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57 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1939
Earlier on I was walking round the room and it suddenly occurred to me I was seeing it for the first time. There are two beds, bandy-legged chairs with no seats, month-old newspapers browned by the sun and nailed to the window in place of the panes of glass.
But she seemed younger and her plump, white arms spread out all milky in the café light, healthy and attractive, as if she was being drowned alive and had raised her hands in a desperate call for help, thrashing like someone drowning, and her arms had been left behind, distant across time, a girl’s arms separated from the long, twitchy body that no longer existed.
It can only be understood on one level. It’s unfortunate but the vision can’t be transcended, the way to express it hasn’t been invented, surrealism is rhetoric. Only by oneself, in the visionary part of one’s soul, just sometimes.
Love is wonderful and absurd and visits all kinds of souls. But wonderful, absurd people are not easy to find; and those who are, it doesn’t last for very long, just their first youth. Later they start to accept things and they’re done for.
“Se dice que hay varias maneras de mentir; pero la más repugnante de todas es decir la verdad, toda la verdad, ocultando el alma de los hechos. Porque los hechos son siempre vacíos, son recipientes que tomarán la forma del sentimiento que los llene.”