In those far-off days our gang of boys first hit on the outlandish and impossible notion of straying even farther, beyond that inn, into no-man’s- or God’s-land, of patrolling borders both neutral and disputed, where boundary lines petered out and the compass rose of winds skittered erratically under a high arching sky. There we meant to dig in, raise ramparts around us, make ourselves independent of the grown-ups, pass completely out of the realm of their authority, proclaim the Republic of the Young…It was to be a life under the aegis of poetry and adventure, never-ending signs and portents. All we need to, or so it seemed to us, was push apart the barriers and limits of convention, the old markers imprisoning the course of human affairs, for our lives to be invaded by an elemental power, a great inundation of the unforeseen, a flood of romantic adventure and fabulous happenings…The spirit of nature was by its very essence a great storyteller. Out of its core the honeyed discourse of fables and novels, romances and epics, flowed in an irresistible stream. The whole atmosphere was absolutely stuffed with stories. You only needed to lay a trap under this sky full of ghosts to catch one, set a wooden post upright in the wind for strips of narrative to be caught fluttering on its tip.from The Republic of Dreams by Bruno Schulz (1892-1942)
Image: ukrainetrek.com
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