A dream
Monday, July 27th, 2009Lately, SDM has become concern about baroque aesthetics, well I’ve always found Latin-American literature quite baroque in style and content. When Espen Aarseth was here in Bremen, invited by Frieder, he constantly referred back to Borges and his labyrinths.
In a deserted place in Iran there is a not very tall stone tower that has neither door nor window. In the only room (with a dirt floor and shaped like a circle) there is a wooden table and a bench. In that circular cell, a man who looks like me is writing in letters I cannot understand a long poem about a man who in another circular cell is writing a poem about a man who in another circular cell . . . The process never ends and no one will be able to read what the prisoners write.
A Dream by Jorge Luis Borges.
(Translated, from the Spanish, by Suzanne Jill Levine.)
I think it’s nice to start a week with a few lines like those. Enjoy it.
PS. below in Spanish.
En un desierto lugar del Irán hay una no muy alta torre de piedra, sin puerta ni ventana. En la única habitación (cuyo piso es de tierra y que tiene la forma del círculo) hay una mesa de madera y un banco. En esa celda circular, un hombre que se parece a mí escribe en caracteres que no comprendo un largo poema sobre un hombre que en otra celda circular escribe un poema sobre un hombre que en otra celda circular… El proceso no tiene fin y nadie podrá leer lo que los prisioneros escriben.
Un Sueño por Jorge Luis Borges.
