Saint Antoine et le centaure

The national library of France has posted images from the medieval bestiaries in their archives:
The Bestiary.

Short Translation: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

From ねじ巻き鳥クロニクル第二部: Part II of Haruki Murakami's Wind-Up Bird Chronicle:

I feel that something is trying to take shape around me. It's all still vague, but there must be some kind of connection. You can’t try to grab it by force or drag it out into the open. There’s nothing to do but wait for things to become clearer.

The Lost Journal of Descartes

As far as anyone knows, the journal Descartes kept in the winter of 1619 no longer exists. In La Vie de Monsieur Descartes, Adrien Baillet describes a period of solitude leading up to the discovery of ‘the foundations of a miraculous science’ - mirabilis scientiae fundamenta.

From Baillet, Livre second, chapitre premier, Paris, 1691:

In the new ardor of his resolutions, he undertook the execution of the first part of his designs, which consisted only in destroying. It was apparently the easier of the two. But he soon realized that it was not as easy for a man to undo his prejudices, as it was for him to burn down his own house.

In 1676, Leibniz studies Descartes journal. It is 22 years after Leibniz’s own experience of revelation:

Year of Grace 1654

Monday, the 23^rd of November, day of Saint Clement, pope and martyr, and others in the catalogue of martyrs. Eve of Saint Chrysogone, martyr and others. From half past 10 in the evening till half past midnight.

Flame
“God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob” not of the philosophers or scholars.
Certainty, Certainty, Feeling, Joy, Peace.
God of Jesus Christ.
Deum meum et Deum vestrum…

After Leibniz’s death in 1716, his notes are deposited in the Royal Library at the Hague. Leibniz’s notes are lost. Our knowledge of Descartes’s notebook depends on the work of Baillet and on the notes copied from Leibniz by the Count Alexandre Foucher de Careil in 1859.

The cover of the notebook is marked with the date, 1 January 1619. Its contents are as follows:

1. Parnassus – mathematical considerations
2. Olympica
3. (untitled) “considerations on the sciences”
4. (untitled) “algebra”
5. Democritica
6. Experimenta
7. Preambula

Short Translation: The Notebook by Agota Kristof Exercice de cécité et de surdité

From the chapter entitled "Exercice de cécité et de surdité" in Agota Kristof's Le Grand Cahier.

One of us plays blind; the other plays deaf. To train ourselves at the beginning the blind one ties one of Grandmother’s black scarves over his eyes, and the deaf one stuffs his ears with grass. The scarf smells bad like Grandmother.

We take each other by the hand, we go walking during the raids when everyone is hiding in basements, and the streets are deserted.

The deaf one describes what he sees:

- The street is straight and long. It’s bordered by low, one-story houses. The houses are white, gray, pink, yellow and blue. At the end of the street, you see a park with trees and a fountain. The sky is blue with some white clouds. You see the planes. Five bombers. They’re flying low.

The blind one speaks slowly so that the deaf one can read his lips:

- I hear the planes. They make a deep, staccato noise. Their engines are struggling. The planes are weighed down with bombs. Now, they’ve passed by. I hear the birds again. Everything else is quiet.

The deaf one reads the lips of the blind one and responds:

- Yes. The street is empty.

The blind one says:

- Not for long. I hear steps approaching from the side street to the left.

The deaf one says:

- You’re right. There’s a man.

The blind one says:

- What’s he like?

The deaf one says:

- Like they all are. Poor, old.

The blind one says:

- I know. I recognize the steps of an old man. I can hear that he is barefoot as well; he must be poor.

The deaf one says:

- He is bald. He has an old army jacket. He has pants that are too short. His feet are dirty.

- His eyes?

- I can’t see them. He’s look at the ground.

- His mouth?

- His lips are sucked in. He must not have any teeth.

- His hands?

- In his pockets. The pockets are huge and filled with something. Potatoes or nuts, there are little bumps. He lifts his head. He’s looking at us. But I can’t tell the color of his eyes.

- Can you see anything else?

- Wrinkles, deep wrinkles like scars on his face.

The blind one says:

- I hear sirens. It’s the end of the air raid. Let’s go back.

Later, with time, we no longer needed the scarf for our eyes nor the grass for our ears. The one who played blind simply turned his gaze inside; the deaf one closed his ears to all sound.

Emerson on Reading:

"[Reading] is a pusillanimous desertion of our work to gaze after our neighbors. It is peeping. Byron says of Jack Bunting –

He knew not what to say, and so he swore.

I may say it of our preposterous use of books – He knew not what to do, and so he read. I can think of nothing to fill my time with, and I find the Life of Brant. It is a very extravagant compliment to pay to Brant, or to General Schuyler, or to General Washington. My time should be as good as their time - my facts, my net of relations, as good as theirs, or either of theirs. Rather let me do my work so well that other idlers if they choose may compare my texture with the texture of these and find it identical with the best."

From "Spiritual Laws."

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