Victoria Liendo
translated by Victoria Lampard

To Charles Coustille,
guilty of making me love France,
he who declares himself innocent of everything.

Libraries very much resemble churches: there are some that can make you feel even closer to God. There are so many libraries in Paris that it’s hard to decide which to visit on a daily basis. There’s your neighborhood library, your university library, your country’s library, the Scandinavian countries’ libraries—more modern—the Grandes Écoles, the famous ones like Saint-Geneviève, the cool ones like Beaubourg, and then there is the official, unquestioned Cathedral of French Wisdom, immense, solemn, silent: the Bibliothèque nationale de France. Against all expectations, the lofty, serious BnF is the only place in which someone as restless as myself is able to sit down and study.

Before the main branch of the library was at Richelieu, near the Opera and the … Read More »

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 »