Yoon Kim
@yoonkim.bsky.social
“And isn’t the mind a little like the air? However immense the space is that you open in front of it, it fills it.”
— Marcel Proust
from “Jacques Lefelde (The Stranger),” in The Mysterious Correspondent, trans. @avecsesdoigts.bsky.social
— Marcel Proust
from “Jacques Lefelde (The Stranger),” in The Mysterious Correspondent, trans. @avecsesdoigts.bsky.social
February 16, 2026 at 8:30 PM
“And isn’t the mind a little like the air? However immense the space is that you open in front of it, it fills it.”
— Marcel Proust
from “Jacques Lefelde (The Stranger),” in The Mysterious Correspondent, trans. @avecsesdoigts.bsky.social
— Marcel Proust
from “Jacques Lefelde (The Stranger),” in The Mysterious Correspondent, trans. @avecsesdoigts.bsky.social
Reposted by Yoon Kim
Missing the ocean 💙
February 15, 2026 at 11:58 PM
Missing the ocean 💙
. . . The mind
Is so hospitable, taking in everything
Like boarders, and you don’t see until
It’s all over how little there was to learn
Once the stench of knowledge has dissipated, and the trouvailles
Of every one of the senses fallen back.
— John Ashbery, “Houseboat Days”
Is so hospitable, taking in everything
Like boarders, and you don’t see until
It’s all over how little there was to learn
Once the stench of knowledge has dissipated, and the trouvailles
Of every one of the senses fallen back.
— John Ashbery, “Houseboat Days”
February 16, 2026 at 7:40 PM
. . . The mind
Is so hospitable, taking in everything
Like boarders, and you don’t see until
It’s all over how little there was to learn
Once the stench of knowledge has dissipated, and the trouvailles
Of every one of the senses fallen back.
— John Ashbery, “Houseboat Days”
Is so hospitable, taking in everything
Like boarders, and you don’t see until
It’s all over how little there was to learn
Once the stench of knowledge has dissipated, and the trouvailles
Of every one of the senses fallen back.
— John Ashbery, “Houseboat Days”
February 16, 2026 at 5:27 PM
Roland Barthes:
“Were I a writer, and dead, how I would love it if my life … were to reduce itself to a few details, a few preferences, a few inflections, let us say: to ‘biographemes’ whose distinction and mobility might go beyond any fate and come to touch … some future body.”
“Were I a writer, and dead, how I would love it if my life … were to reduce itself to a few details, a few preferences, a few inflections, let us say: to ‘biographemes’ whose distinction and mobility might go beyond any fate and come to touch … some future body.”
February 16, 2026 at 5:17 PM
Roland Barthes:
“Were I a writer, and dead, how I would love it if my life … were to reduce itself to a few details, a few preferences, a few inflections, let us say: to ‘biographemes’ whose distinction and mobility might go beyond any fate and come to touch … some future body.”
“Were I a writer, and dead, how I would love it if my life … were to reduce itself to a few details, a few preferences, a few inflections, let us say: to ‘biographemes’ whose distinction and mobility might go beyond any fate and come to touch … some future body.”
“The wish to have a soul and to be this selfsame soul uniquely through eternity must pale, remarkably, before the soul’s desire to have a body and a lifetime. The soul would gladly give its kingdom for a horse. Or perhaps a donkey?”
— Paul Valéry (Analects, tr. Gilbert)
— Paul Valéry (Analects, tr. Gilbert)
February 16, 2026 at 4:47 PM
“The wish to have a soul and to be this selfsame soul uniquely through eternity must pale, remarkably, before the soul’s desire to have a body and a lifetime. The soul would gladly give its kingdom for a horse. Or perhaps a donkey?”
— Paul Valéry (Analects, tr. Gilbert)
— Paul Valéry (Analects, tr. Gilbert)
Reminds me of Proust:
“It is in sickness that we are compelled to recognise that we do not live alone but are chained to a being from a different realm, from whom we are worlds apart, who has no knowledge of us and by whom it is impossible to make ourselves understood: our body. [+]
“It is in sickness that we are compelled to recognise that we do not live alone but are chained to a being from a different realm, from whom we are worlds apart, who has no knowledge of us and by whom it is impossible to make ourselves understood: our body. [+]
February 16, 2026 at 4:37 PM
Reminds me of Proust:
“It is in sickness that we are compelled to recognise that we do not live alone but are chained to a being from a different realm, from whom we are worlds apart, who has no knowledge of us and by whom it is impossible to make ourselves understood: our body. [+]
“It is in sickness that we are compelled to recognise that we do not live alone but are chained to a being from a different realm, from whom we are worlds apart, who has no knowledge of us and by whom it is impossible to make ourselves understood: our body. [+]
“[…] if the body had been easier to understand, nobody would have thought that we had a mind.”
— Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature
— Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature
February 16, 2026 at 4:29 PM
“[…] if the body had been easier to understand, nobody would have thought that we had a mind.”
— Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature
— Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature
When I learned to read and write, I devoured books, and I thought that they were like trees, like animals, something that is born. I didn’t know there was an author behind it all. Eventually, I discovered that that’s how it was, and I said, “I want that, too.”
— Clarice Lispector (interview, 1976)
— Clarice Lispector (interview, 1976)
February 15, 2026 at 8:48 PM
When I learned to read and write, I devoured books, and I thought that they were like trees, like animals, something that is born. I didn’t know there was an author behind it all. Eventually, I discovered that that’s how it was, and I said, “I want that, too.”
— Clarice Lispector (interview, 1976)
— Clarice Lispector (interview, 1976)
“I shall read a passage of Shakspeare every Sunday at ten o Clock—you read one at the same time and we shall be as near each other as blind bodies can be in the same room.”
— John Keats in a letter (1818)
— John Keats in a letter (1818)
February 15, 2026 at 7:10 PM
“I shall read a passage of Shakspeare every Sunday at ten o Clock—you read one at the same time and we shall be as near each other as blind bodies can be in the same room.”
— John Keats in a letter (1818)
— John Keats in a letter (1818)
“Life forms a surface that acts as if it could not be otherwise, but under its skin things are pounding and pulsing.”
(Musil, The Man without Qualities)
(Musil, The Man without Qualities)
February 15, 2026 at 6:20 PM
“Life forms a surface that acts as if it could not be otherwise, but under its skin things are pounding and pulsing.”
(Musil, The Man without Qualities)
(Musil, The Man without Qualities)
“Das Leben bildet eine Oberfläche, die so tut, als ob sie so sein müßte, wie sie ist, aber unter ihrer Haut treiben und drängen die Dinge.”
— Robert Musil, MoE
— Robert Musil, MoE
February 15, 2026 at 6:18 PM
“Das Leben bildet eine Oberfläche, die so tut, als ob sie so sein müßte, wie sie ist, aber unter ihrer Haut treiben und drängen die Dinge.”
— Robert Musil, MoE
— Robert Musil, MoE
“And the proof is that we cannot even imagine another way of being. We are stuck here for eternity and we are not even aware that we are stuck…
We were surprised once, long ago; and now we can never be surprised again.”
— John Ashbery, “The Recital”
We were surprised once, long ago; and now we can never be surprised again.”
— John Ashbery, “The Recital”
February 15, 2026 at 6:17 PM
“And the proof is that we cannot even imagine another way of being. We are stuck here for eternity and we are not even aware that we are stuck…
We were surprised once, long ago; and now we can never be surprised again.”
— John Ashbery, “The Recital”
We were surprised once, long ago; and now we can never be surprised again.”
— John Ashbery, “The Recital”
“But from time to time. From time to time. What tenderness in these little words, what savagery.”
(Beckett, Molloy)
(Beckett, Molloy)
February 14, 2026 at 6:23 PM
“But from time to time. From time to time. What tenderness in these little words, what savagery.”
(Beckett, Molloy)
(Beckett, Molloy)
“Mais de temps en temps. De temps en temps. Quelle bonté dans ces petits mots, quelle férocité.”
(Beckett, Molloy)
(Beckett, Molloy)
February 14, 2026 at 6:22 PM
“Mais de temps en temps. De temps en temps. Quelle bonté dans ces petits mots, quelle férocité.”
(Beckett, Molloy)
(Beckett, Molloy)
Reposted by Yoon Kim
Along the way
In the neighborhood
In the neighborhood
February 13, 2026 at 7:29 PM
Along the way
In the neighborhood
In the neighborhood
“The reverse of melancholy is always irony.”
— W. G. Sebald (interview, 1998)
— W. G. Sebald (interview, 1998)
February 13, 2026 at 8:10 PM
“The reverse of melancholy is always irony.”
— W. G. Sebald (interview, 1998)
— W. G. Sebald (interview, 1998)
“There’s not too fine a distinction between humor and tragedy, that even tragedy is in a way walking a tightrope between the ridiculous—between the bizarre and the terrible.”
— William Faulkner (UVA, March 9, 1957)
— William Faulkner (UVA, March 9, 1957)
February 13, 2026 at 8:10 PM
“There’s not too fine a distinction between humor and tragedy, that even tragedy is in a way walking a tightrope between the ridiculous—between the bizarre and the terrible.”
— William Faulkner (UVA, March 9, 1957)
— William Faulkner (UVA, March 9, 1957)
“How will we manage to disappear?”
(Blanchot, The Infinite Conversation)
(Blanchot, The Infinite Conversation)
February 13, 2026 at 5:11 PM
“How will we manage to disappear?”
(Blanchot, The Infinite Conversation)
(Blanchot, The Infinite Conversation)
… and [she] is now part of the drift called “the infinite.”
I cannot tell how Eternity seems.
It sweeps around me like a sea…
— Emily Dickinson (letter, 1882)
I cannot tell how Eternity seems.
It sweeps around me like a sea…
— Emily Dickinson (letter, 1882)
February 13, 2026 at 5:09 PM
… and [she] is now part of the drift called “the infinite.”
I cannot tell how Eternity seems.
It sweeps around me like a sea…
— Emily Dickinson (letter, 1882)
I cannot tell how Eternity seems.
It sweeps around me like a sea…
— Emily Dickinson (letter, 1882)
“She is the articulation of forgetting…”
(Gertrude Stein, “Two”)
(Gertrude Stein, “Two”)
February 12, 2026 at 7:14 PM
“She is the articulation of forgetting…”
(Gertrude Stein, “Two”)
(Gertrude Stein, “Two”)
Just came to mind:
“Passion means to forget oneself. But you do things in order to enrich yourselves. C’est ça. You haven’t the least notion how repulsively egoistic that is of you…”
— Clavdia to Hans Castorp (The Magic Mountain)
“Passion means to forget oneself. But you do things in order to enrich yourselves. C’est ça. You haven’t the least notion how repulsively egoistic that is of you…”
— Clavdia to Hans Castorp (The Magic Mountain)
February 12, 2026 at 6:09 PM
Just came to mind:
“Passion means to forget oneself. But you do things in order to enrich yourselves. C’est ça. You haven’t the least notion how repulsively egoistic that is of you…”
— Clavdia to Hans Castorp (The Magic Mountain)
“Passion means to forget oneself. But you do things in order to enrich yourselves. C’est ça. You haven’t the least notion how repulsively egoistic that is of you…”
— Clavdia to Hans Castorp (The Magic Mountain)
Rhyme is the public truth of language, sound paced out in the shared places, the echoes are no-one’s private property or achievement; thus any grace (truly achieved) of sound is political, part of the world of motion and place in which language is like weather, the air we breathe.
J.H. Prynne, 1968
J.H. Prynne, 1968
February 12, 2026 at 5:12 PM
Rhyme is the public truth of language, sound paced out in the shared places, the echoes are no-one’s private property or achievement; thus any grace (truly achieved) of sound is political, part of the world of motion and place in which language is like weather, the air we breathe.
J.H. Prynne, 1968
J.H. Prynne, 1968
Lately, Prynne keeps coming to mind.
Perhaps it’s time to return to these letters.
(twice abandoned)
Perhaps it’s time to return to these letters.
(twice abandoned)
February 12, 2026 at 4:58 PM
Lately, Prynne keeps coming to mind.
Perhaps it’s time to return to these letters.
(twice abandoned)
Perhaps it’s time to return to these letters.
(twice abandoned)
“When it’s in a book I don’t think it’ll hurt any more . . . exist any more. It’ll be wiped out. That’s what I find, with this story I’ve had with you. That writing . . . one of the things writing does is wipe things out. Replace them.”
— Duras, Emily L. (tr. Barbara Bray)
— Duras, Emily L. (tr. Barbara Bray)
February 11, 2026 at 8:30 PM
“When it’s in a book I don’t think it’ll hurt any more . . . exist any more. It’ll be wiped out. That’s what I find, with this story I’ve had with you. That writing . . . one of the things writing does is wipe things out. Replace them.”
— Duras, Emily L. (tr. Barbara Bray)
— Duras, Emily L. (tr. Barbara Bray)