Ciò su cui non s’abbia possibilità di influenza converrà scansarlo in silenzio come le mulinanti sfere celesti

“Ciò su cui non s’abbia possibilità di influenza converrà scansarlo in silenzio come le mulinanti sfere celesti” is an aphorism attributed to Nostradamus in the novel. It advises silently setting aside what cannot be influenced, likening such withdrawal to the turning of celestial spheres. The line gives a grand, orderly image to an effort at mental retreat, but its immediate context shows how difficult that retreat is to sustain.

Form and Attribution

The sentence is framed as a general maxim rather than a personal confession: what lies beyond one’s influence should be avoided in silence. Its formal, impersonal counsel gives the act of turning away a sense of discipline. The comparison to celestial spheres enlarges that act beyond an individual choice, making silence seem as regular and impersonal as cosmic motion. The brief attribution, “Parola di Nostradamus,” presents the maxim as received wisdom, not a principle the narrative identifies as Norma Jeane’s own invention.

The Immediate Context

The aphorism follows a catalogue of what Norma Jeane does not want to think about. She avoids newspapers and television news, declines to involve herself in reports about the devastation in Korea, and does not want to dwell on nuclear tests in Nevada and Utah. She also suspects that government informants are watching her and that her screen identity, Marilyn Monroe, appears on a list; the passage places that fear within a year when many lists contained hundreds of names. The maxim therefore sits amid pressures that range from international events to a private sense of surveillance, all grouped under the question of what she can control.

That effort at distance is not limited to politics. Norma Jeane tries to use breathing to attend to her soul and not think about political matters or the child taken from her womb and discarded. The aphorism’s injunction to avoid the uncontrollable in silence follows this refusal to dwell on loss. Yet the passage also records the question she tries not to ask: whether the child lived for any time after the procedure. Her avoidance is thus presented alongside the painful thought it is meant to contain.

Silence and Its Limits

The image of quiet withdrawal has a tension built into it. It proposes silence as a way to evade matters beyond one’s power, but the surrounding narration gives those matters specific names and circumstances: war, nuclear testing, surveillance, and the lost child. The maxim does not make them disappear. Instead, its position in the passage shows the work required to turn attention away from them, while the details that surround it keep them present for the reader.

The same tension appears in Norma Jeane’s reading. She has just finished The Brothers Karamazov and is reading Chekhov’s stories in long, feverish nighttime sessions. She identifies herself with characters in the stories, cries over one, and seems at times unsure where or who she is; when her husband’s irritated voice calls her back to ordinary life, she retreats into herself. The aphorism’s promise of silent distance therefore stands beside a powerful immersion in literature, where other lives become ways of experiencing and naming her own.

Narrative Significance

As a compact expression, the maxim gathers the passage’s competing movements: refusal to engage, painful awareness, and escape into reading. Its cosmic comparison gives withdrawal an appearance of calm order, while the surrounding episodes make clear that the mind keeps returning to what it would rather avoid. The line is consequently less a report of successful detachment than a formulation of the distance Norma Jeane seeks—and of the difficulty of maintaining it.