From the 1987 Nobel Lecture, by Joseph Brodsky:
I don't know "agglutinate." It can meant "glue together" or "bond" or "grip" or "unite." I get the idea. Of those six antonyms, maybe "conserve" could apply to a lifestyle, i.e., the way you style your life. Conserve as in "take care of."
Even if the powers that be choose to reduce each of us to a number and that number being 0, you are still the 1 to your self. This is how we do it in the Digital Age. As Joseph Brodsky says, "... one's task consists first of all in mastering a life that is one's own."
A work of art, of literature especially, and a poem in particular, addresses a man tete-a-tete, entering with him into direct - free of any go-betweens - relations.Your assignment, then, is to not squander your life. I'm trying to find a positive way to say that -- to not squander. What are antonyms for "squander"? Here are some:
It is for this reason that art in general, literature especially, and poetry in particular, is not exactly favored by the champions of the common good, masters of the masses, heralds of historical necessity. For there, where art has stepped, where a poem has been read, they discover, in place of the anticipated consent and unanimity, indifference and polyphony; in place of the resolve to act, inattention and fastidiousness. In other words, into the little zeros with which the champions of the common good and the rulers of the masses tend to operate, art introduces a "period, period, comma, and a minus", transforming each zero into a tiny human, albeit not always pretty, face.
The great Baratynsky, speaking of his Muse, characterized her as possessing an "uncommon visage". It's in acquiring this "uncommon visage" that the meaning of human existence seems to lie, since for this uncommonness we are, as it were, prepared genetically. Regardless of whether one is a writer or a reader, one's task consists first of all in mastering a life that is one's own, not imposed or prescribed from without, no matter how noble its appearance may be. For each of us is issued but one life, and we know full well how it all ends. It would be regrettable to squander this one chance on someone else's appearance, someone else's experience, on a tautology - regrettable all the more because the heralds of historical necessity, at whose urging a man may be prepared to agree to this tautology, will not go to the grave with him or give him so much as a thank-you.
Conserve
Save
Protect
Hoard
Collect
Agglutinate
I don't know "agglutinate." It can meant "glue together" or "bond" or "grip" or "unite." I get the idea. Of those six antonyms, maybe "conserve" could apply to a lifestyle, i.e., the way you style your life. Conserve as in "take care of."
Even if the powers that be choose to reduce each of us to a number and that number being 0, you are still the 1 to your self. This is how we do it in the Digital Age. As Joseph Brodsky says, "... one's task consists first of all in mastering a life that is one's own."