Twice a day, first thing in the morning and around five in the afternoon, Ceronetti drinks a cup of Chinese green tea. These are moments that the writer treasures, because in them "the breath of the tea penetrates the dead corners" and the mind connects unusual things, creates new links. What are the materials of these thoughts? Memories, images, dreams, what is read in dictionaries, in the Bible, in the Koran, in the work of Rathenau, Conrad, Baudelaire and Tocqueville, or in a newspaper clipping. By awakening the mind and senses, tea acts as a fragrant antidote to inertia and daze. Thus these pages took shape, destined to reveal to the reader a singular lucidity and to stimulate in him that "desperate curiosity in constant movement" without which "despair would have no limits."
