Diego Rivera (1886 - 1957)

Day of the Dead in the City by Diego Rivera, 1924. “Towards sunset on the Day of The Dead in November 1939, two men in white flannels sat on the main terrace of the Casino drinking anis....Consider the agony of the roses. See, on the lawn Concepta’s coffee beans, you used to say they were Maria’s, drying in the sun. Do you know their sweet aroma any more? Regard: the plantains with their queer familiar blooms, once emblematic of life, now of an evil phallic death. You do not know how to love these things any longer. All your love is the cantinas now: the feeble survival of a love of life now turned to poison, which only is not wholly poison, and poison has become your daily food...”
“You do not know how to love these things any longer...” from Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry—a story, told like a spell, of one man's breakdown, a breakdown that had been on its way all his life. Finally it turns up and then takes place over the course of one day—the Day of the Dead.

 

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