A Little Workshop of Stories
Bajramovic Benjamin 
Reading Assmann’s The Search for God in Ancient Egypt, I came across a myth about the creation of humanity. Atum, the first god, the creator, the one who created himself, found himself alone in the primordial waters of chaos. To ease his loneliness, he spat out two children, Shu and Tefnut. But the waters of … Read more
Seventy-three years have passed since the publication of Czesław Miłosz’s The Captive Mind. The book appeared in 1953, two years after Miłosz’s defection to the West, and was received largely with enthusiasm, as a rare analysis of an East that the Iron Curtain had rendered distant and obscure. The Captive Mind is not a history … Read more
He had been sitting beneath a tree in the city park for a long time. From there he had a clear view of the promenade, where people passed by absorbed in their everyday errands, or wandered, intoxicated by the mild spring day. Over his left shoulder he could follow the path, children at play, parents … Read more
The man was sitting on a bench, looking at the lake. He seemed to be daydreaming. He looked a little sad, lost in his thoughts. Another man approached, holding a child by the hand. “Excuse me,” he said to the man on the bench, “could you move a bit?” The man shifted as much as … Read more
In the plain stood a railway station. It was old, very old, and creaked in the wind like the skeletons of the hanged that whistle as they sway and knock against one another. Every nail, screw, and hinge had long since loosened from their places on the ancient wooden structure. The signs were no longer … Read more
For three days and three nights the rain fell. Dense, heavy, opaque. It fell slowly, like a theatre curtain descending at the end of a performed act. People sat in their houses. The hungry cattle moaned and bellowed in their pens and stables. From time to time a lantern would glow on a porch, then … Read more
Thomas Mann’s Joseph and His Brothers opens with an image of young Joseph gazing into the dark bottom of a well, reflecting on the past. The deeper his gaze penetrates, the darker the reflection becomes, until it finally turns into shadow. Breaking free from the spell of the well, Joseph runs off into his bright … Read more
In the middle of the grove stood an unusual tree. Since time immemorial, its branches had stretched deep into the earth, its leaves sprouting and dying in the underground darkness, while its roots jutted into the air. Thus the tree had lived. Travellers and wanderers passing through the grove avoided it, taking it for a … Read more
The house is quiet, sunk into the night like a decaying ship. It lies tame and peaceful, beautiful in its collapse. It has killed four people. They were found on the threshold, intensely dead.The first in pieces.The second, a homeless man, gray-haired and gaunt, as if he had died of old age.The third, a young … Read more
The tragic story of David Lindsay, the forgotten author of A Voyage to Arcturus, and the terrible distance between imaginative genius and literary talent. Calderón’s hero Sigismundo, imprisoned all his life, is granted a single day of freedom. His jailers drug him and transfer him to the royal palace, where Sigismundo awakens dressed in splendid … Read more