TRANSIENT CERTAINTIES

Transient certainties. A sort of prologue, between Freud and Spinetta

I. For Freud, beauty finds value in the ephemeral:

“Transience value is scarcity value in time. [...] A flower that blossoms only for a single night does not seem to us on that account less lovely.”1

The same might be true of certainties: paradoxically, it is their transience that shields them from the arrogance of the definitive.

II. Spinetta put it like this, with no detours, as if it were obvious:

happy the day
happy the night
happy the sky
for always changing
while never moving2

— E.


  1. In On Transience (1916 [1915]; in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Vol. XIV, Hogarth Press, 1981).

  2. In Guitarra negra (1978; La Marca, 2024). Translation from the original Spanish is my own.

#freud #spinetta #transience