At his wonderful blog The Philosophical Worldview Artist, Douglas Robertson has posted his English translation of Thomas Bernhard’s 1962 story “Der Kulterer.”
Opening lines:
The closer he drew to the day of his release from the penal institution, the more Kulterer dreaded returning to his wife. He led an existence that was completely withdrawn and completely unheeded by his fellow-inmates, and during his free time, which was often much too long, because in accordance with regulations they worked only five or six hours a day at the printing machines, he would write down his ideas, or as he termed them, “trifling thoughts,” which preoccupied him almost uninterruptedly.
“Spotted Horses”
by
William Faulkner
I
A little while before sundown the men lounging about the gallery of the store saw, coming up the road from the south, a covered wagon drawn by mules and followed by a considerable string of obviously alive objects which in the levelling sun resembled vari-sized and -colored tatters torn at random from large billboards-circus posters, say -attached to the rear of the wagon and inherent with its own separate and collective motion, like the tail of a kite.
“What in the hell is that?” one said.
“It’s a circus,” Quick said. They began to rise, watching the wagon. Now they could see that the animals behind the wagon were horses. Two men rode in the wagon.
“Hell fire,” the first man – his name was Freeman – said “It’s Flem Snopes.’ They were all standing when the wagon came up and stopped and Snopes got down and approached the steps. He might have departed only this morning. He wore the same cloth cap, the minute bow tie against the white shirt, the same gray trousers. He mounted the steps. Continue reading ““Spotted Horses,” A Short Story by William Faulkner”
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