Time is water, and the Venetians conquered both by building a city on water, and framed time with their canals. Or tamed time. Or fenced it in. Or caged it.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the relationship between time and the physical environment, particularly how the Venetians shaped their surroundings to control time.
Joseph Brodsky's quote suggests that time is fluid and elusive, akin to water, and that the Venetians uniquely mastered their interaction with both. By constructing their city on water and designing intricate canals, they didnβt just inhabit a landscape, but also organized and managed time itself, highlighting a profound connection between human creations and natural elements.
In practice
In a speech about urban planning, one might use this quote to illustrate how cities shape our perception of time.
Basically, it's hard for me to assess myself, a hardship not only prompted by the immodesty of the enterprise, but because one is not capable of assessing himself, let alone his work. However, if I were to summarize, my main interest is the nature of time. That's what interests me most of all. What time can do to a man.
One always pulls the trigger out of self-interest and quotes history to avoid responsibility or pangs of conscience.
On the whole, infinity is a fairly palpable aspect of this business of publishing, if only because it extends a dead author's existence beyond the limits he envisioned, or provides a living author with a future he cannot measure. In other words, this business deals with the future which we all prefer to regard as unending.
The invention of ethical and political doctrines, which blossomed into our own social sciences, is a product of times when things appeared manageable. The same goes for the criticism of those doctrines, though as a voice from the past, this criticism proved prophetic.
Try not to pay attention to those who will try to make life miserable for you. There will be a lot of those - in the official capacity as well as the self-appointed.
To put it in plain language, Russia is that country where the name of a writer appears not on the cover of his book, but on the door of his prison cell.
This world... ever was, and is, and shall be, ever-living Fire, in measures being kindled and in measures going out.
There may be women to emerge who will be able to formulate a new and possible concept that homosexual persecution and condemnation has at its roots not only social ignorance, but a philosophically active anti-feminist dogma.
Circumstances do not make the man, they reveal him.
You must see with eyes unclouded by hate. See the good in that which is evil, and the evil in that which is good. Pledge yourself to neither side, but vow instead to preserve the balance that exists between the two.
The universe is but one great city, full of beloved ones, divine and human, by nature endeared to each other.
The worst crime committed by totalitarian mind-sets is that they force their citizens, including their victims, to become complicit in their crimes. Dancing with your jailer, participating in your own execution, that is an act of utmost brutality.
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