greatness.
Which? Where, how, and for what? So, at the moment of deciding, while remembering history, which only makes great things from the dead, from the feet to the eyes and from one shoulder to another, my body, made for greatness, mourns for greatness. Present in my body, evident, invading . . . unused.
The body does not form grandeur, does not show it, gives it nothing social or historical, except through crimes and lies: neither the victory that tramples a thousand vanquished, nor the excellence that deposes the cohort of the mediocre.
And, from infallible experience, since my violent, weighty, demanding childhood, grandeur lies in me and dilates. Every day then, it awakens a ready energy, as it has for several decades, to go forth at the first call, attentive watcher, loyal servent, devoted unto dying, but obeying only greatness.
This free, early omnipotence, this immense demand, can be exhausted in a work; but this work only rarely achieves greatness and doubtless anonymously, because it is not a question of me, but of the work that produces and will give birth to me. Thus, the unusable power remains intact, youthful and fresh even in old age. Virginal, to be precise. It sings the Magnificat.
Now nothing can make an exception of this experience. Doubtless, everyone, one day at least, experiences this formidable dilation of his being--in explosive volume, strength, and potential--this free break, this unemployed greatness, that remains virginal no matter what one does, the infinite regret of remaining to one side: the infinite possibility of learning.
Why stubbornly refuse to call this vacant intensity, potential world and thought right in the middle of the body, which is like a rose window or a small sun, the soul?
--Michel Serres, The Troubadour of Knowledge
Which? Where, how, and for what? So, at the moment of deciding, while remembering history, which only makes great things from the dead, from the feet to the eyes and from one shoulder to another, my body, made for greatness, mourns for greatness. Present in my body, evident, invading . . . unused.
The body does not form grandeur, does not show it, gives it nothing social or historical, except through crimes and lies: neither the victory that tramples a thousand vanquished, nor the excellence that deposes the cohort of the mediocre.
And, from infallible experience, since my violent, weighty, demanding childhood, grandeur lies in me and dilates. Every day then, it awakens a ready energy, as it has for several decades, to go forth at the first call, attentive watcher, loyal servent, devoted unto dying, but obeying only greatness.
This free, early omnipotence, this immense demand, can be exhausted in a work; but this work only rarely achieves greatness and doubtless anonymously, because it is not a question of me, but of the work that produces and will give birth to me. Thus, the unusable power remains intact, youthful and fresh even in old age. Virginal, to be precise. It sings the Magnificat.
Now nothing can make an exception of this experience. Doubtless, everyone, one day at least, experiences this formidable dilation of his being--in explosive volume, strength, and potential--this free break, this unemployed greatness, that remains virginal no matter what one does, the infinite regret of remaining to one side: the infinite possibility of learning.
Why stubbornly refuse to call this vacant intensity, potential world and thought right in the middle of the body, which is like a rose window or a small sun, the soul?
--Michel Serres, The Troubadour of Knowledge
