The Golden Calf
At precisely 4:40 p.m., Basilius Lokhankin went on a hunger strike.He was lying on an oilcloth-covered couch, his back to the world, his face to the curved back of… More
It’s Time to Mow the Flowers
It’s Time to Mow the FlowersIt’s time to mow the flowers, don’t procrastinate. Fetch the sickles, come, don’t spare a single tulip in the fields. The meadows are in bloom: who has ever seen such… More
The Museum of Eterna’s Novel (The First Good Novel)
Dedication To My Character EternaIn Eterna I have known the maximum impulse to piety without vice, nothing confused or demented in the act of abnegation and mercy. Nothing that… More
“Abandoned House” and “Premonition”
Abandoned HouseThere, the steps are deep purpleThere the plants are red sunbirdsThere the stones have grown human facesI often pass byAssuming various anxious posturesFor I’ve always been feeble at… More
The Golden Age
The IslandThe island is about twenty kilometres in diameter and lies in the Atlantic Ocean on the Tropic of Cancer between Cape Verde and the Canary Islands. In the… More
The Remnants
“If someone hasn’t eaten any, his breath doesn’t smell.” This on the pattern of the proverb about onions, the idea being that doubt was in order. “If her mouth weren’t… More
Milan Kundera: The Unbearable Lightness of Being
27Karenin was not overjoyed by the move to Switzerland. Karenin hated change. Dog time cannot be plotted along a straight line; it does not move on and on, from… More
Death in Venice
Gustav Aschenbach or von Aschenbach, as he had officially been known since his fiftieth birthday, set out alone from his residence in Munich’s Prinzregentenstrasse on a spring afternoon in… More
The Story of the Second Slap in the Face and the Tides of the World
I come home, my lips still stained with black chocolate icing, a splotch of golden pudding adorning my cheek and an overlooked streak of cherry juice remaining on my… More