Laelius de amicitia Blackout
I have tried 'writing' some poetry through the technique called 'blackout poetry', by inking a cheap copy of Cicero's De Amicitia, a Latin philosophical treatise on friendship from the first century BC. It is a popular, even trendy, technique, but practicing it for the first time inspired some reflections on the act of reading. I will interpolate some examples and some reflections.
Italian text: fede, piacevolmente sapiente; io, poi, presa al fianco di lui. mi ricordo intimi sulla bocca mortale, affettuosissima. la morte di quella sembra avere più peso dell'amicizia. non c'è stato nessun[o], solo te
English translation: faithful, pleasantly wise; I, then, taken by his side. I remember, intimate, on my mortal mouth, so loving. its death seems to be heavier than friendship. There has not been anyone, only you
To do blackout poetry, one would think, you want start reading a text, scanning for words that go well together. Then, after carefully selecting the words that work well together, you erase the rest, so as to connect very distant words like in a constellation - by means of darkening the space between. It seems a rather artificial process, and indeed poetry is an artificial process, where inspiration is bridled into metrics, rhythms, sounds. However, I feel like this technique bears witness to something else, which concerns the poetic in itself, but also the very innocent act of reading. Perhaps, it is a comment about the uninterrupted flow of every normal action.
English translation: I shouldn't have left
This page, perhaps, better shows what I have in mind. It is not really a poem. Well, who can say what a poem is. A statement like that acquires a poetic depth through its context - voice, pacing, a page where every other word is ignored, erased. Not just because of its immediate meaning. I shouldn't have left. A better translation would be: I shouldn't have distanced myself. I shouldn't have waited, silently, allowing the distance between us to grow, allowing the space between us to tear. I shouldn't have let the flame get faint. I am reading Cicero - here, I will undo the blackout action to bring the mechanism to light, ruining the magic of this page - he says: nec enim ab isto officio, quod semper usurpavi cum valerem, abduci incommodo meo debui. I shouldn't have left this job, which I always worked on while I was doing well, just because of some misfortune. Cicero is talking about his own business. I... could not care less. Well perhaps I could, normally, when everything is fine enough for me to care about Cicero, or about any other philosophy or philosopher. Not now. The words I shouldn't have left hit my eyes with violence. They are absolutely incidental in Cicero's discourse, they don't really mean anything taken by themselves. They mean everything to me. Like Cicero, I too have neglected my normal occupations because I am not doing so well. Because of some 'misfortune'. The misfortune being, that I left.
Italian text: angosciarsi profondamente, la prima volta anzitempo, la seconda troppo tardi
English translation: profoundly being in anguish, the first time too early, the second time too late
Oh, the moment of sorrow and regret. How untimely my anguish has always been. Getting lost in a thousand anxieties, being blinded by all sorts of self-inflicted insecurities and fears, paralysed by dread, pre-mortem mourning. I have lived in and of anticipations, neglecting what I really had. Something so incredible, precious, and rare, enough to salvage me from that constant fear of loss. For few moments, sure, but oh I knew I had nothing to fear. Many times I have jumped off the roof, landing on soft and safe ground. At the same time, I should have seen that I was hurting the very thing that sustained me. Blind to good, blind to evil. Actually - I did see that. The same way I saw my own safety and my own luck. Doubly afraid, of losing what I had, and of losing what I had. When Cicero writes graviter angi, being in great pain, he is talking about how selfish it is to sink into despair for someone else's death, to be too preoccupied with one's loss to see that, a friend's death is nothing evil for them - a greater life awaits them in the hereafter. Later, he is simply talking about Scipio's political career - he was made consul twice, both times at the wrong time. My eyes read Cicero's consolation, but my heart is not here. Or, it is, enough to pick up these few words - the selfishness of the pain caused by one's absence, the untimeliness of life. Why am I reading if this book is so meaningless to me, if the only things that matter - the only words I truly read - happen to me so decontextualised, so fatally? We read only what we want to read, only what we are allowed, forced, to read. Blackout poetry, to me, renders this explicit.
Italian text: la vita gli tolse la consapevolezza di morire
English translation: life took away their awareness of dying
The original text is completely denaturated. Not life, but its sudden end deprived Scipio of his awareness. A (almost) quick and painless death. My eyes want to hear no reasons - life made them forgetful of the constant process of dying. And losing. And growing and alone. Or at least it soothed their fear. My same own. Oh they were life itself. Sadness does not distract me from the book. It brings itself into its pages. That is all they mean. That is what anything means.
Italian text: l'anima divina pensava del corpo nulla di bene e nulla di male
English translation: the divine soul thought of the body as nothing good and nothing bad
Blacking out the pages of this treatise, I have felt the weight of inevitability. Mainly, the neural inevitability of thought processes - how anxieties and melancholias arise through the most fortuitous and artificial of cues. How hard it is to let go of certain habits of thought and heart. And how hard it is to do anything at all, to be grounded in reality, to know what you have. To see the page in front of you. But also, the inevitability of poetry. The mechanisms that make us blind to reality, those that erase most of the words on a page, or most of the objects in our sight field, work poetically. They hang onto one meaningful word - one that triggers something inside - and expand its meaning, set it free, to then hold onto another word, drawing the poetic pattern among them. Like a bee buzzing from flower to flower. The black marker knows what to erase, and where to stop - a poem is sung out of silences.