Pre-Dialogue, II

...this insignificant interval between death and dying. One cannot accept or refuse, O death, emptiness, air, sun. The "I" is the miracle of the "You." "This follows from a certain logic," he said: "the 'I' to designate the 'You,' the 'You' to justify the 'I,' and 'He' for disappearing." There is no present. There is a past haunted by the future and a future tormented by the past. The present is the time of writing, both obsessed with and cut off from an out-of-time brimming with life. (Now that all is silent within me, will I, who have hardly known how to talk to myself, still be able to speak? I almost cannot hear myself any more. On this 'almost' I shall rest my words or, rather, what stub- bornly still wants to be words—though they be deaf to the call of the world—an take entire charge of them. Expressing nothing, they will express me all the better.)