Well, now I will read this small, two short pieces
of [? pearls ?].
They are part of a chapter of my book of essays, which
is called "Little Larousse."
And I think you know what Little Larousse is,
the French encyclopedia which is called Le Petit Larousse.
And so the chapter of the book is like this petit larousse.
The first fragment has the title,
"After the end of the world."
Are we already living after the end of the world?
The historian will say our epoch has been preceded
by countless ends of the world.
Ominous Babylon fell.
The Romans looked with horror at the barbarians
and at the Christians, Byzantium fell.
For the people living in those civilizations
like bees in a hive, these were terrifying catastrophes--
real ends of the world.
Carthage fell.
After all, they could not have known
that in 100, 200, or 500 years, the scar would heal
and something of ancient Rome would be
preserved in Christian Europe.
But even closer in time to us, or in times relatively recent,
was not World War 1 an end of the world,
not just for the boys who fell at Verdun,
but also for the majority of the inhabitants of Europe?
The old order was ending and an uncertain chaotic tomorrow
beginning.
Joy reigned only in countries like Poland or Czechoslovakia,
to whom the end of the world brought independence.
And World War II, the annihilation of the Jews, two
uprisings in Warsaw, dust and graves and tenement yards.
And then again, life.
Daisies, laundry drying on white lines, books,
suddenly older by 1,000 years from preceding epochs and used
bookshops.
Various other degrees of the tragic and ends of the world.
For example, the predicament of German Jews, writers,
intellectuals, who had forgotten their Jewish
ancestry and belong to the great masters of the German tongue.
Suddenly they find out they have been sentenced to death
while the janitor of their tenement house, a man speaking
a dark, obscure dialect receives the gift
of temporary immortality and is a better, more real German.
The end of the world.
The emaciated Mandelstam dying in a concentration camp.
Baczynski, a Polish poet, killed in a battle
during the Warsaw uprising.
Polish officers driven to Katyn in the spring with the April
sun shining and shrubs unfurling their first leaves.
How should one live after so many ends of the world?
Adorno felt that after Auschwitz, poetry was not
possible, but there is laundry drying on the white clothes
line.
You hear a laughing child.
The child will grow up, become a policeman or priest.
That is why I am of the opinion that after the end
of the world, one should live as always.
One should remember obviously about what took place
and what will take place.
And in spite of this, live as always.
Take long walks, watch the sun set,
read poems, write poems, listen to music,
help others, impede tyrants, rejoice and laugh
and worry about death, as always.