Arch of Triumph Erih Maria Remark
Harku i Triumfit Erih Maria Remark
Excerpt from the book
… A deafening thunder suddenly rolled over the city. Raindrops began to collide behind the flower petals. Noticed how the road began to grieve in black silver. The rain came increasing. Heavy drops hit him in the face. And suddenly he did not know if he was funny or miserable, whether he suffered or not, he only knew that he was living. He was living!
He existed and life had conquered him again, he was shaking it and, he was no longer a spectator, he was no longer outside it; the strong glow of the uncontrollable feeling flowed back through his veins, like fire through the chimneys of furnaces; and there was almost no point in whether he was happy or unhappy; he lived and felt strongly that he was living and that was enough!
It continued to rain under the rain like a hail of machine guns. It stood there, it was heavy rain and water, and earth at once; the thunderbolts of the horizons intersected within it; he was both a creature and an element of nature; nothing had a name, and so all seemed lonely and abandoned, all the same, and love, and water pouring down, even those dim lights on the roofs, and the earth that seemed to be swollen; borders no longer existed and he himself was part of it all.
Happiness and misery remained empty cartridges thrown away by the omnipotent feeling that he was living and that he was feeling that he was living. … “Oh you up there!” he spoke pointing to the lighted window, and laughed, and did not realize he was laughing.
“You little light, you vision of a fairy, you face that exercises a strange power over me, here on this planet, where there are hundreds of thousands of other faces, better, more beautiful, wiser, more frank, more loyal and more approachable, oh you coincidence who confused me one night on foot there on the street and who entered my life, you feeling crashed to the shores, thoughtless but captivating and slipping under my skin in the night sleep, you, who know for me almost nothing but what I resisted, and who therefore threw themselves into my arms, until I no longer resisted you, you, who wished to then continue your way, to be exiled from me, to greet, to greet!
Here I am staying here and I do not think I will stay like this one more time. The rain penetrates me under my shirt and is warmer and colder and softer than your hands and your skin. I am standing here miserable and with the claws of jealousy in my belly, looking for you, despising you, admiring and adoring you, because you threw the lightning that ignited, the lightning that sleeps in every bay, the spark of life, the black fire.
I am standing here, no longer like a dead man with permission, less cynicism, sarcasm and a pinch of courage, no more cold; I am alive again, even if suffering, but still vulnerable to the storms of life, reborn and restored to its simple power! Blessed be you Mado, with that wandering heart of yours, you Nike with that Latin accent of yours!
Dream and deception, broken mirror of a gloomy god, oh you who know nothing, thank you! I will never say that you will reap the benefits of this, but you have returned to me what neither Plato, nor chrysanthemums, nor all poetry, nor all mercy, nor despair and neither the strongest nor the most patient hope: The simple, powerful, genuine life, which seemed to me like a crime in these times between one catastrophe and the other! I thank you! I had to miss you to find out! Stay healthy!
