Nustérze or poscrà
Giorgio Agamben, Quodlibet, March 2, 2023
“I don’t believe in tomorrow, perhaps in the day after tomorrow”, wrote Joseph Roth. What do I believe in? Neither in tomorrow, nor in the day after tomorrow — perhaps in poscrà or pescridde, as, it seems to me, they call in Apulian dialect the day following the day after tomorrow. But in truth, I rather believe in nustérze (the day before yesterday) or in the day before the day before yesterday. It is the understanding and knowledge of the past that are lacking today, and not only among the youngest. But it is, perhaps, time that is lacking, in all its ecstasies and forms, because the future that has devoured them is empty, and no one believes in it anymore, while the present is by definition unlivable. The time we need, however, is none of these: it is Aion or Eon, that the ancients depicted as a young man with winged feet poised on a wheel, who can only be grasped by a tuft of hair on his forehead — the opportunity — and, if you let him pass, you are lost forever.
Aion is the colour of time, the time of life, and, as a Mexican proverb says, this special time is never lacking, hay más tiempo que vida(*) — maybe because this time and life are the same thing. It is a time that cannot be counted, which can only be expressed with adverbs and never with numbers: now, already, always, by now, soon, late, still, never, poscrà... The problem is that we are no longer alive and the opportunity is just to re-become or become alive (“make oneself alive”, as they say), to take back our time, no matter how or when, if not today rather than the day before yesterday or poscrà. Around us there are only mummies, corpses that claim to direct their own exhumation and torment us with decrees and news to make us participate in their sinister ceremony. It is with these mummies that we must break; only if we leave them behind, is it possible that, nustérze or poscrà, the winged young man will come towards us with with his tuft – and no, this time no, we won’t let him escape.
Giorgio Agamben, Quodlibet, March 2, 2023
“I don’t believe in tomorrow, perhaps in the day after tomorrow”, wrote Joseph Roth. What do I believe in? Neither in tomorrow, nor in the day after tomorrow — perhaps in poscrà or pescridde, as, it seems to me, they call in Apulian dialect the day following the day after tomorrow. But in truth, I rather believe in nustérze (the day before yesterday) or in the day before the day before yesterday. It is the understanding and knowledge of the past that are lacking today, and not only among the youngest. But it is, perhaps, time that is lacking, in all its ecstasies and forms, because the future that has devoured them is empty, and no one believes in it anymore, while the present is by definition unlivable. The time we need, however, is none of these: it is Aion or Eon, that the ancients depicted as a young man with winged feet poised on a wheel, who can only be grasped by a tuft of hair on his forehead — the opportunity — and, if you let him pass, you are lost forever.
Aion is the colour of time, the time of life, and, as a Mexican proverb says, this special time is never lacking, hay más tiempo que vida(*) — maybe because this time and life are the same thing. It is a time that cannot be counted, which can only be expressed with adverbs and never with numbers: now, already, always, by now, soon, late, still, never, poscrà... The problem is that we are no longer alive and the opportunity is just to re-become or become alive (“make oneself alive”, as they say), to take back our time, no matter how or when, if not today rather than the day before yesterday or poscrà. Around us there are only mummies, corpses that claim to direct their own exhumation and torment us with decrees and news to make us participate in their sinister ceremony. It is with these mummies that we must break; only if we leave them behind, is it possible that, nustérze or poscrà, the winged young man will come towards us with with his tuft – and no, this time no, we won’t let him escape.
(*) Literally, there is more time than life.
(English translation by I, Robot)
Man Ray, A l’heure de l’observatoire, les amoureux (Observatory Time: The Lovers), 1934. Courtesy of Centre Pompidou, Paris. |
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