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1 Mr Cogito never trusted tricks of the imagination the piano at the top of the Alps played false concerts for him he didn't appreciate labyrinths the Sphinx filled him with loathing he lived in a house with no basement without mirrors or dialectics jungles of tangled images were not his home he would rarely soar on the wings of a metaphor and then he fell like Icarus into the embrace of the Great Mother he adored tautologies explanations idem per idem that a bird is a bird slavery means slavery a knife is a knife death remains death he loved the flat horizon a straight line the gravity of the earth 2 Mr Cogito will be numbered among the species minores he will accept indifferently the verdict of future scholars of the letter he used the imagination for entirely different purposes he wanted to make it an instrument of compassion he wanted to understand to the very end - Pascal's night - the nature of a diamond - the melancholy of the prophets - Achilles' wrath - the madness of those who kill - the dreams of Mary Stuart - Neanderthal fear - the despair of the last Aztecs - Nietzsche's long death throes - the joy of the painter of Lascaux - the rise and fall of an oak - the rise and fall of Rome and so to bring the dead back to life to preserve the covenant Mr Cogito's imagination has the motion of a pendulum it crosses with precision from suffering to suffering there is no place in it for the artificial fires of poetry he would like to remain faithful to uncertain clarity Zbigniew Herbert |