Ingeborg Bachmann

 

                with Martin Walser and Heinrich Boll (1955)

Paris

Broken on the wheel of night,
the lost ones sleep
in thundering tunnels deep below.
But wherever we are is light.

We have armfuls of flowers,
mimosas from the many years.
Gold falls from bridge to bridge
breathlessly into the river.

The light is cold,
but colder still is the stone by the door,
and the shells of all the water wells
are already half empty.

What will happen if we, the homesick,
dazed right down to the roots of our hair,
remain here: what will happen
if we keep insisting on beauty?

Lifted high on wagons of light,
we wake, but still are lost
on streets of genius, high above.
And wherever we are not is night.

    Translated from German by Paul Weinfield

Georges Perec

What we need to question is bricks, concrete, glass, our table manners, our utensils, our tools, the way we spend our time, our rhythms. Question that which seems to have ceased forever to astonish us. We live; true, we breathe; true; we walk, we open doors, we walk down the stairs, we sit at the table to eat, go to bed to sleep. How? Where? When? Why? 

Describe your street. Describe another street. Compare them.
Make a list of what’s in your pockets, or your bag. Ask yourself where these things came from; what are they for and what will become of them?
Question your teaspoons.
What is under your wallpaper?

Perec, 1973 Cause Commune

        translation by Ian Butler?

Reinaldo Arenas

from Before Night Falls (Antes que Anochezca)

 “In those days I had a different idea about sexual relations; I loved someone and I wanted that person to love me; I did not believe that one had to search, unceasingly, to find in other bodies what one body had already provided.” – 64

“The gay world is not monogamous. Almost by nature, by instinct, the tendency is to spread out to multiple relationships, quite often to promiscuity. It was normal for me not to understand this at the time; I had just lost my lover and felt completely disillusioned.” – 64=65

“We would all bring our notebooks and write poems or chapters of our books, and would have sex with armies of young men. The erotic and literary went hand in hand.” – 101

“The ideal in any sexual relationship is finding one’s opposite, and therefore the homosexual world is now something sinister and desolate; we almost never get what we most desire.” – 108

“The sea was like a feast and forced us to be happy, even when we did not particularly want to be. Perhaps subconsciously we loved the sea as a way to escape from the land where we were repressed; perhaps in floating on the waves we escaped our cursed insularity.” – 114