May 2011
April 2011
“For this reason the outside, seen from the melancholic inside, appears absurd and unreal, and constitutes ‘the farce we must all play.’ But for an instant—because of wild music, or a drug, or the sexual act carried to its climax—the very slow rhythm of the melancholic soul does not only rise to that of the outside world: it overtakes it was an ineffably blissful exorbitance, and the soul then thrills animated by delirious new energies.”
—Alejandra Pizarnik, “The Bloody Countess”
“And now we can understand why only the most grippingly sad music of her gypsy orchestra, or dangerous hunting parties, or the violent perfume of the magic herbs in the witch’s hut or—above all—the cellars flooded with human blood, could spark something resembling life in her perfect face.”
—Alejandra Pizarnik, “The Bloody Countess”
“Here the sinister beauty of nocturnal creatures is summed up in this silent lady of legendary paleness, mad eyes, and hair the sumptuous colour of ravens.”
—Alejandra Pizarnik, “The Bloody Countess”
“As the door flew open, the sound beat out at us, with an effect impossible to explain to one who has not heard it—with a certain, horrible personal note in it, as if in there in the darkness you could picture the room rocking and creaking in a mad, vile glee to its own filthy piping and whistling and hooning. To stand there and listen was to be stunned by Realisation. It was as if someone showed you the mouth of a vast pit suddenly, and said: That’s Hell.”
—William Hope Hodgson, “The Whistling Room”
