Tuesday
Mar272012

Okay then, here you go, a Piñera story:

The Mountain

The mountain is three thousand feet high. I’ve resolved to eat it, bit by bit. It’s a mountain like any other: vegetation, rocks, earth, animals, even human beings climbing up and down its slopes.

Every morning I lie down against it and begin to chew the first thing I come to. I continue in this fashion for several hours. I return home, my body exhausted and my jaw destroyed. After a brief rest, I sit in the doorway to watch the mountain in the blue distance.

If I told my neighbor these things, he would surely burst out laughing or think I was crazy. But knowing what I have taken on, I can clearly see that the mountain is losing mass and height. Eventually they will speak of geological upheavals.


And that is my tragedy: no one will want to admit that I was the one who devoured the three-thousand-foot mountain.


Virgilio Piñera, 1957. Translated by Mark Schafer. From Cold Tales.

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Reader Comments (1)

You really make it seem so easy with your presentation

March 28, 2012 | Unregistered Commenteralise

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