To become attached to places and to certain times of the day, to trees, to people, to the history of souls

I send my regards to the poet Leonidze and to his poetry with the same kind of warmth as his wife, his future and his household. I can force myself to be even more explicit: I send regards to the spark of childishness which runs through his hands and his manuscripts and descends upon his children. I do not speak of that false, Raphaelesque and over-sentimentalised conception of childhood, which does not exist except on chocolate boxes, but of the simplicity and foolishness and defencelessness of a child, of its electro-conductivity; of childhood's ability to build a world on a toy and to be killed in crossing a road; of the spectacle of a child in the midst of a great life which has in the meantime forged ahead and with which he copes in child-like fashion, simply, foolishly, quickly and defencelessly. But this message is so weighty that it is best not to give it. (Pasternak)


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