MOSQUITO IN THE CITY
Mosquito in the City by Erlom Akhvlediani, is a philosophical novel about the matter of life concerns. A mosquito is a metaphor of a human being discovered in an unknown world. The author represents it as a humanized insect, at the same time comparing him with Eros, the God of Love. A sting of the mosquito causes love, which is illness. And because Eros is a god, killing him is a fatal crime. But on the other hand, death is the only way to turn into a god, which is why the mosquito, an innocent human, is looking for a person who will help him end his existence. This novel written with minimalist style is full of paradoxes, combining imagination and reality.
EXTRACT
Translated into English by Elizabeth Heighway
1
Mosquito in the city
/Story/
My writing desk is bewitched. No matter how often I tidy it, in no time at all it fills up again with things I don’t need.
That’s why I stopped bothering ages ago.
I suppose that at some point I must have needed all those things for something, but I can’t for the life of me remember what that something was.
It would be so good to look at my writing desk and see just a single sheet of white paper lying in front of me, a sheet of paper on which I am actually writing!
My writing desk also needs the following things on it: a pen, a full pack of cigarettes, an old set of pharmaceutical scales(pharmaceutical scales on which I weigh everything, ash and elephants, people I know and the night, dreams and memories, things like that), an hourglass filled with sand, a desk lamp and, most importantly, a magnifying glass.The magnifying glass is essential; at night a whole host of gnats and flying things come flocking towards the light of my desk lamp. Sometimes in the quiet of night I hear a tiny pitter-patter – some little gnat is jumping around on my sheet of paper – and it’s then that I pick up my magnifying glass and use it to peer at the gnat.
Strange little creatures that they are, gnats evoke all sorts of thoughts and feelings in me! When there are none around it causes me immense sadness. Sometimes I feel as if gnats are just humans in another incarnation, humans trapped inside a tiny body. We are just as helpless, exposed and loathsome, just as wretched, annoying and unnecessary as they are. Maybe theirs is a more honest expression ofour
real existence.
And all that aside, the gnats around my writing desk are the only living things in a sea of useless, dead objects. They are all I have to bring relief from the monotony of my solitude... (See PDF)
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