With so many trees in the city, you could see the spring coming each day until a night of warm wind would bring it suddenly in one morning. Sometimes the heavy cold rains would beat it back so that it would seem that it would never come and that you were losing a season out of your life. This was the only truly sad time in Paris because it was unnatural. You expected to be sad in the fall. Part of you died each year when the leaves fell from the trees and their branches were bare against the wind and the cold, wintry light. But you knew there would always be the spring, as you knew the river would flow again after it was frozen. When the cold rains kept on and killed the spring, it was as though a young person had died for no reason.
In those days, though, the spring always came finally but it was frightening that it had nearly failed.
"If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast"
"You expected to be sad in the fall. Part of you died each year when the leaves fell from the trees..." "... But you knew there would always be the spring, as you knew the river would flow again after it was frozen."
ReplyDeletevery interesting and beautiful part, coze it is either hope or sadness or both of them, but it sounds really very beautiful:))
I would rather say it's a state of despair where no light is to be seen at the end!!!!!!!!The thing is that though you can't see it, it surely is there because the spring is to come eventually!!
ReplyDeletePeople always keep in mind that SPRING IS TO COME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I like this part so much, because it reminds me that the „good“ and the „bad“ times in life are so often related. The bad times are the ones that make us grow and sometimes they make us value life again..
ReplyDeleteAnd I think when he talks about fall and spring and describes how the weather is changing a lot, to me it sounds somehow like a metaphor for life, that is always full of sad times – full of times of change, which can be really hard. When summer is over and you know winter is to come and the air gets colder, it does make you sad somehow. Everything is getting more serious. But then Hemingway tells us, that these times of change, like fall, are just natural parts of life and that we should never forget that there will be better times again. As Hermann Hesse said:
“The heart must be, at each new call for leaving,
prepared to part and start without the tragic,
without the grief - with courage to endeavor
a novel bond, a disparate connection:
for each beginning bears a special magic
that nurtures living and bestows protection.”
Perfect said Magdalena! That's one of my most favorite poems!!!! Attachments are very human, they make a huge part of our life, but meanwhile they put bonds around us, don't let us see new lights and grow! And though it is very hard, sometimes even painful to say farewell to old connections we need to go forward anyway!
ReplyDeleteThe Cosmic Spirit seeks not to restrain us
But lifts us stage by stage to wider spaces.
If we accept a home of our own making,
Familiar habit makes for indolence.
We must prepare for parting and leave-taking
Or else remain the slave of permanence.
Even the hour of our death may send
Us speeding on to fresh and newer spaces,
And life may summon us to newer races.
So be it, heart: bid farewell without end.
Ani