
“I leave to the various futures (not to all) my garden of forking paths.”
The Garden of Forking Paths (1942), The Garden of Forking Paths
The Garden of Forking Paths (1942), The Garden of Forking Paths
“I leave to the various futures (not to all) my garden of forking paths.”
The Garden of Forking Paths (1942), The Garden of Forking Paths
Other Inquisitions (1952), The Modesty of History
Context: Only one thing is more admirable than the admirable reply of the Saxon king: that an Icelander, a man of the lineage of the vanquished, has perpetuated the reply. It is as if a Carthaginian had bequeathed to us the memory of the exploit of Regulus. Saxo Grammaticus wrote with justification in his Gesta Danorum: "The men of Thule [Iceland] are very fond of learning and of recording the history of all peoples and they are equally pleased to reveal the excellences of others or of themselves."
Not the day when the Saxon said the words, but the day when an enemy perpetuated them, was the historic date. A date that is a prophecy of something still in the future: the day when races and nations will be cast into oblivion, and the solidarity of all mankind will be established.
Ray Kurzweil: The Library Journal, The virtual book revisited http://www.kurzweilai.net/the-virtual-book-revisited
“Even if my country remains at war with yours... remember … I am not your enemy.”
Source: The Keys of the Kingdom (1941), p. 281
Variant translation: This web of time — the strands of which approach one another, bifurcate, intersect or ignore each other through the centuries — embrace every possibility.
The Garden of Forking Paths (1942), The Garden of Forking Paths
Context: The Garden of Forking Paths is an incomplete, but not false, image of the universe as Ts'ui Pên conceived it. In contrast to Newton and Schopenhauer, your ancestor did not believe in a uniform, absolute time. He believed in an infinite series of times, in a growing, dizzying net of divergent, convergent and parallel times. This network of times which approached one another, forked, broke off, or were unaware of one another for centuries, embraces all possibilities of time. We do not exist in the majority of these times; in some you exist, and not I; in others I, and not you; in others, both of us.
"Washington, D.C."
Ranting Again
I am not one of those who left the land..." (1922), translated in Poems of Akhmatova (1973) by Stanley Kunitz and Max Hayward
His objective was to convince the Dissenters to join with their fellow countrymen.
Attributed, An Argument on Behalf of the Catholics of Ireland by a Northern Whig. (September, 1791)