It is windy here, so we will read an autumnal poem. Animistic, I like personified seasons, and I have bolded the lines which brought this poem to mind. To Autumn (1819) Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; Conspiring with him how to load and bless With fruit the vines … More John Keats
Nothing about pain Except that it is cloistered like a madonna in heat and at the finest impulse grasps and embraces me The little dog that looks from behind a nearby tree Nothing cleans the scab of a healed scar It sleeps warm and comfortable intertwining legs Its desolate silence freezes my strength It casts … More Nada sobre el dolor
Looking back on my state of mind at the time, I am reminded by analogy of the enormous power of Christianity to convince the believer of his fundamental and never-ending guilt; I also stood (we all stood) before the Revolution and its Party with permanently bosed head, and so I gradually became reconciled to the … More Milan Kundera II
When the Comrades classified my conduct and my smile as intellectual (another notorious pejorative of the times), I actually came to believe them because I couldn’t imagine (I wasn’t bold enough to imagine) that everyone else might be wrong, that the Revolution itself, the spirit of the times, might be wrong and I, an individual, … More Milan Kundera I
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
coldhearted scientist وداد 