Matthew Boylan’s Reviews > Penguin Modern Classics Under the Volcano > Status Update

"Such areas there are in one another we leave, perhaps for ever, unexplored!"

“The Consul said nobly: "Everybody happy, including me." And including those, Hugh thought, who effortlessly, beautifully, in the blue sky above them, floated, the vultures–xopilotes, who wait only for the ratification of death.”

Earlier it had promised to be too hot: but just enough sun warmed them, a soft breeze caressed their faces, the countryside on either hand smiled upon them with deceptive innocence, a drowsy hum rose up from the morning, the mares nodded, there were the foals, here was the dog, and it is all a bloody lie, he thought: we have fallen inevitably into it, it is as if, upon this one day in the year, the dead come to life,

M. Laruelle set the writhing mass in an ashtray, where beautifully conforming it folded upon itself, a burning castle, collapsed, subsided to a ticking hive through which sparks like tiny red worms crawled and flew, while above a few gray widths of ashes floated in the thin smoke, a dead husk now, faintly crepitant ...
Suddenly from outside, a bell spoke out, then ceased abruptly:
dolente ... dolore!