kind. I cross thin sea ice, wind scraping my face. Ice so fresh it’s not even dusted with snow.
She writes:
Augu
then stops. Leaves two blank pages. (She’s come almost to the end of her notebook. Will she come back to me after this? I get afraid she won’t come back.) (What is it she doesn’t want to say?) Then:
The next two pages are missing. Did she write on them then tear them out?
Then:
Fons tua quo fugiens delapsa est Lympha? Quid undis (Ye streams of the fountain, why have ye fled?
Tot factum? Quonam est ustus abe? igne liquor? Where is all the water gone?
In lacrimas abii totus: quodcumque liquoris What fiery sun has exhausted the ever-running spring?
Mi fuit, omne hausit jam cinis Agricola. We are exhausted by XXXXX
“Slaves be by their own [compulsion?] in mad game
break their manacles & wear the name of
Of Freedom graven on a heavier chain”
(she scribbles this quickly)
And:
Comedy: a picture of Human Nature worse & more deformed than the original (Aristotle)
Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound thou all producing Earth, and thee, Bright Sun
That’s all. Her hand lingers for a minute. She closes the notebook and is gone.
Who would choose to come here? These were their ships:
the Terror
the Erebus
the Half-Moon
the Ayde
the Gabriel
the Michael
the Mermaid
the Moonlight
the Saint Anna
the Sunshine
the North Star
the Fox
the Hecla
the Griper
the Fury
the Advance
the Jeannette
the Polaris
the Fram
the Neptune
the Alert
What would I name mine? The Mary Harmsworth? The Clariae? The Absencia?. The Locke? The Shen Kuo? The Clairville? The Unsigned?
Fanny,
Mary shivers all the time now. I think of places in the Arctic: Great Slave Lake, Repulse Bay, Icy Cape, Obstruction Rapid. Then of all the vast stretches that have no names—those most of all.
So many hands moving across their secret pages:
“… a weariness of heart, a blank feeling. Always it is night now,” wrote one whose ship was stranded in the ice.
And another:
“October 12th Wednesday. One hundred and twenty-second day. Breakfast, last spoonful of glycerin and hot water. Dinner, willow tea. We can’t move against this living gale of wind. Last night I dreamed I was wearing a breastplate of ice.”
“October 15th Saturday. One hundred and twenty-fifth day. Breakfast, willow tea and two old boots. Buried Alexy in the afternoon. Laid him on the ice of the river, then covered him over with slabs of ice.”
And:
“Everything is blurred, sometimes doubled. I dreamed I looked everywhere for my dog. He’d slipped away before I could harness him. I called and went peering around the hummocks. Finally I left camp without him, certain I’d seen his good face for the last time. Empty ridge upon ridge of ice-pack before me. Then he reappeared and looked at me with consoling eyes. I meant to whip him but his eyes disarmed me.”
And:
“I’ll probably never see you again. You should know I saw a red poppy breaking through the snow. How is this possible? Also white shifting shapes, like arches. Whether land or light I couldn’t tell. Mostly there are no forms anymore, no cumbrous reality—only this odd glow I’ve gotten used to and which nonetheless irritates my eyes so that now I’ll stop writing.”
Fanny,
I’m staying up late, writing down these lines from Heraclitus—
“Everything gives way, nothing stays fixed” and “Homer was wrong in saying, ‘Would that strife might perish from amongst gods and men.’ For if that were to occur, then all things would cease to exist.”
Do you believe him, Fanny? Do I?
Such cold air tonight, even here. There are reports that Parry’s ships have found the Northwest Passage—
Casa Baldini
Via del Giglio
Passato Santa Maria Maggiore
Inghilterra Via Valfonda
Casa Frassi Casa Bojti, Firenze
Pisa (Shelley & Mary) Casa Galetti Casa Silva
Her hand comes and goes, writing addresses on the inside front cover of a newly bought notebook.
Then:
rich in nothing but deformities
(but why would she write this?)
And:
ashamed of
(I remember how Montaigne wrote of wanting to shame his own mind. As mine often feels ashamed, though it’s not clear to me why). Again, she breaks off.
Then:
Dream of Allegra. She was on the road from Ravenna to visit me.
Animation which is the Child of Liberty In the fifth mystery we see and then we don’t see
Io non piangeva si dentro [m] impietrai (I did not weep, so stony I grew within)
the wild world abounds in uncertainty and dispute
I try to know where she is, wonder if I’ll ever see her face, try to scrutinize her fragments of thought. Why do I say “fragments of thought” instead of thought itself? Why look for completion, steadiness, uniformity? How much has that to do with the true workings of the mind? Why shouldn’t her