Many may not notice the young rabbit, caught
in the thicket of brush near the bottom left-
hand corner, because there is so much to see
in the center: an angel of light hovering over
the head of a woman, no more than a girl,
who has turned her head slightly to one side
and lowered her eyes, the better perhaps to
hear what might have been said off-stage, as
it were, or catch a glimpse of what has brushed
past her so quickly she might have missed it.
.
We would only work it all out much later:
that the glimmer of thin glaze over everything
was intended to represent her veiled vision;
to suggest the confusion creeping into her
consciousness, as she lowered her head, trying
to understand what must have been difficult—
almost impossible—to comprehend: this sudden
onset of the miraculous and how it would
come to such a glorious end—so unlike that
of the trapped rabbit, who had no way out.
How to Write a Russian Novel
The Prodigal of Leningradby daniel taylorparaclete press, 256 pages, $21.99 There is of course no generic “Russian…
Knausgaard’s Mephistopheles
Back in college, one of my literature professors once remarked that the first hundred pages of a…
Living with Wittgenstein
In the autumn of 1944, Ludwig Wittgenstein noticed a young doctoral student in attendance at his lectures…