Visi vertimai

The bird idea, for instance, conveyed a sense of deity to them, of bird deity, that is: they had sacred birds: hawks, ibis and so forth, and worshipped them. "And he put his tongue out as though to say with challenge: Ha, ha!".
His nose pecked the air.

However attempts to adapt the European Realist novel to Latin America were,at best, marginally succesful. Balzacian tales of young men struggling to rise in society made little sense in hierarchical Latin America. Machado was one of the few writers who could have told such a tale ; but to do so would have been to refute the tenets of positivism by unmasking his racial and class origin.

A CHAPTER OF HATS AND OTHER STORIES

Do you really believe it was heaped-up sand and ropes and clumsy leverage and all our weary and laborious mechanical contrivances?

Binovitch had the bird in him somewhere: in his features, certainly, with his piercing eye and hawk-like nose; in his movements, with his quick way of flitting, hopping, darting; in the way he perched on the edge of chair; in the manner he pecked at his food; in his twittering, high-pitched voice as well; and, above all, in his airy, flashing mind. He skimmed all subjects and picked their heart out neatly, as a bird skims lwn or air to snatch its prey. He had the bird's eye view of everything. He loved birds and understood them instinctively; could imitate their whistling notes with astonishing accuracy. Their one quality he had not was poise and balance. He was nervous little man; he was neurasthenic. And he was in Egypt by doctor's orders. Such imaginative, unnecessary ideas he had! Such uncommon beliefs! "The old Egyptians", he said. laughingly yet with a touch of solemn conviction in his manner, were a great people.Their consciousness was different from ours.