(via Orcinus)


"...these four melancholic writers [Kemal, Koçu, Tanpınar, Hısar] ...knew enough to realize that in Turkey they would never achieve a voice as strong and authentic as Mallarmé's or Proust's. But after long deliberation they found an important and authentic subject: the decline and fall of the great empire into which they were born." --Orhan Pamuk, I˙stanbul (2004)


"In 1971 the Matica even suggested that, if the language of command in the army was to be 'Serbian,' then sailors ought to obey commands in 'Croatian' on the grounds that 80 per cent of the Yugoslavian army operated in Croatian waters..." --Language and Nationalism in Europe

    "Warfare Lite" (Pessoa III.)

Lost in the sacred dark, by the stone bridge, be.
Shadow filigree drapes. Your heart made whole
by barren fiat. There, where i am me,
the body is a prayer from cap to sole. [soul]
Honk at the one at the head of the line, unseeing.
Fighter tamed by sun in the aftertime,
go softly now. You've had your fill of being,
and finding all your fruits consumed by rime;
a morning drive across this ruined world.
In the aftertime, plant soldiers that are wise
with wounding. Hey, into the Zone we're hurled
only a moment, dodge by mad surmise,
and find by hap if looth at all. O rage
for certainty, let gallows-mistletoe assuage.