satisfy your curiosity.   down here, where there are merely two seasons -dry and wet-, the yearly arrival of the Swallows does not announce the coming rebirth of Spring. instead, the little traveling birds are the harbingers of tangerines in season and the sugar cane harvest, winter break and my own December birthday.

"He had discovered a world of monarchs crowned with plumes of green birds, of vegetations that date back to the origins of the earth, of delicacies never tasted, of drinks drawn from cactus and palm tree, without realizing that, in such a world, events develop their own style over the course of their happening."

Alejo Carpentier, on Bernal Díaz del Castillo, in “De lo real maravilloso americano”, 1967

(Source: National Geographic)

— 2 years ago with 15 notes
#fuck, it's hard to translate Carpentier  #Alejo Carpentier  #Bernal Díaz del Castillo  #Cuba  #I write exotic in scare quotes  #Latin America  #Mexico  #Neobarroque  #The New World  #animals  #birds  #lit  #magic realism  #quetzal  #real maravilloso 
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