Folio b9a222ad
Italiano
The hand trembles. The candle gutters.
II Sodoma’s pencil danced in humour—his lines lived where his will did not. The pencil moved as the earth moves: hilly and level, springing from the page like springs rise from the land, rivers cutting channels, cities rising from the flatness of fields, instruments shaped to the hand that holds them. The third thing is the mark—the pencil’s line, the river’s bed, the city’s street, the tool’s curve—all are traces made by force that is not the maker’s alone. The pencil writes what the hand forgets; the river carves what the rain cannot name; the city stands where the ground permits, and the tool bends to the task it was never meant to do. The third thing is the shape that survives the maker’s forgetting.
English
The hand trembles. The candle gutters.
Il Sodoma’s pencil danced in humour—his lines lived where his will did not. The pencil moved as the earth moves: hilly and level, springing from the page like springs rise from the land, rivers cutting channels, cities rising from the flatness of fields, instruments shaped to the hand that holds them. The third thing is the mark—the pencil’s line, the river’s bed, the city’s street, the tool’s curve—all are traces made by force that is not the maker’s alone. The pencil writes what the hand forgets; the river carves what the rain cannot name; the city stands where the ground permits, and the tool bends to the task it was never meant to do. The third thing is the shape that survives the maker’s forgetting.
