Читать книгу Evening Is the Whole Day - Preeta Samarasan - Страница 3

History begins only at the point where things go wrong; history is born only with trouble, with perplexity, with regret. So that hard on the heels of the word Why comes the sly and wistful word If. If it had not been for … If only … Were it not … Those useless Ifs of history. And, constantly impeding, deflecting, distracting the backward searchings of the question why, exists this other form of retrogression: If only we could have it back. A New Beginning. If only we could return …

— from Waterland by Graham Swift

The sun goes down and the sky reddens, pain grows sharp, light dwindles. Then is evening when jasmine flowers open, the deluded say. But evening is the great brightening dawn when crested cocks crow all through the tall city and evening is the whole day for those without their lovers.

— Kuruntokai 234, translated by A. K. Ramanujan