On [:] The Comet | Bruno Schulz (1938)

Alexander Helwig Wyant (1836–1892),  Comet of 1882

“We followed in the wake of astral throngs; we ran a licked finger along all the light years
between star and star. In this way, we meandered in an incoherent, chaotic line-formation
in the sky, dispersed in all directions on the endless rungs of the night, emigrants from a
forsaken globe, plundering the vast multitude of the stars. The last barricades were breached,
and into the black, astral space rode cyclists, standing upright on their velocipedes. They hung
in motionless flight in the interplanetary vacuum, amid the perpetual opening of ever newer
constellations. Flying down a siding, they blazed their trails of sleepless cosmography. But in
truth, they were caught up in interplanetary lethargy, blackened with soot as if they had thrust
their heads into the ventilator shaft of a stove, their ultimate goal, the finishing line of all
those blind flights.”

Bruno Schulz, The Comet, 1938