This story can be found in Absinthe: New European Writing issue number five and was translated from the Bulgarian by Magdalena Levy and Alexis Levitin.
The story opens:
"So he walked and walked down the streets filled with light, stopping under street lamps, staring at the swarming snowflakes, opening his mouth the way he used to when he was a child, and sticking his tongue out for the stinging icy drops."
It's an interesting, meandering sentence - one that is rare in Gospodinov's story. Through the rest of the story, he is more direct. The sentence also brings up the imagine of snowflakes, which re-appear throughout the few pages remaining to this effort. They constantly represent a loneliness, something that could disappear at any moment, which also has that opening line as slightly odd.
The story finishes up very nicely though. Well, actually, not so nicely. A better choice of description would be neatly.
Absinthe is a great journal and gives us all an opportunity to read writers we may not otherwise come across. As for the image of snow in the description Dan provides and its metaphorical application, if you're looking for a great read by a "foreign" writer, try the novel SNOW by Orhan Pamuk. And now for the weather, mostly cloudy with chance of...
Posted by: steven gillis | May 10, 2006 at 12:59 PM