August 15, 2011

prufrock's--or my--confession

a friend wrote this in closing:

sii sempre grande

and the trouble with my rusty italian or maybe my love of words or maybe just with me but here i go
is that in this case grande could mean "great", or it could mean "big".  now, these things are similar
but they are also different and each meaning could have appropriate and useful bearing, could be a secret message, synchronous and prophetic, a symbolic subtitle to help me make sense of the story of life right now, that i could recognize.  and treasure.

but, which grande.  should i write back and ask?  "did you mean big or did you mean great?"  and that is ridiculous and not just because either definition would be wholly satisfying.  so i should just choose.  but because each is equally satisfying as the other, and so there is no clear cut choice which should be made, i am left debating not only which meaning to embrace, but now whether or not i should write and ask, and in the end i realize through the insane focus on word meaning and forced fortunes that what i am really asking is:

do i dare to eat a peach?

and this is the crux of it.  as usual.  


2 comments:

  1. what i think he meant was sia sempre magnifico. choose that one, or another - if it your choice, make it, but choose from your constellation, not someone else's.

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  2. well, this is interesting.

    though it keeps me debating the peach, i must ask because it is my nature to do such tangential things: will you tell me more? if i promise to choose, i must know what the expressions mean. it sounds like you may be quite proficient in his language.

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