MS-WU-MSS008-3-49

[0665] more beautiful, though with a different beauty. [0666] And now it was a
name I sought, in my memory, the name of the only town it was given
me to know, with the intention, as soon as I had found it, of stopping,
and saying to a passer-by, doffing my hat, I beg your pardon, Sir,
this is X, isn't it, X being the name of my town.

[0667] And this name that
I sought, I felt sure that it began with a B or with a P, but in
spite of this clue, or perhaps because of its falsity, the other
letters continued to escape me.

[0668] I had been living so far from words
so long, you understand, that it was enough for me to see my town,
since we're talking of my town, to be unable, you understand. [0669] It's
too difficult to say, for me. [0670] And even my sense of identity was
veiled in a namelesness often hard to penetrate, as we have just
seen I think. [0671] And so on for all the other things which mocked my
senses.

[0672] Yes, even then, when already all was fading, waves and
particles, there could be no things but nameless things, no
names but thingless names. [0673] I say that now, but after all what do
I know now about then, now when the icy words hail down upon me,
the icy meanings, and the world dies too, foully named. [0674] All I know
is what the words know, and the dead things, and that makes a
handsome little sum, with a beginning a middle and an end as in
the well-built phrase and the long sonata of the dead.

[0675] And truly
it little matters what I say, this or that or any other thing.
[0676] Saying is inventing. [0677] Wrong, and rightly so. [0678] You invent nothing,
you think you are inventing, you think you are escaping, and all
you do is stammer out your lesson, the remnants of a pensum one
day got by heart and long forgotten, life without tears, as it is
wept. [0679] To hell with it anyway. [0680] Where was I. [0681] Unable to remember