Memories Images, Once They Are

Memory's Images, Once They Are Fixed In Words, Are Erased," Polo Said. "perhaps I Am Afraid Of Losing Venice All At Once, If I Speak Of It, Or Perhaps, Speaking Of Other Cities, I Have Already Lost It, Little By Little.

What He Sought Was Always Something Lying Ahead, And Even If It Was A Matter Of The Past It Was A Past That Changed Gradually As He Advanced On His Journey, Because The Traveller's Past Changes According To The Route He Has Followed: Not The Immediate Past, That Is, To Which Each Day That Goes By Adds A Day, But The More Remote Past. Arriving At Each New City, The Traveller Finds Again A Past Of His That He Did Not Know He Had: The Foreignness Of What You No Longer Are Or No Longer Possess Lies In Wait For You In Foreign, Unpossessed Places.

Elsewhere Is A Negative Mirror. The Traveler Recognizes The Little That Is His, Discovering The Much He Has Not Had And Will Never Have.

The Things That The Novel Does Not Say Are Necessarily More Numerous Than Those It Does Say And Only A Special Halo Around What Is Written Can Give The Illusion That You Are Reading Also What Is Not Written.

My Working Method Has More Often Than Not Involved The Subtraction Of Weight. I Have Tried To Remove Weight, Sometimes From People, Sometimes From Heavenly Bodies, Sometimes From Cities; Above All I Have Tried To Remove Weight From The Structure Of Stories And From Language. . . . Maybe I Was Only Then Becoming Aware Of The Weight, The Inertia, The Opacity Of The World--qualities That Stick To The Writing From The Start, Unless One Finds Some Way Of Evading Them.