January 2010 – Page 3 – hexachromatic

A night in July!

“A night in July! What can be likened to it? How can one describe it? Shall I compare it to the core of an enormous black rose, covering us with the dreams of hundreds of velvety petals? The night winds blow open its fluffy center, and in its scented depth we can see the stars looking down on us.”

—Bruno Schulz, “The Street of Crocodiles”, The Street of Crocodiles and Other Stories, 1934; translated by Celina Wieniewska.

Alphabet Updated With 15 Exciting New Replacement Letters

a dangerous, frivolous element

“Only a sheaf of peacock’s feathers standing in a vase on a chest of drawers did not submit to regimentation. These feathers were a dangerous, frivolous element, hiding rebelliousness, like a class of naughty schoolgirls who are quiet and composed in appearance, but full of mischief when no longer watched. The eyes of those feathers never stopped staring; they made holes in the walls, winking, fluttering their eyelashes, smiling to one another, giggling and full of mirth. They filled the room with whispers and chatter; they scattered like butterflies around the many-armed lamps; like a motley crowd they pushed against the matted elderly mirrors, unused to such bustle and gaiety; they peeped through the keyholes.”

—Bruno Schulz, “The Street of Crocodiles”, The Street of Crocodiles and Other Stories, 1934; translated by Celina Wieniewska.

“I stepped into a winter night bright from the illuminations of the sky. It was one of those clear nights when the starry firmament is so wide and spreads so far that it seems to be divided and broken up into a mass of separate skies, sufficient for a whole month of winter nights and providing silver and painted globes to cover all the nightly phenomena, adventures, occurrences, and carnivals. . . .

On that night the sky laid bare its internal construction in many sections, which, like quasi-anatomical exhibits, showed the spirals and whorls of light, the pale green solids of darkness, the plasma of space, the tissue of dreams. . . .

The colored map of the heavens expanded into an immense dome, on which there loomed fantastic lands, oceans and seas, marked with the lines of stellar currents and eddies, with the brilliant streaks of heavenly geography. The air became light to breathe and shimmered like silver gauze. One could smell violets. From under the white woolly lambskin of snow, trembling anemones appeared with a speck of moonlight in each delicate cup. The whole forest seemed to be illuminated by thousands of lights and by the stars falling in profusion from the December sky.”

—Bruno Schulz, “The Street of Crocodiles”, The Street of Crocodiles and Other Stories, 1934; translated by Celina Wieniewska.