He was wearing a white summer suit with mother-of-pearl buttons, over which he had thrown a duster of the same color. Beneath his fine straw hat, broad-brimmed and newly washed, his great dying eyes shone around his sharply honed nose. His right hand was of hard plaster and he carried, hanging on his arm, a … More St. Lucy and St. Lazarus VII

I struck out walking again, impelled by my rubber soles. I was crowned by a magnificent silence surrounded by baby grand pianos everywhere. In the darkness, traced out with electric light bulbs, one could read with out effort: St. Lazarus Station. St. Lazarus was born very pale. He emitted a smell of wet sheep. When … More St. Lucy and St. Lazarus VI

On one of the doors leading out of the cathedral the skeleton of an ancient fish had been hung; on another, the skeleton of a seraph, gently rocked by the oval breeze of the opticians’ shops, which wafted in with its fresh smell of apples and coastline. It was lunch time, and I asked for … More St. Lucy and St. Lazarus V

This is the fourth installment of our mysterious text. Once again, what I present here is a very rough draft. It could use comments. In the cathedral people were celebrating the solemn novena to the human eyes of St. Lucy. The exterior of things was being glorified, the clean, well ventilated beauty of the skin, … More St. Lucy and St. Lazarus IV

This translation is getting harder, and it needs annotation as well. Here, however, is the third section. It could use comments. I started doing the translation because I was not sure I understood the original. I then found that in order to make the text marginally readable in English, I must also stray on purpose … More St. Lucy and St. Lazarus III

This post is going to be in Spanish, so if you do not read that exalted language, you are invited instead to read It’s Not You, It’s Your Apartment, on the horrors of dating poor housekeepers. Do not overlook the comments thread. More serious English language entertainment can be found in the abstracts of two … More El archipiélago de la vanguardia

Saint Lucy was a beautiful young girl from Syracuse. She is painted with two magnificent ox eyes on a tray. She suffered martyrdom under the consul Pascasian, who had a silver mustache and howled like a mastiff. As do all saints she posed and resolved delicious theorems, before those whose plate glass windows the apparatuses … More St. Lucy and St. Lazarus II

I have begun to translate this long prose poem, a text I discovered by chance. I got a new Research Insight from it, which I think I should work on for other venues. But it was the first time in a long time I had had this type of Research Insight: a spontaneous one. Lately … More St. Lucy and St. Lazarus I