Italo Calvino
“Without Colours”
The Complete Cosmicomics
Translated by William Weaver:
The Day returned, to paint the Earth with grey; and my gaze moved around and didn’t see her. I let out a mute cry: “Ayl! Why have you run off?” But she was in front of me and was looking for me, too; she couldn’t see me and silently shouted: “Qfwfq! Where are you?” Until our eyesight darkened, examine that sooty luminosity and recognized the outline of an eyebrow, an elbow, a thigh.
There is something Ovidian about this passage – a reverse-engineered metamorphosis.
Silent shouts. Mute cries.
Yet heard. And therefore seen.
And so for day 2668
03.04.2014