if it hadn't been for her plan to read the library books in a new order, in the most alpha-basic of orders, she never would have come across it. even though she was taken by it on first sight when she drew it from the d-shelf. a white book, slim, modern. just poems, no comments, no dates inside. only later did she discover that hilde domin, the one who wrote it, was born 1909. had lived through two world wars. had been modern in her very own way. and had died just the year ago.
hier, the book was named. here, it would be translated, one of the few cases where the word held the sound and only changed it's outlines while travelling across a border. she tried to think of another word that worked that way, but there didn't seem to be one. rose, she remembered instead. but rose was different. rose remained unchanged in writing, but changed in its pronounciation. a rose is a rose is not a rose, she said, and picked up one of the fallen violet petals. violet, she thought. violett in german. another almost, both in writing and in tone.
~~
1 comment:
2005/2006, I did that thing with the library that made the librarians wonder whether I was using or abusing their spaces. I forgot my genre and read anything I could and in that experiemce I found that just like age, which is just a a number, genre, can be a just a fad. Writing is all that it is. Writing is what makes it here.
Post a Comment