WEBVTT

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Well, now I will read this
small, two short pieces

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of [? pearls ?].

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They are part of a chapter
of my book of essays, which

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is called "Little Larousse."

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And I think you know
what Little Larousse is,

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the French encyclopedia which
is called Le Petit Larousse.

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And so the chapter of the book
is like this petit larousse.

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The first fragment
has the title,

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"After the end of the world."

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Are we already living
after the end of the world?

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The historian will say our
epoch has been preceded

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by countless ends of the world.

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Ominous Babylon fell.

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The Romans looked with
horror at the barbarians

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and at the Christians,
Byzantium fell.

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For the people living
in those civilizations

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like bees in a hive, these
were terrifying catastrophes--

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real ends of the world.

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Carthage fell.

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After all, they
could not have known

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that in 100, 200, or 500
years, the scar would heal

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and something of
ancient Rome would be

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preserved in Christian Europe.

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But even closer in time to us,
or in times relatively recent,

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was not World War 1
an end of the world,

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not just for the boys
who fell at Verdun,

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but also for the majority of
the inhabitants of Europe?

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The old order was ending and
an uncertain chaotic tomorrow

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beginning.

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Joy reigned only in countries
like Poland or Czechoslovakia,

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to whom the end of the
world brought independence.

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And World War II, the
annihilation of the Jews, two

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uprisings in Warsaw, dust and
graves and tenement yards.

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And then again, life.

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Daisies, laundry drying
on white lines, books,

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suddenly older by 1,000 years
from preceding epochs and used

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bookshops.

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Various other degrees of the
tragic and ends of the world.

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For example, the predicament
of German Jews, writers,

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intellectuals, who had
forgotten their Jewish

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ancestry and belong to the great
masters of the German tongue.

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Suddenly they find out they
have been sentenced to death

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while the janitor of their
tenement house, a man speaking

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a dark, obscure dialect
receives the gift

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of temporary immortality and
is a better, more real German.

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The end of the world.

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The emaciated Mandelstam
dying in a concentration camp.

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Baczynski, a Polish
poet, killed in a battle

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during the Warsaw uprising.

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Polish officers driven to Katyn
in the spring with the April

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sun shining and shrubs
unfurling their first leaves.

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How should one live after
so many ends of the world?

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Adorno felt that after
Auschwitz, poetry was not

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possible, but there is laundry
drying on the white clothes

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line.

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You hear a laughing child.

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The child will grow up,
become a policeman or priest.

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That is why I am of the
opinion that after the end

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of the world, one
should live as always.

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One should remember obviously
about what took place

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and what will take place.

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And in spite of
this, live as always.

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Take long walks,
watch the sun set,

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read poems, write
poems, listen to music,

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help others, impede
tyrants, rejoice and laugh

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and worry about
death, as always.

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