English 138 Identification

Much less did he expect the hail of Iberian kicks that proceeded to rain down on him, kicks delivered at first by Espinoza alone, but then by Pelletier, too, when Espinoza flagged, despite Norton's shouts at them to stop, despite Norton's objecting that violence didn't solve anything, that in fact after this beating the Pakistani would hate the English even more, something that apparently mattered little to Pelletier, who wasn't English, and even less to Espinoza, both of whom nevertheless insulted the Pakistani in English as they kicked him, without caring in the least that he was down, curled into a ball on the ground, as they delivered kick after kick, shove Islam up your ass, which is where it belongs, this one is for Salman Rushdie (an author neither of them happened to think was much good but whose mention seemed pertinent), this one is for the feminists of Paris (will you ****ing stop, Norton was shouting), this one is for the feminists of New York (you're going to kill him, shouted Norton)...and on and one, until he was unconscious and bleeding from every orifice in the head, except the eyes. (74)

2666 Roberto Bolano

"Was that all?" asked the lady. "Not for the little gaucho. If you'd spent any longer with him, I think he would have killed you, which would have been an extravagant gesture in its own right, though certainly not the kind the ranger and his son had in mind." (23)

2666 by Roberto Bolano

...[the widow] told him, in an incomprehensible language, not to be sad, that he had ridden an excellent race but her husband was good too and more experienced, words that to the little gaucho sounded like the moon, like the passage of clouds across the moon, like a slow storm, and then the little gaucho looked up at the lady with the eyes of a bird of prey, ready to plunge a knife into her at the navel and slice up to the breasts, cutting her wide open, his eyes shining with a strange intensity, like the eyes of a clumsy young butcher..." (21)

2666 by Roberto Bolano

...people less interested in literature than in literary criticism, the one field, according to them—some of them, anyway—where revolution was still possible....all of them generally rational thinkers, let us repeat, although often incapable of telling their asses from their elbows, and although they noticed a there and a not-there, an absence presence in the fleeting passage of Pelletier and Espinoza through Bologna, they were incapable of seeing what was really important: Pelletier's and Espinoza's absolute boredom regarding everything said there about Archimboldi or their negligent disregard for the gaze of others, as if the two were so much cannibal fodder, a disregard lost on the young conferencegoers, those eager and insatiable cannibals, their thirtysomething faces bloated with success, their expression shifting from boredom to madness, their coded stutterings speaking only two words: love me, or maybe two words and a phrase: love me, let me love you, though obviously no one understood.)

2666 by Roberto Bolano

These weren't comfortable nights, much less pleasant ones, but Espinoza discovered two things that helped him mightily in the early days: he would never be a fiction writer and, in his own way, he was brave. He also discovered that he was bitter and full of resentment, that he oozed resentment, and that he might easily kill someone, anyone, if it would provide a respite from the loneliness and rain and cold of Madrid, but this was a discovery that he preferred to conceal. Instead he concentrated on his realization that he would never be a writer and on making everything he possibly could out of his newly unearthed bravery.

2666 by Roberto Bolano

I walk through the streets of Bukhara, eastern city of song and story, place of legend. I walk through the crumbling walls of sun-dried brick, beneath the empty towers and minarets, past the palaces and mosques. I remember how, as a boy in faraway Kansas, I dreamed of seeing this fabulous city of Bukhara—as distant then as a fantasy of the Thousand and One Nights. And now, in 1932, here I am (dreams come true) travelling through the courtesy of a Soviet newspaper throughout Central Asia, and seeing for myself all the dusty and wonderful horrors that feudalism and religion created in the dark past, and that have now been taken over by socialism.

A N- Looks at Soviet Central Asia by Langston Hughes

Tajaiv, the lad I'm writing of, didn't meet us at the door or anything like that. He was not one of the official people...He wasn't a big person. He was shorter than the other young workers around the room. Just a little hard Uzbek or Tadjik boy of perhaps fifteen or sixteen or seventeen. A youngster who hadn't ever seen a bed of roses. But now he was very happy. As one of our hosts he came near the stove to greet us...Look what we have built...the first barracks at Chirchikstroy. Here we will live while the dam is made. Before we built this, there was nothing on this land. This is the first building—our work!

A N- Looks at Soviet Central Asia by Langston Hughes

The students who gathered to greet me were interested in learning of student life in America. I spoke to them in English, which Comrade Stephan translated into Russian, which was then re-translated into Turkmen. But even with these double translations we succeeded in effecting some interesting exchanges of background and opinion. I told them of the difficulties for poor students, especially of minority groups in America. And they in turn told me of their new life and gave me their revolutionary greetings to carry back to the proletarian youth in the United States who still live under capitalism, and to the Negro students caught in the tangled web of religious philanthropy and racial oppression.

A N- Looks at Soviet Central Asia by Langston Hughes

"'What a beautiful tennis ball and what a nice Lee Chee nut you have, my dear Angel!' commented Wong Wan-Lee. "Thanks very much for your compliment, my dear Prince!" returned Pearl Chang. Pearl Chang rested herself comfortably on the sofa. For the sake of curiosity, Wong Wan-Lee squeezed Pearl Chang's Lee Chee nut to find out whether there was a pit in it. Suddenly Pearl Chang stood up, put on her coat, grabbed her pocket-book and yelled: 'This is not a tennis ball; this is my breast! This is not a Lee Chee nut; this is my nipple! You hurt me! I thought you were born in China, the land of Confucius, Lao-Tze and Buddha. But you are as tough as any white brat I ever met when I was South!' Pearl Chang opened the door and left." (102)

And China Has Hands by H.T. Tsiang

"'What are these wooden frames and barbed wires around the counter for?' inquired Pearl Chang.To this Wong Wan-Lee made no answer, for he did not want to lose face." (90)

And China Has Hands by H.T. Tsiang

"'You are not an American. When they call you names, you lose nothing. If you throw away nuts just like that, you will never become rich. With one penny you could start a savings account and draw interest from it.' 'Never mind the few cents. I'm rich. The Chinese ambassador in Washington feeds those old savages at big feasts to make friends for China; I, Ambassador Wong Wan-Lee, here in the laundry feed these little savages with Lee Chee nuts, and these little savages will become my messengers and carry my messages to their old savages, and their old savages will become my customers by and by.'" (35)

And China Has Hands by H.T. Tsiang

"...Now you are exiled in a savage land and living among uncivilized devils. You are destined to meet many persecutions. But whenever troubles come to you, I will be with you and take you to safety. Not until the day that I dress in red will you be saved forever. You and I will then live happily together."

And China Has Hands by H.T. Tsiang

"A few feet from the door there was a counter. This counter told customers: 'Outside you stay; inside there is a kingdom and there is an emperor, His Majesty, Wong Wan-Lee!" ...In the doorway, between these two wooden shelves, was a curtain. Behind the wooden shelves and the curtain was a drying room. Behind the drying room was a bedroom. In front of the wooden shelves and the curtain, the space was open for the public—for business; and behind the shelves and the curtain, privacy reigned."

And China Has Hands by H.T. Tsiang

"All the workers in this cafeteria paraded.All the workers in the other cafeterias joined:The white, the yellow, and the black,The ones between yellow and black,The ones between yellow and white,And the ones between white and black.They were marching on, singing their song:The song of the white,The song of the yellow,The song of the black,The song of the ones who were neither yellow nor white,The song of the ones who were neither black nor white,And the song that knows nothing of white, yellow, or black."

And China Has Hands by H.T. Tsiang

"I have no ten thousand fortunes,But I'll have China!Yes,Oh, yes,RedOr no red,ChinaUnite!Woe to her foe—Mikado!Up, China now stands,And China Has Hands—EightHundredMillionHands!"

And China Has Hands by H.T. Tsiang

"In the time of the Chow Dynasty, the land was equally divided into nine parts. Eight married couples received their respective shares. They worked all together on the center portion for maintaining the schools and for payment of public expenses. When they reached the age of sixty, or if they died before reaching sixty, the government took back their share and gave it to another couple. Nobody could buy it and nobody could sell it. That was communism!

And China Has Hands by H.T. Tsiang

"Oh, what good news: China fights Japs (Summer, 1937). Then he read the local news about his native province and about his village, and this made him sick with the longing to go home and fight."

And China Has Hands by H.T. Tsiang

"Pearl did not come. Wong Wan-Lee was working in his laundry. While he was working, he was thinking of Pearl Chang." (113)

And China Has Hands by H.T. Tsiang

"These Emperors were all the ancestors of me, Wong Wan-Lee, but as there were no writings that recorded such things, I don't know exactly how I was related to them.

And China Has Hands by H.T. Tsiang

"Wong Wan-Lee regained consciousness a little and he saw Pearl Chang sitting there in a red dress. Was she the angel whom Wong Wan-Lee had once met in his dream and thought of meeting since?" (166)

And China Has Hands by H.T. Tsiang

All the workers in this cafeteria paraded. The workers in the other cafeterias joined: The white, the yellow, and the black, The ones between yellow and black, The ones between yellow and white, And the ones between white and black. They were marching on, singing their song: The song of the white, The song of the yellow, The song of the black, The song of the ones who were neither yellow nor white, The song of the ones who were neither yellow nor black, The song of the ones who were neither black nor white, And the song that knows nothing of white, yellow, or black. They wanted better wages. They wanted shorter hours.

And China Has Hands by H.T. Tsiang

Among those silver rings he stared as if he saw the angel appear again and she said to him: "My dear Wong Wan-Lee, descendant of Huang Ti, the great-great-grandson of the Han Dynasty, the great-grandson of the T'ang Dynasty, the grandson of the Sung Dynasty and the son of the Ming Dynasty: Now you are exiled in a savage land and living among uncivilized devils. You are destined to meet many persecutions. But whenever troubles come to you, I will be with you and take you to safety. Not until the day that I dress in red will you be saved forever. You and I will then live happily together!" (28)

And China Has Hands by H.T. Tsiang

Noon came. He cooked and ate his lunch. He put some water into the pot where some burned rice remained, and he had what he called his Chinese coffee. After lunch he put a sign on the door reading "Will be back in five minutes" and had a nap. In ten or fifteen minutes he got up and started to work again. He used an ironing machine to work on the collar of a shirt, but he had to work on the rest by hand. It took long hours to have all the shirts done. His hand was not a machine, but he had to move his hand as fast as a machine. .... Day in and day out, year in and year out, that is the life of a Chinese laundryman, and Wong Wan-Lee was one of them, and this was his first day.

And China Has Hands by H.T. Tsiang

Pearl Chang saw blood flowing from Wong Wan-Lee's breast.: It covered all his clothes. She took her white skirt and sopped some blood with it. Then, kneeling, she lifted his head into her lap. It reddened her dress. Wong Wan-Lee regained consciousness a little, and he saw Pearl Chang sitting there in a red dress. Was she the angel whom Wong Wan-Lee had once met in his dream and had thought of meeting ever since?

And China Has Hands by H.T. Tsiang

Pearl Chang thought Chinamen never talked, and now Wong Wan-Lee talked.

And China Has Hands by H.T. Tsiang

Poor Wong Wan-Lee, who had made no ten thousand fortunes, was a failure; but his cousin Wong Lung had made a million and had become the hero of The Good Earth—Horatio Alger! Poor Pearl C., who had become no star, was a failure, but her cousin Pearl B. had married her boss, a publisher.

And China Has Hands by H.T. Tsiang

The author of Poems of the Chinese Revolution, China Red, and The Hanging on Union Square also participated, for he thought that since he had written so much about revolution, he had better do something about it. And picketing is a revolution in a small way... By now, our author had secured a publisher for his fourth book, and the publisher was taking a deep interest in observing the moves of his writer—hoping the author would get his head clubbed so his picture would appear in the papers and, by- productingly, his books be mentioned.

And China Has Hands by H.T. Tsiang

The fellow talked to her about himself a lot: "My first novel, China Red, has been endorsed in the Soviet Union as a 'valuable miniature of a great movement and the voice of a new China approaching,' but the fakers here in America condemned it with 'we should not be attracted by its fascinating title and the seeming sympathy of the author.'" Pearl Chang was puzzled. The fellow continued: "I kept quiet and had my second novel, The Hanging on Union Square, published. It was first praised as 'an interesting experimental novel about the unemployed, perhaps the first novel with a proletarian theme written in expressionistic technique.' ... Pearl was further puzzled.

And China Has Hands by H.T. Tsiang

The lion moved along. Pearl Chang saw that the lion wore leather shoes. When its mouth would open, she saw that the lion had human eyes instead of teeth. As the lion danced harder, Pearl Chang held Wong Wan-Lee's hand harder. The harder Pearl Chang held Wong Wan-Lee, the more difficult it was for him to stand. The lion was finally taking a rest. No, it was not the lion who had gotten tired, but the lion men, of whom there were three. The lion men now emerged and drew sharp breaths. Now the lion had nothing left but its sagging skin. The small bells on it rang feebly as they touched the ground.

And China Has Hands by H.T. Tsiang

To the Death of the Japanese Empirewhose soldiers are much superior in the art of killing, with casualties in the first four weeks of the undeclared Shanghai war, reported to be ten thousand as against twenty thousand Chinese, by which rate of killing (with their eyes closed to the fact that there might be a revolt of their masses and international conflict with the other Powers, and so forth), when one hundred and twenty million Chinese—little more than one-fourth of the Chinese population—should be killed, there would be sixty million Japanese—the whole Japanese population—killed, and thus no more Japanese left, and thus no more Japanese Empire remainingThis Book is Mournfully Dedicated

And China Has Hands by H.T. Tsiang

Havana in a glance--- Paradise land, all it ought to be. Under a palm, on one leg, a flamingo stands. Calero blossoms all over Vedado. ... "Excuse me, Mr. Bragg, But why's your white, white sugar ground by black, black Negroes? A black cigar don't go with your moustach--- [sic] That's for a Negro with a black moustach! And since you like coffee with sugar, Why don't you grind the sugar yourself?"

Black and White (translated by Langston Hughes)

Esli Gavanu okinut' migom rai-strana strana chto nado Pod pal'moi na nozhke stoiat flamingo. Tsvetet kolario po vsei Vedado.

Black and White by Vladimir Mayakovsky (translation provided)

Out of the clash of peasant and proletarian worlds came the most powerful new form to emerge from the proletarian literary movements: magical or marvelous realism. Though magical realism is often considered a successor and antagonist to social realism, its roots lay in the left-wing writers' movements... Carpentier's notion of "lo real maravilloso" was an explicit attempt to capture the temporal dislocations, the juxtaposition of different modes of life—the mythic and the modern—that had resulted form a history of conquest, enslavement, and colonization... The magical realism of Carpentier and Asturias is perhaps best seen as a second stage of the proletarian avant-garde...the magical realism of 1949 is the return of the repressed history, lived and witnessed by the exiles and migrants, and the consequent insistence on the specific reality of the colonized world at the moment of liberation in India, Indonesia, and China, a moment that finds its historical precursor not in the French Revolution (as the Bolsheviks did) but in the Haitian Revolution. (69-70)

Denning: Culture in the Age of Three Worlds

...in cultures that belong to the periphery of the literary system (which means: almost all cultures, inside and outside Europe), the modern novel first arises not as an autonomous development but as a compromise between western formal influence (usually French or English) and local materials.

Franco Moretti, Conjectures on World Literature

Babel's love of the laconic implies certain other elements of hhis aesthetic, his commitment...to le mot juste [the exact word], to the search for the word or phrase that will do its work with a ruthless speed, and his remarkable powers of significant distortion, the rapid foreshortening, the striking displacement of interest and shift of emphasis—in general his putting all awry the arrangement of things as they appear in the "certified true copy."

Lionel Trilling: The Forbidden Dialectic

"I have hesitated to call the novel's admixture of realist discourse and fantastic fabrication an allegory of empire's excess, but perhaps this is what it is." (47)

Parry: Aspects of Peripheral Modernisms

Significantly, the intermittent recourse to realist representation is called into question by narrative modes that undermine realism, as in the novel's use of anachrony, prolepsis and analepsis: there is a discrepancy between the chronology of events and the order in which these are related; reference to future happenings are prematurely made, and there are recollections of moments that precede their telling. A more telling use of an alienation device is in the novel's narrative form. The framing of the narrator's tale within the hieratic oral manner of a hakawati, a public teller of tales in the Arab world ("It was, gentlemen, after a long absence ... that I returned to my people") and a popular mode, is joined with mimicry of a sophisticated literary technique, mu-arada (or mucdradah). Barbara Harlow who has identified its usage in the novel, explains that it means opposition or contradiction in which at least two voices participate, the first composing a poem that the second will undo by writing along the same lines, but reversing the meaning. In this way the narrator...tells two different stories, one of a colonial subject (Mustafa Sa'eed) and the other of a postcolonial subject (the narrator himself), that hinge on their relationship to the coexistence and clash of customary and emergent social and cultural forms within a traditional society altered by imperialist penetration (Harlow).

Parry: Aspects of Peripheral Modernisms

"The Sabbath is beginning," Gedali pronounced solemnly. "Jews must go to the synagogue." "Pan Comrade," he said, getting up, his top hat swaying on his head like a little black tower. "Bring a few good men to Zhitomir. Oy, they are lacking in our town, oy, how they are lacking! Bring good men and we shall give them all our gramophones. We are not simpletons. The International, we know what the International is. And I want the International of good people, I want every soul to be accounted for and given first-class rations. Here, soul, eat, go ahead, go and find happiness in your life. The International, Pan Comrade, you have no idea how to swallow it!" "With gunpowder," I tell the old man, "and seasoned with the best blood." And then from the blue darkness young Sabbath climbed onto her throne. "Gedali," I say to him, "today is Friday, and night has already fallen. Where can I find some Jewish biscuits, a Jewish glass of tea, and a piece of that retired God in the glass of tea?"

Red Cavalry Isaac Babel

Fields of purple poppies are blossoming around us, a noon breeze is frolicking in the yellowing rye, virginal buckwheat is standing on the horizon like the wall of a faraway monastery. Silent Volhynia is turning away, Volhynia is leaving, heading in the pearly white fog of the birch groves, creeping through the flowery hillocks, and with weakened arms entangling itself in the underbrush of hops. The orange sun is rolling across the sky like a severed head, gentle light glimmers in the ravines among the clouds, the banners of the sunset are fluttering above our heads. The stench of yesterday's blood and slaughtered horses drips into the evening chill.

Red Cavalry Isaac Babel

I threw everything together in a jumble, the mandates of the political agitator and the mementos of a Jewish poet. Portraits of Lenin and Maimonides lay side by side—the gnarled steel of Lenin's skull and the listless silk of the Maimonides portrait. A lock of woman's hair lay in a book of the resolutions of the Sixth Party Congress, and crooked lines of Ancient Hebrew verse huddled in the margins of Communist pamphlets. Pages of The Song of Songs and revolver cartridges drizzled on me in a sad, sparse rain. The sad rain of the sunset washed the dust from my hair, and I said to the young man, who was dying on a ripped mattress in the corner, "Four months ago, on a Friday evening, Gedali the junk dealer took me to your father, Rabbi Motale, but back then, Bratslavsky, you were not in the Party." ....He died before we reached Rovno. He died, the last prince, amid poems, phylacteries, and foot bindings. We buried him at a desolate train station. And I, who can barely harness the storms of fantasy raging through my ancient body, I received my brother's last breath.

Red Cavalry Isaac Babel

I threw everything together in a jumble, the mandates of the political agitator and the mementos of a Jewish poet. Portraits of Lenin and Maimonides lay side by side—the gnarled steel of lenin's skull and the listless silk of the Maimonides portrait. A lock of woman's hair lay in a book of the resolutions of the Sixth Party Congress, and crooked lines of Ancient Hebrew verse huddled in the margins of Communist pamphlets. Pages of The Song of Songs and revolver cartridges drizzled on me in a sad, sparse rain. The sad rain of the sunset washed the dust from my hair, and I said to the young man, who was dying on a ripped mattress in the corner, "Four months ago, on a Friday evening, Gedali the junk dealer took me to your father, Rabbi Motale, but back then, Bratslavsky, you were not in the Party." ....He died before we reached Rovno. He died, the last prince, amid poems, phylacteries, and foot bindings. We buried him at a desolate train station. And I, who can barely harness the storms of fantasy raging through my ancient body, I received my brother's last breath

Red Cavalry Isaac Babel

Night came galloping toward me on swift steeds, flames danced on the horizon

Red Cavalry Isaac Babel

Night came galloping toward me on swift steeds. The wailing of the transport carts deafened the universe; on the earth enveloped by screams the roads faded away. Stars slithered out of the cool gut of the sky, and on the horizon abandoned villages flared up.

Red Cavalry Isaac Babel

The burned out-town—broken columns and the hooks of evil old women's fingers dug into the earth—seemed to me raised into the air, comfortable and unreal like a dream. The naked shine of the moon poured over the town with unquenchable strength. The damp mold of the ruins blossomed like a marble bench on the opera stage. And I waited with anxious soul for Romeo to descend from the clouds, a satin Romeo singing of love, while backstage a dejected electrician waits with his finger on the button to turn off the moon. Blue roads flowed past me like rivulets of milk trickling from many breasts.

Red Cavalry Isaac Babel

The damp sunrise poured down on us like waves of chloroform.

Red Cavalry Isaac Babel

The morning seeped out of us like chloroform seeping over a hospital table.

Red Cavalry Isaac Babel

The spectacles on his nose were for Babel of the first importance in his conception of himself. He was a man to whom the perception of the world outside the cave came late and had to be apprehended, by strength and speed, against the parental or cultural interdiction, the Jewish interdiction; it was as if every beautiful violent phrase that was to spring upon reality was a protest against his childhood. The violence of the Revolution, its sudden leap, was cognate with this feral passion for perception—to an artist the Revolution might well have seemed the rending not only of the social but of the perceptual chains,

Red Cavalry Isaac Babel

The village floated and bulged, crimson clay oozing from its gloomy wounds. The first star flashed above me and tumbled into the clouds. The rain whipped the willow trees and dwindled. The evening soared into the sky like a flock of birds and darkness laid its wet garland upon me. I was exhausted, and, crouching beneath the crown of death, walked on, begging fate for the simplest ability—the ability to kill a man.

Red Cavalry Isaac Babel

We sit down on some empty beer barrels. Gedali winds and unwinds his narrow beard. His top hat rocks above us like a little black tower. Warm air flows past us. The sky changes color—tender blood pouring from an overturned bottle—and a gentle aroma of decay envelops me. "So let's say we say 'yes' to the Revolution. But does that mean that we're supposed to say 'no' to the Sabbath?" Gedali begins, enmeshing me in the silken cords of his smoky eyes. "Yes to the Revolution! Yes! But the Revolution keeps hiding from Gedali and sending gunfire ahead of itself." "The sun cannot enter eyes that are squeezed shut," I say to the old man, "but we shall rip open those closed eyes!"

Red Cavalry Isaac Babel

"...I, over and above everything else, am a colonizer, I am an intruder whose fate must be decided...In that court I hear the rattle of swords in Carthage and the clatter of the hooves of Allenby's horses desecrating the ground of Jerusalem. The ships at first sailed down the Nile carrying guns not bread, and the railways were originally set up to transport troops; the schools were started so as to teach us how to say 'Yes' in their language. They imported to us the germ of the greatest European violence...the like of which the world has never previously known, the germ of a deadly disease that struck them more than a thousand years ago. Yes, my dear sirs, I came as an invader into your very homes: a drop of the poison which you have injected into the veins of history. 'I am no Othello. Othello was a lie.'"

Seasons of Migration to the North by Tayeb Salih

"...my storehouse of hackneyed phrases is inexhaustible. For every occasion I possess the appropriate garb." (30)

Seasons of Migration to the North by Tayeb Salih

"And I am a thirsty desert, a wilderness of southern desires." (32)

Seasons of Migration to the North by Tayeb Salih

"At the climax of our pain there passed through my head clouds of old, far-off memories, like a vapour rising up from a salt lake in the middle of the desert." (37)

Seasons of Migration to the North by Tayeb Salih

"I pursued [Jean] for three years. Every day the string of the bow became more taut. It was with air that my waterskins were distended; my caravans were thirsty, and the mirage shimmered before me in the wilderness of longing..." (29)

Seasons of Migration to the North by Tayeb Salih

"I related to her fabricated stories about deserts of golden sands and jungles where non-existent animals called out to one another. (33)

Seasons of Migration to the North by Tayeb Salih

"I'm like Othello—Arab-African," I said to [Isabella Seymour]. (33)

Seasons of Migration to the North by Tayeb Salih

"It was I who killed them. I am the desert of thirst. I am no Othello. I am a lie." (29, first account of the murder trial)

Seasons of Migration to the North by Tayeb Salih

"My store of hackneyed phrases in inexhaustible." (34)

Seasons of Migration to the North by Tayeb Salih

"Our house is right on the bank of the Nile, so that when I'm lying on my bed at night I put my hand out of the window and idly play with the Nile waters till sleep overtakes me." (34)

Seasons of Migration to the North by Tayeb Salih

"Yes, that's me. My face is Arab like the desert of the Empty Quarter, while my head is African and teems with a mischievous childishness." (33)

Seasons of Migration to the North by Tayeb Salih

"You'll find that I'm an aged crocodile who's lost its teeth," I said to her, a wave of joy stirring in the roots of my heart. "I wouldn't have the strength to eat you even if I wanted to." (34)

Seasons of Migration to the North by Tayeb Salih

...the germ of contagion that oozes from the body of the universe.

Seasons of Migration to the North by Tayeb Salih

From my position under the tree I saw the village slowly undergo a change: the water-wheels disappeared to be replaced on the bank of the Nile by pumps, each one doing the work of a hundred water-wheels...Seeing the bank contracting at one place and expanding at another, I would think that such was life: with a hand it gives, with the other it takes. Perhaps, though, it was later that I realized this. In any case I now realize this maxim, but with my mind only, for the muscles under my skin are supple and compliant and my heart is optimistic. I want to take my rightful share of life by force, I want to give lavishly, I want love to flow from my heart, to ripen and bear fruit...I looked at the river—its water had begun to take on a cloudy look with the alluvial mud brought down by the rain that must have poured in torrents on the hills of Ethiopia...I hear a bird sign or a dog bark or the sound of an axe on wood—and I feel a sense of stability, I feel that I am important, that I am continuous and integral. No, I am not a stone thrown into the water but seed sown in a field. I go to my grandfather and he talks to me of life 40 years ago, 50 years ago, even 80, and my feeling of security is strengthened. I loved my grandfather and it seems that he was fond of me.

Seasons of Migration to the North by Tayeb Salih

I tell you that had the ground suddenly split open and revealed an afreet standing before me, his eyes shooting out flames, I would not have been more terrified. All of a sudden there came to me the ghastly, nightmarish feeling that we—the men grouped together in that room—were not a reality but merely some illusion. (14)

Seasons of Migration to the North by Tayeb Salih

In this very place, at just such a time, in just such darkness as this, his voice, like dead fishes floating on the surface of the sea, used to float out. "I went on pursuing her for three years. Every day the bow string became more taut. My caravans were parched with thirst and the mirage glimmered in front of me in the desert of longing." (77)

Seasons of Migration to the North by Tayeb Salih

Over there is like here, neither better nor worse. But I am from here, just as the date palm standing in the courtyard of our house has grown in our house and not in anyone else's. The fact that they came to our land, I know not why, does that mean we should poison our present and our future? Sooner or later they will leave our country, just as many people throughout history left many countries. The railways, ships, hospitals, factories and schools will be ours and we'll speak their language without either a sense of guilt or a sense of gratitude. Once again we shall be as were—orindary people—and if we are lies we shall be lies of our own making.

Seasons of Migration to the North by Tayeb Salih

The darkness was thick, deep and basic—not a condition in which light was merely absent; the darkness was not constant, as though light had never existed and the stars in the sky were nothing but rents in an old and tattered garment. (78)

Seasons of Migration to the North by Tayeb Salih

"...they walked round tough, senile old bushes, then followed the path back into the thick of the reeds" (39)

Soul Andrei Platonov

"The desert's deserted emptiness, the camel, even the pitiful wandering grass—all this out to be serious, grand and triumphant."

Soul Andrei Platonov

.Chagataev looked with hatred at these fat plants, searching beneath them for some kind of less coarse grass that he could eat.

Soul Andrei Platonov

Chagataev took Ksenya's hand in his own hand and felt the faraway, hurried beating of her heart; it was as if her soul wanted to reach him and come to his rescue. Chagataev now knew for sure that help could come to him only from another human being.

Soul Andrei Platonov

Food at this moment would serve both to nourish the soul, and to make empty, submissive eyes begin to shine again and take in the sunlight scattered over the earth. It seemed to Chagataev that the whole of humanity, were it here before him, would be looking at him with this same expectancy, ready to delude itself with hopes, endure disillusion, and busy itself once again with diverse, inescapable life. Chagataev smiled. He knew that grief and suffering are only a phantom and a dream; even little Aidym could destroy them just like that with her childish powers. In heart and world alike, as if in a cage, there beats a happiness that has never been let out, never been experienced, and every human being feels its power but feels it only as pain, because the action of this happiness is compressed and mutilated in confinement, like a heart inside a skeleton. But it would not be long before he changed the fate of his nation.

Soul Andrei Platonov

"...they walked round tough, senile old bushes, then followed the path back into the thick of the reeds" (40)

Soul by Andrei Platonov

"The camel then closed his eyes, because he did not know how he was meant to cry" (27)

Soul by Andrei Platonov

...the camel paid no attention to this man coming up to him. He was watching the motion of some dead stems of grass being blown about by a current of wind: would they come close or would they pass by out of reach?...In the distance a ball of tumbleweed was drifting along the ground; the camel watched this large, living plant with eyes made kind by hope [глазами, добрыми от надежды], but the tumbleweed passed by to one side. The camel then closed his eyes, because he did not know how he was meant to cry" [потому что не знал, как нужно плакать].

Soul by Andrei Platonov

Because of night, it began to turn cold. After eating some nan breads from his bag, Chagataev pressed himself against the camel's body for warmth and dozed off. He was smiling. Everything in the existing world seemed strange to him; it was as if the world had been created for some brief, mocking game. But this game of make-believe had dragged on for a long time, for eternity, and nobody felt like laughing any more. The desert's deserted emptiness, the camel, even the wandering grass—all this ought to be serious, grand, and triumphant. Inside ever poor creature was a sense of some other happy destiny, a destiny that was necessary and inevitable—why, then, did they find their lives such a burden and why were they always waiting for something? Chagataev curled up against the camel's stomach and fell asleep, full of astonishment at strange reality.

Soul by Andrei Platonov

But what was the dream that nourished the consciousness of the nation, if the whole of this wandering nation was able to go on bearing its fate? The nation couldn't be living off truth; had it known the truth about itself, it would have died at once from sorrow. But people live because they have been born, not because of mind or truth [oднако люди живут от рождения, а не от ума и истины], and, while the heart goes on beating, it breaks up and grinds away their despair, losing its own substance as it destroys itself through work and endurance.

Soul by Andrei Platonov

But what was the dream that nourished the consciousness of the nation, if the whole of this wandering nation was able to go on bearing its fate? The nation couldn't be living off truth; had it known the truth about itself, it would have died at once from sorrow. But people live because they have been born, not because of mind or truth, and, while the heart goes on beating, it breaks up and grinds away their despair, losing its own substance as it destroys itself through work and endurance.

Soul by Andrei Platonov

Chagataev continued searching for this unknown person, until he felt someone's face. The face immediately wrinkled up beneath Chagataev's fingers, and out of the man's mouth came a warm breath of words, each of which made sense of its own even though, taken together, they made no sense at all. Chagataev listened in astonishment, holding the man's face between his hands, and tried to grasp what the man was saying—but he couldn't. The inhabitant of the yurt was sitting on the ground; sometimes he would stop talking, give a brief, sensible laugh, then start talking again. Chagataev felt that the man was laughing at his own words and mind: the mind of the man was thinking, but its thoughts had no meaning. Then Chagataev guessed the truth, and he too began to smile: the words made no sense because there was nothing in them but sounds.

Soul by Andrei Platonov

Chagataev gazed at pale salt marshes, at patches of loam, at a dark decrepitude of exhausted dust which perhaps held within it all that was left of the bones of poor Ahriman, who had proved unable to attain the bright fate of Ormuzd or to defeat him. Why had Ahriman been unable to be happy? Was it that the fate of Ormuzd and the other inhabitants of those far distant countries, those lands smothered by gardens, was alien and repulsive to him?... Chagataev liked to reflect on people's past failures: what they had failed to do was what he now had to achieve.

Soul by Andrei Platonov

Chagataev looked with hatred at these fat plants, searching beneath them for some kind of less coarse grass that he could eat.

Soul by Andrei Platonov

Looking out of the hut's entrance, they could see the shadow of evening running towards the pit of Sary-Kamysh, which in ancient times had been the hell of the whole world. Chagataev had heard this tale in his childhood but only now did he understand its full meaning. In far-off Khorasan, beyond the Kopet-Dag mountains, among gardens and ploughed fields, lived the pure god of happiness, fruit and women—Ormuzd, protector of agriculture and of human reproduction, lover of peace in Iran. But to the north of Iran, beyond the mountains, lay empty sands; they stretched out in the direction of the middle of the night, where there was nothing but sparse, feeble grass—and even this grass was torn up by the wind and driven to the black places of Turan where the soul of man aches without respite. From there, unwilling to submit to despair and a hungry death, benighted people would flee to Iran...and there, among the estates of fat, hateful man who lives his life in one place, they would destroy and find pleasure.

Soul by Andrei Platonov

Patches of chance grass were growing in the yard and a rubbish bin stood in one corner. Next to this was a dilapidated wooden shed, then a solitary old apple tree that lived without any care or encouragement from human beings. Just beyond this tree lay a stone, a virgin rock that must have weighed a couple of tons; no one knew where it was from. And beyond that—an iron wheel from a nineteenth-century traction engine that had sunk itself deep into the ground.

Soul by Andrei Platonov

Perhaps one of the old inhabitants of Sary-Kamysh had been called Ahriman, the equivalent of devil, and misery had filled this poor devil with rage. He had not been the most evil of all, only the most unfortunate, and he had tried all his life to cross the mountains into Iran, knocking at the gate of the paradise of Ormuzd, wanting to eat and enjoy himself, but in the end he had bent his weeping face down to the barren earth of Sary-Kamysh and had died there.

Soul by Andrei Platonov

The black dog looked at Chagataev, opening and closing its mouth, going through the movements of barking and rage but without any sound coming out. At the same time it lifted its front paws, first the right and then the left; it was trying to work itself up into a fury before attacking the strange man—but it couldn't. Chagataev bent down over the dog; it grabbed his hand in its jaws and rubbed it between empty gums; the dog did not have so much as one tooth. Chagataev felt the dog's body; a cruel, pathetic heart was beating rapidly, and in the dog's eyes were tears of despair.

Soul by Andrei Platonov

The little girl looked at Chagataev with a strange and ordinary human look that he tried to understand. It might have meant: Take care of me. Or perhaps: Don't deceive me and don't torment me, I love you and fear you. Or perhaps the childish thought in her dark, shining eyes was bewilderment: why is it bad here when I need good?

Soul by Andrei Platonov

The ram was tired of leading the sheep, sorting out their squabbles at watering places...Now he had become intelligent, thin and unhappy, and the sheep hated him for his lack of strength and his indifference towards them...The ram lived an aggrieved life; he wanted to become a dog, and he even tried to tear out the sheep's wool with his mouth, to grab it between toothless gums.

Soul by Andrei Platonov

(An n number of possible languages use the same vocabulary; in some of them, the symbol library allows the correct definition a ubiquitous and lasting system of hexagonal galleries, but library is bread or pyramid or anything else, and these seven words which define it have another value. You who read me, are You sure of understanding my language?) (57-58)

The Library of Babel by Jorge Luis Borges

...the formless and chaotic nature of almost all the books. One was made up of the letters MCV, perversely repeated from the first line to the last. Another (very much consulted in this area) is a mere labyrinth of letters, but the next-to-last-page says Oh time thy pyramids. (53)

The Library of Babel by Jorge Luis Borges

Everything: the minutely detailed history of the future, the archangels' autobiographies, the faithful catalogue of the Library, thousands and thousands of false catalogues, the demonstration of the fallacy of those catalogues, the demonstration of the fallacy of the true catalogue, the Gnostic gospel of Basilides, the commentary on that gospel, the commentary on the commentary on that gospel, the true story of your death, the translation of every book in all languages, the interpolations of every book in all books. (54)

The Library of Babel by Jorge Luis Borges

It is useless to observe that the best volume of the many hexagons under my administration is entitled The Combed Thunderclap and another The Plaster Cramp and another Axaxaxas mlo. These phrases, at first glance incoherent, can no doubt be justified in a cryptographical or allegorical manner; such a justification is verbal and, ex hypothesi, already figures in the Library. I cannot combine some characters dhcmrlchtdj which the divine Library has not foreseen and which in one of its secret tongues to do not contain a terrible meaning. No one can articulate a syllable which is not filled with tenderness and fear, which is not, in one of these languages, the powerful name of a god. (57)

The Library of Babel by Jorge Luis Borges

Let it suffice for me to repeat the classic dictum: The Library is a sphere whose exact center is any one of its hexagons and whose circumference is inaccessible. (52)

The Library of Babel by Jorge Luis Borges

...although he didn't know it, to him work was a sort of intoxication which gave him a glowing health and plenty of easy sleep. So he worked on continuously, incessantly, without stopping for breath, even though the violent exertion of his limbs was making him gasp.

Untouchable Mulk Raj Anand

...he couldn't help being swept away by the sensations that crowded in on him from every side. He followed the curves of the winding, irregular streets lined on each side with shops, covered with canvas or jute awnings and topped by projecting domed balconies. He became deeply engrossed in the things that were displayed for sale, and in the various people who thronged around them. His first sensation of the bazaar was of its smell, a pleasant aroma oozing from so many unpleasant things, drains, grains, fresh and decaying vegetables, spices, men and women, and asafoetida. Then it was the kaleidoscope of colours, the red, the orange, the purple of the fruit in the tiers of baskets which were arranged around the Peshawari fruit-seller, dressed in a blue silk turban, a scarlet waistcoat, embroidered with gold, a long white tunic and trousers... Bakha felt confused, lost for a while. Then he looked steadily from the multi-colored, jostling crowd to the beautifully arranged shops. There was the inquisitiveness of the child in his stare...

Untouchable Mulk Raj Anand

Bakha stood amazed, embarrassed. He was deaf and dumb. His senses were paralyzed. Only fear gripped his soul, fear and humility and servility. He was used to being spoken to roughly. But he had seldom been taken so unawares. The curious smile of humility which always hovered on his lips in the presence of high-caste men now became more pronounced. He lifted his face to the man opposite him, though his eyes were bent down. Then he stole a hurried glance at the man. The fellow's eyes were flaming and red-hot.

Untouchable Mulk Raj Anand

Before long he had succumbed to sleep. Unfortunately for his tired body, it was an uneasy half sleep that he enjoyed, the hindrances in the labyrinthine depths of his unconscious weaving strange, weird fantasies and dreams.

Untouchable Mulk Raj Anand

He worked away earnestly, quickly, without loss of effort. Brisk, yet steady, his capacity for active application to the task he had in hand seemed to flow like constant water from a natural spring. Each muscle of his body, hard as a rock when it came into play, seemed to shine forth like glass. He must have had immense pent-up resources lying deep, deep in his body, for as he rushed along with considerable skill and alacrity from one doorless latrine to another, cleaning, brushing, pouring phenoil, he seemed as easy as a wave sailing away on a deep-bedded river.

Untouchable Mulk Raj Anand

Like a ray of light shooting through the darkness, the recognition of his position, the significance of his lot dawned upon him.

Untouchable Mulk Raj Anand

[The Havildar] lifted two sticks of wood fuel from the fire and stuck them on the ground before Bakha. The sweeper picked up the live, burning pieces of coal in his hand one by one, and put them in the firepot. He suddenly recalled the figure of the little girl in his dream of the morning on whose hands the silversmith had placed a burning ember.

Untouchable Mulk Raj Anand