Ада, или Отрада

If the Past is perceived as a storage of Time, and if the Present is the process of that perception, the future, on the other hand, is Dot an item of Time, has nothing to do with Time and with the dim gauze of its physical texture. The future is but a quack at the court of Chronos. Thinkers, social thinkers, feel the Present as pointing beyond itself toward a not yet realized ‘future’ — but that is topical utopia, progressive politics. Technological Sophists argue that by taking advantage of the Laws of Light, by using new telescopes revealing ordinary print at cosmic distances through the eyes of our nostalgic agents on another planet, we can actually see our own past (Goodson discovering the Goodson and that sort of thing) including documentary evidence of our not knowing what lay in store for us (and our knowing now), and that consequently the Future did exist yesterday and by inference does exist today. This may be good physics but is execrable logic, and the Tortoise of the Past will never overtake the Achilles of the future, no matter how we parse distances on our cloudy blackboards.

Physiologically the sense of Time is a sense of continuous becoming, and if ‘becoming’ has a voice, the latter might be, not unnaturally, a steady vibration; but for Log’s sake, let us not confuse Time with Tinnitus, and the seashell hum of duration with the throb of our blood. Philosophically, on the other hand, Time is but memory in the making. In every individual life there goes on from cradle to deathbed the gradual shaping and strengthening of that backbone of consciousness, which is the Time of the strong. ‘To be’ means to know one ‘has been.’ ‘Not to be’ implies the only ‘new’ kind of (sham) time: the future. I dismiss it. Life, love, libraries, have no future.

Our modest Present is, then, the time span that one is directly and actually aware of, with the lingering freshness of the Past still perceived as part of the nowness. In regard to everyday life and the habitual comfort of the body (reasonably healthy, reasonably strong, breathing the green breeze, relishing the aftertaste of the most exquisite food in the world — a boiled egg), it does not matter that we can never enjoy the true Present, which is an instant of zero duration, represented by a rich smudge, as the dimensionless point of geometry is by a sizable dot in printer’s ink on palpable paper.

ne can be a lover of Space and its possibilities: take, for example, speed, the smoothness and sword-swish of speed; the aquiline glory of ruling velocity; the joy cry of the curve; and one can be an amateur of Time, an epicure of duration. I delight sensually in Time, in its stuff and spread, in the fall of its folds, in the very impalpability of its grayish gauze, in the coolness of its continuum. I wish to do something about it; to indulge in a simulacrum of possession. I am aware that all who have tried to reach the charmed castle have got lost in obscurity or have bogged down in Space. I am also aware that Time is a fluid medium for the culture of metaphors.

Why is it so difficult — so degradingly difficult — to bring the notion of Time into mental focus and keep it there for inspection?

We all know those old wardrobes in old hotels in the Old World subalpine zone. At first one opens them with the utmost care, very slowly, in the vain hope of hushing the excruciating creak, the growing groan that the door emits midway. Before long one discovers, however, that if it is opened or closed with celerity, in one resolute sweep, the hellish hinge is taken by surprise, and triumphant silence achieved. Van and Ada, for all the exquisite and powerful bliss that engulfed and repleted them (and we do not mean here the rose sore of Eros alone), knew that certain memories had to be left closed, lest they wrench every nerve of the soul with their monstrous moan. But if the operation is performed swiftly, if indelible evils are mentioned between two quick quips, there is a chance that the anesthetic of life itself may allay unforgettable agony in the process of swinging its door.