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Quote again from Night Train to Lisbon “ESTOU A VIVER EM MIM PROPRIO COMO NUM COMBOIO A ANDAR. I LIVE IN MYSELF AS IN A MOVING TRAIN. I didn't board voluntarily, didn't have the choice and don't know the name of the destination. One day in the distant past I woke up in my compartment and felt rolling. It was exciting, I listened to the pounding of the wheels, held my head in the wind and savoured the speed of the things passing by me. I wished the train would never interrupt its journey. By no means did I want it to stop somewhere forever. It was in Coimbra, on a hard bench in the lecture hall, that I became aware: I can't get off. I can't change the tracks or the direction. I don't determine the pace. I don't see the locomotive and can't see who's driving it and whether the engineer makes a reliable impression. I don't know if he reads the signals correctly and notices if a switch is worked wrong. I can't change the compartment. In the corridor, I see people passing by and think: Maybe it looks completely different in their compartment than in mine. But I can't go there and see, a conductor I never saw and never will see has bolted and sealed the compartment door. I open the window, lean far out and see that everybody else is doing the same thing. The train makes a soft curve. The last cars are still in the tunnel and the first are going on. Maybe the train is travelling in a circle , over and over, without anybody noticing it, not even the engineer? I have no idea how long the train is. I see all the others craning their neck to see and understand something. I call a greeting, but the wind blows away my words. (..) Sometimes I'm startled and think the train can go off the rails any time. Indeed I usually frighten myself with the thought. But in rare, incandescent moments, it flashes through me like a blessed lightning bolt. I wake up and the landscape of the others draws past. Sometimes at breakneck speed so that I hardly keep up with their moods and their exuberant nonsense; then again with tormenting slowness when they keep saying and doing the same thing. I am glad about the window-pane between them and me. So I see their wishes and plans but they can't open fire on me unhindered. I'm glad when the train picks up speed and they disappear. The wishes of others: What do we do with them when they strike us? I press my forehead to the compartment window and concentrate with all my might. I would like once, one single time, to grasp what is going on outside. Really grasp it. So that it doesn't slip away from me again immediately. It fails. Everything goes much too fast, even when the train stops between stations. The next impression wipes away the last one. Memory is overheated, I'm breathlessly busy retrospectively assembling the fleeting images of the event into an illusion of something intelligible. I always come too late, how fast the light of attention to things scurries off. Everything is always already past. I'm always left behind empty-handed. Never am I there. Not even when the inside of the compartment is reflected at night in the windowpane. I love tunnels. They're the symbol of hope: some time it will be bright again. If by chance it is not night. Sometimes I get a visit in the compartment. I don't know how that's possible despite the bolted and sealed door, but it does happen. Usually the visit comes at the wrong time. They're people from the present, often also from the past. They come and go as they like, they're inconsiderate and bother me. I have to talk with them. It's all temporary, not binding, doomed to oblivion; conversations on a train. A few visitors disappear without a trace. Others leave sticky and stinking traces, ventilating doesn't help. Then I'd like to rip out all the furnishings of the compartment and replace them with new ones. The trip is long. Some days I wish it were endless. Those are rare, precious days. Other days I'm glad to know that there will be a last tunnel, where the train will come ta a halt for ever.” Ryszard |
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5/23/2016 5:18 am |
managed to watch the movie version, enjoy the ending scene of what he said to her about the discovery of his adventure in Lisbon. It's truly simulating and inspiring, perhaps it's the truth how we should live. Thanks for sharing again. Ryszard
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