Emmanuel L. Di Rossetti
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Excerpt from The Hussar. Poem by Alvaro Mutis
[…] The centuries-old must of the wine, which is watered in the cellars. The strength of his arm and his bronze shadow. The stained-glass window that recounts his loves and recalls his last battle grows darker each day under the smoke of lamps fueled by bad oil. Like the wail of a siren… Continue reading
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Nocturne. Poem by Alvaro Mutis
Fever draws the song of an androgynous bird, paving the way for insatiable pleasure that branches out and traverses the body of the earth. Oh! The fruitless voyage around the islands, where women offer the traveler the cool sway of their breasts and the terrifying depth in the hollow of their hips! The tender skin… Continue reading
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Christian Testimony – 2
When I started this blog, the idea of writing about the liturgy came to me very quickly. Not to claim the status of an expert, but to share my experience of what represents the heart of a Christian's life. So there were two paths that had to converge: I had to describe the Mass (and… Continue reading
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In the polluted air of our societies
“We are told that the air of the world is unbreathable. I agree. But the first Christians found each morning at their doorstep an atmosphere saturated with vice, idols, and incense offered to the gods. For more than two hundred years, they were relegated, slandered, and marginalized by the current of the social river that swept them away… Continue reading
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On totalitarian states
“Totalitarian states, which alternately use lies and violence (lies to cover up violence and violence to silence those who uncover the lies), owe most of their success to having paralyzed the forces of reaction against deceit and lies. This is on a moral level… Continue reading
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Speech by Donoso Cortès (1850)
“Regular armies are today the only thing preventing civilization from descending into barbarism. Today, a spectacle new in history, new in the world, unfolds before our eyes: when, gentlemen, has the world ever seen, except in our time, that civilization is attained through arms and… Continue reading
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Hannah Arendt on human life
Modern theories, whose raison d'être is to obscure human nature and thus instill in humanity an overabundance of belief in itself, perpetuate this constant obfuscation. This constant obfuscation draws upon Simone de Beauvoir's thoughts on human life. Constant obfuscation, uprooting, infantilization… We must tell humanity that it… Continue reading
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Unamuno on human life
“I don’t want to die, no, I don’t, nor do I want to; I want to live forever, forever; and to live myself, this poor self, that I am and feel myself to be today and here, and that is why the problem of the duration of my… Continue reading
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Yeats on human life
“When I think of all the books I have read,” Yeats said, “all the wise words I have heard, all the anxieties I have caused my parents… all the hopes I have had, every life weighed in the balance of my own seems to me a preparation for some…” Continue reading
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Simone de Beauvoir on human life
“To declare that life is absurd is to say that it will never have meaning. To say that it is ambiguous is to decide that its meaning is never fixed, that it must always be earned.”* A formidable declaration of powerlessness draped in an expression of the will to power, or how desire must regulate, govern life. This sentence is… Continue reading
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Pascal on human life
And this excerpt from Pascal, an avowed and forced intimacy: “When I consider the short duration of my life, absorbed in the eternity that precedes and follows it, the small space that I fill and even that I see, lost in the infinite immensity of spaces that I am unaware of and that are unaware of me, I am frightened and astonished to see myself…” Continue reading
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Tolstoy on human life
This morning, I stumbled—literally—upon this passage from Tolstoy's Confession, which is a pure marvel and so aptly foreshadows The Death of Ivan Ilyich, written seven years later: “At first it seemed to me that these were gratuitous, inappropriate requests. I thought that all this was already known, that if… Continue reading
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The abandonment of Benedict XVI
“Eli, Eli lama sabachthani?” When Benedict XVI signaled, in a few simple words, that he was renouncing the papacy, it sent shockwaves through the world and deeply affected Catholics. The most outlandish rumors circulated, and everyone wondered about the reasons for this decision, which, even if it… Continue reading
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The death of intimacy
Everywhere—on the internet, in newspapers, or on television—personal experience is displayed, exhibited, and presented as the definitive reference. This indecency rests on a reversal of values. It is based primarily and ubiquitously on the idea of sameness. The idea of sameness thinks: “I lived this; my experience reflects a universal feeling. I want to say what…” Continue reading