Temporale

The Cahiers Series continues its exploration of translation in all its aspects with this account by renowned writer and academic Marine Warner of what happened to time during the Coronavirus pandemic lockdowns. She recounts how strangely her days and weeks passed, in this highly personal account of a response to lockdown in which she delves into her experience of Catholic convent schools for some clues as to how each day might be marked as significant. She discusses missals, almanacs, Roman and Revolutionary calendars, developing her thoughts into what amounts almost to a manifesto for a new way of rendering each day different, memorable, human. Her text is accompanied by a further response to lockdown, by the Greek photographer Dimitris Kleanthis, whose haunting images somehow make visible the suspension and acceleration of time experienced by so many, while also hinting at how, to the eye that is acute enough, there may always be an event taking place.