« | Main | XXX, NSFW, shocking content ahead, read this only if you're above 18, etc. »
May 21, 2006
Book Bliss
Associação de Loucos e Sonhadores, Lisboa
(((((())))))
Finally read Vonnegut's SlaughterHouse 5. My mouth is open in amazement. I love the simple and yet powerful and imaginative writing. Fascinated by the Tralfamadorian concept of time. (sighs with pleasure)
Now I can't hear anyone talking about death without thinking: "So it goes".
Can't wait to get my hands on Cat's Cradle.
(((((())))))
One of those happy succession of synchronicities led me to Enrique Vila-Matas. His name came up at least once every day of this past week, through friends, articles in newspapers, referenced in books I was reading and culminated on the happy, thrifty find of a set of 6 of his books for 18 Euros at FNAC.
The sheer erudition of the man. Pure intellectual bliss and aesthetic enjoyment. So happy.
Also, he writes beautifully about Lisboa:
Lisboa es el nada nunca jamás. Lisboa es para llorar, puro destino y llanto, fado y luz de lágrima. Pero al mismo tiempo es una inmersión radical en la alegría. “Otra vez vuelvo a verte, / ciudad de mi infancia pavorosamente perdida /Ciudad triste y alegre, otra vez sueño aquí”. No es la ciudad blanca que creyó ver un suizo equivocado, sino una ciudad azul de alegres nostalgias inventadas.
Lisbon is nothing never ever. Lisbon is for crying, pure destiny and weeping, fado and light of tears. But at the same time is a radical immersion in joy. "I see you once again, / city of my dreadfully lost childhood / Sad and happy city where I dream again". It is not the white city that a mistaken Swiss thought he saw, but a blue city of cheerful invented nostalgia.
The original text is here (in spanish).
(((((())))))
Posted by claudia
Comments
Posted by Potz at May 25, 2006 09:31 AM
Posted by Saudades at June 5, 2006 08:29 AM