#title To a Nose
#author Francisco de Quevedo & Ted Kaczynski
#date October 3, 1984
#source [[https://harbor.klnpa.org/california/islandora/object/cali%3A1074][California University Archive]]
#lang en
#pubdate 2022-11-18T09:58:00
#authors Francisco de Quevedo, Ted Kaczynski
#topics Poetry, Ted's Translations
#ATTACH f-d-francisco-de-quevedo-ted-kaczynski-to-a-nose-1.pdf

The following is a prose translation of a sonnet by Francisco de Quevedo y Vilegas (1580-1643), who is considered to have been one of the greatest figures of Spanish literature. Such samples of his writing as I found in the book about him that I read were very difficult to decipher -- some were to me practically incomprehensible. So don't count on the accuracy of the following translation.

------

TO A NOSE

Francisco de Quevedo

There was a man attached to a nose.

It was a superlative nose.

It was a fierce-looking fellow and a scribe.

It was a well-bearded swordfish.

It was a badly-aimed sun-dial.

It was a pensive still.*

It was an elephant lying on its back.

It was Ovid provided with more nose.

It was the beak of a galley.

It was an Egyptian pyramid.

It was all the twelve tribes of noses.

It was an infinite super nose, a vast quantity of nose, a nose so frightful that on the face of Adam it would have been a crime.

----

[[f-d-francisco-de-quevedo-ted-kaczynski-to-a-nose-2.jpg 30r]]*I.e., apparatus for distilling. No doubt an alembic is intended. -->

(Quevedo must have had an acromegalous uncle.)

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