Recovered fragments of New York City

[Newland Archer i la cosina de la seva esposa, Ellen Olenski, al Metropolitan Museum, observen restes de Troia (Ilium, en llatí) i s’observen l’un a l’altra, i es deixen portar per la malenconia, com si coneguessin ja el seu destí]

…they were staring silently at the glass cabinets mounted in ebonised wood which contained the recovered fragments of Ilium. […]

Its glass shelves were crowded with small broken objects—hardly recognisable domestic utensils, ornaments and personal trifles—made of glass, of clay, of discoloured bronze and other time-blurred substances.

“It seems cruel,” she said, “that after a while nothing matters … any more than these little things, that used to be necessary and important to forgotten people, and now have to be guessed at under a magnifying glass and labelled: ‘Use unknown.’”

“Yes; but meanwhile—”

“Ah, meanwhile—”

As she stood there, in her long sealskin coat, her hands thrust in a small round muff, her veil drawn down like a transparent mask to the tip of her nose, and the bunch of violets he had brought her stirring with her quickly-taken breath, it seemed incredible that this pure harmony of line and colour should ever suffer the stupid law of change.

“Meanwhile everything matters—that concerns you,” he said.


Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence, Chapter 31