repetitions and variations

We can observe these forms everywhere in nature, and we see how easily all forms of matter on earth – so why not the human consciousness as well? – will yield to what I’m calling the regulating effect of chance. In this way, we can find comfort in imagining that it’s possible to write as easily as frost creates its fernlike repetitions and variations on a window-pane, or as concisely as the flesh of kiwifruit clings to the black cardinal points of its seeds, and even that it might be possible to write completely gray on gray, as when a large cloud, without edges or breaks, will very slowly, as it spreads, begin to reveal a consistency and a direction.

Inger Christensen, The Regulating Effect of Chance, from The Condition of Secrecy: Essays, 2018, tr. Susanna Nied



Shudders of cold convulsed her. Her teeth chattered in an icy frost, full stop. Her shapely ice-cold hands lay still (as in a deep frost, shuddering with cold, slender woman with eyes wide open, renowned silk sheets), full stop. Her shining eyes wandered flickeringly in the dark, and her quaking lips breathed, colon, open quotation marks, capital o-aitch Helena, em-dash, em-dash, Helena, em-dash, close quotation marks, rotation marks, flotation marks.

Alfred Döblin, Berlin Alexanderplatz, 1929, tr. Michael Hoffmann