Porchia: a man of few words

Voices (Voces) by Antonio Porchia
– as translated by W.S. Merwin –
Excerpts Relevant to the School of No Media.

Antonio Porchia

I do not agree with you. But if you do not agree with yourself either, then I do agree with you.
When I believe that the stone is stone and the cloud cloud, I am in a state of unconsciousness.
We become aware of the void as we fill it.
In full light we are not even a shadow.
The void terrifies you and you open our eyes wider.
It is when I assent to nothing that I assent to all.
He who says the truth says almost nothing.
Man talks about everything, and he talks about everything as though the understanding of everything were all inside him.
Nothing is not only nothing. It is also our prison.
Nothing that is complete lives.
Nothing–it is said of this, of that, of almost everything. Only if it is never said of nothing.
What words say does not last. The words last. Because words are always the same, and what they say is never the same.
The chains that bind us most closely are the ones we have broken.
A thing, until it is everything, is noise, and once it is everything it is silence.
Where we have put something, we always believe that there is something, though there may be nothing there.
And you still find something, you have not lost everything. You still have to lose something.
The loss of a thing affects us until we have lost it altogether.
When I believe in nothing I do not want to meet you when you believe in nothing.
Everything is nothing, but afterwards. After having suffered everything.
Only a few arrive at nothing, because the way is long.
I know what I have given you. I do not know what you have received.
Yes, I will try to be. Because I believe that not being is arrogant.
One lives in the hope of becoming a memory.