It is kind of lazy to just grab someone else's quote and re-use it like that, but I found this one so poetic and unusual that we can make an exception. Today, on Ceronetti's "Altrove" (his collection of almost daily quotes selected by him for the newspaper La Stampa), Anna Maria Ortese (note: I mean this quote to be "unusual" compared to what is usually quoted by Ceronetti himself and others on the italian media. It is quite straightforward in itself):

Sometimes I find myself looking into the pages of this or that history of a nation, or of all the nations, or just forgotten chronicles, and I watch emerging and passing by like lights faces of joyless women, yet more resistant than the others, faces of women braver than men, in the act of saying goodbye to someone or looking towards a aurora impossible for them. Women who left orders, flags, testaments, without whom each one of us wouldn't be a thing. Us, without these women, wouldn't even be. They are the woman, that is, humanity. Here is what I mean for being a woman: to be a part -- surfaced today -- of such obscure groups, of their bravery, to recall forever their ensigns of fire and light.

There's something else, therefore, at the origins of pain, which isn't at all the brutal game of an instrument indifferent to life and for each the same. In truth, this instrument is tighten in a well different way for any of us. And we will never know what in reality is physical pain if we ignore what makes the individual, in a system morphologically identical for all.

(RENÉ LERICHE, La Chirurgie de la Douleur - 1938. Quoted today by Guido Ceronetti on lastampa.it)

At first Libi wasn't ready for it-- she had never tried, she had tried once, it was unbearable pain-- This is why now, when I ass-fuck her, I direct her with orders like keep quiet stay still hold it now shut.
Once trying to-- I said something like that, in a brusque way, and her body suddenly relaxed and welcomed me. She became silent-- swallowed-- I smiled and thought: women. My mother would kill me for that smile-- but that's how it went.
I couldn't see her face and I wondered what was going on with the pain-- I pulled her shoulder, her hair but nothing happened. She was resting her cheek against the pillow-- her eyes undetectable in a haze of hair and lashes-- 't was like she was buried in a book-- I am a selfish lover and went on.

Does this instinctive masochism have something to do with not feeling guilty and letting go-- because-- for a second, the body is convinced that there is no way out, no escape from it?
Orders and rough manners, that's for her-- how the pain is suddenly bearable, tidying the room for the arrival of pleasure.
Sometimes I wish I could feel the same when I have sex-- not having a way out. The recurring forwarding of moments of exit from the moment --taking decisions-- can estrange you-- It is more about being an individual than being a male.

So mistreat her, call her names. I know it is like a comment --to the solitude of the bodies that are having sex-- tangled together but isolated-- like nearby teeth in a mysterious mouth.
The mouth is chewing our feelings putting them together-- but the manducating tooth above doesn't know the first thing of the wave of pain or pleasure passing through --the tooth below.

--In picture, above: when she reads, by italyisfalling.com, 2006

He sat at one of the tables outdoor impatiently imagining the small bundle of warm flaky pastry and almond paste, the kipfler, that he was going to eat in a little while altogether with a cappuccino with foam sprinkled with cocoa. He opened the newspapers, browsed them, looked at some of the titles but the kipfler on the background of Saint Marco square deserted, the salt of the air in the blue sky with small pink clouds overcame all the titles of the newspapers.
"Politics, politicians..." he thought with a finicky thought as if looking at another animal species by the unworthy disgraceful appearance. "Politicians... what do they know of the kipfler?

What philosophers can possibily understand... just two colourful cloths drying in a alley shook by the wind give an idea of the inadequacy, the impotence to clinch, of their doctrines.

What is possible to be if not desperately conservators? There's only to conserve: stones animals flowers weeds hills corners outlines walls vaults dome vaults loggias gardens tombs statues paintings windows vegetables gardens humidity stalactites palms olives holm-oaks willows shadows lights seasons books metopes stuccos small tables chests of drawers crafts proverbs parlances cookery tools letter sheets postcards railway stations, forcing the institutions to mainly serve at this desperate purpose, engaging an absurd and fantastic fight against Time and Necessity. For some twenty, thirty years... The defeat would be fated, tragic but dignified, the magistrates butchered, legislators thrown into the rivers, but it will be an ending without surrender at least, a scrap of real history.

The italian writer Guido Ceronetti, who might be called a great pessimist (but who probably consider himself a lucid realist), gifts his reader with a variety of thoughts about the dissolution of traditions and habits in Italy, and this was one of them. Once again, it's from the book Viaggio in Italia (Journey to Italy), 1981-1983. Translation by Italy is Falling, as always.

Recently on this blog we declared our refusal to oppose to any changing force "that may modify traditions, languages, habits, recurrences, creeds, ethnicity in our country or in any other country". Well, we probably were making a show of our cynicism. Or may be it was all about not deceiving ourselves expecting to be saved by traditions.
We didn't changed our mind. There's is no salvation from the dissolvent force of Time.
It's actually more powerful than any chemical plunger.

Until there will be fragments of beauty, something there will always be to gather from the world. As they disappear, the mind loses the ability to grasp and to master. This big adrift flotsam with the old name of Italy is still, for its residual beauty, a not pale help to the thinkablity of the world¹.

This is a quote from the powerful book of journey notes "Un Viaggio in Italia" (A Journey to Italy), written by the italian poet, playwright, novelist Guido Ceronetti (sorry nothing on wikipedia nor elsewhere) between 1981 and 1983 during his endless budging across Italy.

I wonder if he would repeat this words today.

_{1. Translation by Italy is Falling as always. Here's the original: "Finché esisteranno frantumi di bellezza, qualcosa si potrà ancora capire del mondo. Via via che spariscono, la mente perde capacità di afferrare e di dominare. Questo grande rottame naufrago col vecchio nome di Italia è ancora, per la sua bellezza residua, un non pallido aiuto alla pensabilità del mondo." Einaudi 1983, page 39.}