“If I hadn’t read the stories of Felisberto Hernández in 1950, I wouldn’t be thee writer I am today.” Such a telling quote from Gabriel Garcia Marquez highlights the extraordinariness of this little known author from Uruguay. All I have is the feeling or hope that it will grow leaves of poetry or of something that could become poetry when seen by certain eyes.' Aware of something strange going on, I begin to watch for it, sensing that it may have artistic promise. At any given moment I think a plant is about to be born in some corner of me.

Even the consciousness undeviatingly watching over them is unknown to me. Some people live in the world where there are no borders between reality and fantasy.įelisberto Hernández - 'My stories have no logical structures. As soon as I put my man’s body down to sleep, my horse memory would begin to wander.Īt some fine moments Felisberto Hernández reminded me of Locus Solus by Raymond Roussel. At nightfall the thought would stir in me like a horse in a barn. Things are not what they seem… And every object possesses multiple essences…Ī few summers ago I began to suspect I had once been a horse. Some stagger and sway as if about to fall on us, and others trip us up or reach out and grab us with their branches. Inanimate objects acquire souls and human beings lose them.īut at night in the woods the trees attack us from all sides. Things become persons and persons become things.

All I have is the feeling or hope that it will grow leaves of poetry or of something that could become poetry when seen by certain eyes. I don’t know how to nurture the plant or make it bloom. Piano Stories is a book of transformations, of metamorphoses… Alterations are unpredictable.

Piano Stories by Felisberto Hernández