Notes Without A Text (excerpt)
The notebooks Roberto Bazlen kept between 1945 and his death in 1965 were not, like the notebooks of many writers, intended to be read by an admiring posterity. Their entries were written out of personal necessity, and for that reason, among others, they reward rereading.
Even when he was writing for publication, Bazlen’s style was telegraphic. “I think it’s no longer possible to write books,” he posits in one entry:
That’s why I don’t write books–
Almost all books are footnotes, inflated into volumes (volumina).
I write only footnotes.
An excerpt from Roberto Bazlen‘s Notes Without a Text, introduced by translator Alex Andriesse.