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Sunday, March 21, 2010

Milorad Pavic - Imitation #1

[This is one of a series of entries on Milorad Pavic's writings, click for the first post in the series. In addition, this is one of a number of imitations of Pavic's writings. The first sentence is taken directly from Pavic.]

At night there appeared a letter inscribed on each eyelid. If you kept track of them, night after night, they spelled out two-word lines of poetry.

But it was never apparent where one poem ended and the next began. Great scholars were brought in to discuss and decide on where the breaks between poms were. Some argued for temporal breaks based on weeks and months, for instance. Others on thematic development. And still others on the shifting cadences that billowed and slackened; spinning, twisting; up, down, left, and right.

The discussion continues today, even as the woman has become older than old, and the first generation of scholars has mostly died and been replaced by a second.

She herself has never spoken about the words on her eyelids. Except to say, "I don't see what the fuss is about. If the words on my eyes were magnets on the refrigerator nobody would be talking."

Could it be that the significance is in an accoutrement of the eye offering the poem rather than only reading it?

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