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.
Prejudice is a disease. So is fashion. But I will not wear prejudice.
Even in a time of elephantine vanity and greed, one never has to look far to see the campfires of gentle people.
If peace is equated simply with the absence of war, it can become abject pacifism that turns the world over to the most ruthless.
I had been brought up in a church which decides everything and permits no doubts, so that having rejected one article of faith I was forced to reject the rest.
Listening to a news broadcast is like smoking a cigarette and crushing the butt in the ashtray.
If you were an optimistic teen, then you'll be an optimist at 80. People's reactions to bad events are highly stable over a half century or more.
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