a lesser Kafkaesque Kafka..

"In a way, you are poetry material. You are full of cloudy subtleties I am willing to spend a lifetime figuring out."

~ Kafka in a Letter to Milena. (He seems hopeful!)

Chopin's Sadness!

Federico Chopin is probably remembered best for his melancholic, haunting Nocturnes. His etude Tristesse is another beautiful piece of music, complacent, with a hint of sadness or mostly of nostalgia. Perhaps one can trace his tristfulness to his longings for Poland, his beloved country (as I came to know from one of the comments on the youtube link for the etude). 

As beautifully written by Franz Liszt in his biographical work Life of Chopin. 

"We have before asserted that we must have known personally the women of Poland, for the full and intuitive comprehension of the feelings with which the Mazourkas of Chopin, as well as many more of his compositions, are impregnated. A subtle love vapor floats like an ambient fluid around them; we may trace step by step in his Preludes, Nocturnes Impromptus and Mazourkas, all the phases of which passion is capable The sportive hues of coquetry the insensible and gradual yielding of inclination, the capricious festoons of fantasy; the sadness of sickly joys born dying, flowers of mourning like the black roses, the very perfume of whose gloomy leaves is depressing, and whose petals are so frail that the faintest sigh is sufficient to detach them from the fragile stem; sudden flames without thought, like the false shining of that decayed and dead wood which only glitters in obscurity and crumbles at the touch; pleasures without past and without future, snatched from accidental meetings; illusions, inexplicable excitements tempting to adventure, like the sharp taste of half ripened fruit which stimulates and pleases even while it sets the teeth on edge; emotions without memory and without hope; shadowy feelings whose chromatic tints are interminable;—are all found in these works, endowed by genius with the innate nobility, the beauty, the distinction, the surpassing elegance of those by whom they are experienced."

That heart!

"And John tried to see through the morning wall, to stare past the bitter houses, to tear the thousand grey veils of the sky away, and look into that heart -- the monstrous heart which beat for ever, turning the astounded universe, commanding the stars to flee away before the sun's red sandal, bidding the moon to wax and wane, and disappear, and come again; with a silver net holding back the sea, and out of mysteries abysmal, re-creating, each day, the earth. That heart, that heart, without which was not anything made which was made."

~ Go Tell it on the Mountain, James Baldwin

John's Fall!

"Yes: there was Elisha, speaking from the floor, and his father, silent, at his back. In his heart there was a sudden yearning tenderness for holy Elisha; desire, sharp and awful as a reflecting knife, to usurp the body of Elisha, and lie where Elisha lay; to speak in tongues, as Elisha spoke, and, with that authority, to confound his father."

~ Go Tell it on the Mountain, James Baldwin

Elizabeth's Prayer

"But to look back from the stony plain along the road which led one to that place is not at all the same thing as walking on the road; the perspective, to say the very least, changes only with the journey; only when the road has, all abruptly and treacherously, and with an absoluteness that permits no argument, turned or dropped or risen is one able to see all that one could not have seen from any other place."

~ Go Tell it to the Mountain, James Baldwin

'Oh, I don't remember. Just a book.'

'You remember that day,' he asked much later,'when you come into the store?'

'Yes?'

'Well, you was mighty pretty.'

'I didn't think you never looked at me.'

'You was reading a book.'

'Yes.'

'What book was it, Richard?'

'Oh, I don't remember. Just a book.'

'You smiled.'

'You did. too.'

'No, I didn't. I remember.'

'Yes, you did.'

'No, I didn't. Not till you did.'

'Well, anyway -- you was mighty pretty.'

A conversation between Elizabeth and Richard. An excerpt from 'Go Tell It on the Mountain' by James Baldwin. 

a deontological knock?!