Incomprehensible Significance

Where does the frontier lie? Where do we travel to in those dreams of beauty satisfied, laden with significance but without comprehensible meaning, etched far deeper on the mind than any witness of the eyes? Our memories of physical reality, where do they vanish to? While the images of this dream world never grow older. They live—like the memory of a memory.

Now. When I have overcome my fears—of others, of myself, of the underlying darkness: at the frontier of the unheard-of. Here ends the known. But, from a source beyond it, something fills my being with its possibilities. Here desire is purified and made lucid: each action is a preparation for, each choice an assent to the unknown. Prevented by the duties of life on the surface from looking down into the depths, yet all the while being slowly trained and molded by them to take the plunge into the deep whence rises the fragrance of a forest star, bearing the promise of a new affection.

At the frontier—
 

Dag Hammarskjöld, Vägmärken (Markings), translated by W.H. Auden (1964), p. 74-76.

Quoted in: https://feralwords.com/2014/08/18/the-way-and-the-waymarks/

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