Julio Cortazar

 

 ‘Letter to a Young Lady in Paris’ by Julio Cortázar, translated by Paul Blackburn (First published in English in Blow-Up and Other Stories, Pantheon 1967; also in Bestiary, Vintage Classics, 2020. 

“Andrea, I didn’t want to come live in your apartment on Suipacha. Not so much because of the bunnies, but rather that it offends me to intrude on a compact order, built even to the finest nets of air, networks that in your environment conserve the music in the lavender, the heavy fluff of the powder puff in the talcum, the play between the violin and the viola in Ravel’s quartet.”