Contributions by Edgardo Cozarinsky
Edgardo Cozarinsky was born in Buenos Aires, lived for three decades in Paris and now commutes between both cities, with longer stays in his birthplace. He is a writer and filmmaker. Among his more than twenty books, the only ones translated into English are Urban Voodoo (prologue by Susan Sontag), The Bride from Odessa and The Moldavian Pimp. His films include fiction and essays (not to be seen as documentaries). When he turned 70, he embarked in a series of “chamber films” still in progress. He is a great tango enthusiast and can be seen almost every evening in one or another of the “milongas” of Buenos Aires. (Photo: Verónica Chen)
DARK (an overture)
Edgardo Cozarinsky
translated by Cayley Taylor
It starts, always, in the temples, an almost imperceptible throbbing at first, and in the precise moment he acknowledges it, that pulsing starts to grow until he feels as if his head is going to explode and his vision gets cloudy and the distance between him and the objects surrounding him wavers and the arm that he stretches out for the phone is slow in reaching it and the emergency medical service number doesn’t show up in the list though he knows that he’s added it to the phone’s memory. But it’s not just the head. The chest replicates the throbbing of the temples, the thorax narrows and the ribs press down on something that he can only think to call heart, he can’t breathe and the air doesn’t enter his open mouth. He … Read More »
Edgardo Cozarinsky
Translated by Victoria Lampard and Heather Cleary
From “Ultramarina,” a contemporary opera by Marcelo Lombardero, with music by Pablo Mainetti and a libretto by Edgardo Cozarinsky, based on his novel “El rufián moldavo” (Emecé 2004). “Ultramarina” premiered in “Hasta Trilce” in April 2014. The excerpt that follows is a play on tango kitsch sung by a prostitute named Perla.
A CLEAN SLATE
If I could spit out all the kisses
That tainted my young lips…
If I could wash away the scratch of
of all those god-forsaken sheets…
If I could wipe away the caresses
that consumed my skin, then I could love you.
Oh how I wish you were my first,
the one who lied to me a thousand times.
(Does it matter? It is a man’s way to lie
to a woman, and love her all the same),
How I wish you could see me as I once was,
and … Read More »
Three Snapshots on the Way Down
Edgardo Cozarinsky
translated by the author
1. “Il vecchio non trova pace”
What’s that you’re saying, I am about to snap at the barman with my coldest voice and a killer look, when I realize he wasn’t staring at me but at another old man, maybe younger than me, who knows, but who showed those signs of senectitude I take care not to offer to the perfidious onlooker—head bowed, definitively defeated, trying to follow the spasmodic shaking of a blonde on the dance floor.
And how could he find peace, il vecchio, who knows how much champagne he has already bought her, and how much else if this is not their first time, and of course the blonde is deep inside herself, shaking and shaking for nobody, no one, two, or four, not caring who is in front of her, … Read More »
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