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🦋 Two metaphors for the sun

I'm working further on my translation of Hernán Rivera Letelier's El arte de la resurrección... Vague plans to write an interesting cover letter for the first four chapters in rough draft translation and see if I could find a publisher who'd be interested in having me work on the book.

Obviously there is a lot of sun to describe in this book, taking place as it does in the Atacama desert. I found this metaphor just gorgeous:

The Christ of Elqui left the station. The town of Sierra Gorda, nailed down here on the bottom of purgatory, seemed to be completely empty. It seemed an oasis, a mirage in the desert -- indeed its only inhabitant appeared to be the sunshine, stretched out lazy on its four dirt roads, a giant, yellow mongrel dog.

Many of their dear ones -- as they themselves would say, their voices low -- had probably died in a work accident, or in a barroom brawl, or infected by one of the epidemics which regularly tore through the north, or had fallen in one of the Army’s massacres of the saltpetre workers -- most had simply vanished into thin air, like the reverberating sun of mid-day vanishes into the desert. They rode the trains in hopes of meeting up with their kin, even if it were to be in a graveyard.

posted morning of Saturday, December 8th, 2012
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