I flattened myself against the wall to get out of their way, and as the body went past there was a woman following just behind the litter, who I suppose must have been the wife of the dead man. She was in deep mourning, and there were a lot of other women with her. And as she went along she was sobbing out loud and saying:See Antonio Vilanova, "Reminiscencias del Asno de Oro en « la casa donde nunca comen ni beben » del Lazarillo," Bulletin hispanique 92.1 (1990) 627-653.
"My husband and my lord, where are they taking you? To the sad and gloomy house, to the dark and dreary house, to the house where they neither eat nor drink!"
Arriméme a la pared por darles lugar, y, desque el cuerpo pasó, venía luego a par del lecho una que debía ser su mujer del difunto, cargada de luto, y con ella otras muchas mujeres; la cual iba llorando a grandes voces y diciendo:
—Marido y señor mío, ¿adónde os me llevan? ¡A la casa triste y desdichada, a la casa lóbrega y oscura, a la casa donde nunca comen ni beben!
"A peculiar anthologic maze, an amusing literary chaos, a farrago of quotations, a mere olla podrida of quaintness, a pot pourri of pleasant delites, a florilegium of elegant extracts, a tangled fardel of old-world flowers of thought, a faggot of odd fancies, quips, facetiae, loosely tied" (Holbrook Jackson, Anatomy of Bibliomania) by a "laudator temporis acti," a "praiser of time past" (Horace, Ars Poetica 173).
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Tuesday, December 26, 2023
The Sad and Gloomy House
The Life of Lazarillo De Tormes, tr. W.S. Merwin (1962; rpt. New York: New York Review Books, 2005), p. 77 (from chapter 3):