Customer Reviews

Nostalgia for Death & Hieroglyphs of Desire

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The poetry is dark and inky, probably best read with a candle on a black night. It starts with "Everything in the night sketches /with its shadowy hand: the please it reveals, the vices it undresses". Villaurrutia writes of "the cave of dreams", and there is a blend of night, dreaming, and death. "And I, only I know that death/ is the choked words, the strange groans/ and the obscure involuntary movements you make/ when you wrestle the angel of sleep in your sleep". And nothing escapes this view "is it God? - who dreams in this bitter world" and even birds "gouge invisible corridors of air".

Octavio Pass knew Villaurrutia, and presents some personal reminiscences ("brief outburst and prolonged lethargies" --) and discussion of Interior exile. . A lot of this essay however is lost on me, as I was not familiar with the many persons mentioned or Contemporareous . Where the essay shines is discussing Villaurrutia internals (acedia) and "poetry inhabited by a double opposition: sleep and waking, consciousness and delirium". .. "our true homeland is death and that is why we feel a nostalgia for it".

I was introduced to this book by a friend in high school. He had stolen the only copy out of my schools library.. since then it is has been an impossible task to find the book. I don't know yet if this is the right one! Villaurrutia is an amazingly dark poet who writes exactly what the mind is thinking! Great translation, but nothing close to what the spanish is really saying! -Jamie

An excellent collection of poems for the Modern Goth or anyone who isn't afraid of admitting that they've ever felt absolutely alone. Too bad it's so hard to find and the only published poems in translation from this poet. Dark in an age where it wasn't popular to be dark, accidentally rich in romance and rhythm, it brings literature back to a period when political statements took a back seat to the root of poetry -- writing about what you're feeling. Again, I wish there were more of Villaurrutia's work available.