Copies of the new issue shipped from the printer December 7 but have been delayed in the postal system. We apologize for the delay and thank you for your patience!

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Café chats

July 17, 2012

Santiago Ramón y Cajal, physician, scientist, artist, and writer

From Benjamin Ehrlich’s translation of Café Chats by Santiago Ramón y Cajal, in the current issue:

Glory is nothing but delayed oblivion. . . .

 ••

. . . In the effort to defend ourselves against attacking microbes and perpetuate our existence, millions of our own cells (such as glandular, blood, and phagocytic corpuscles) must be destroyed continuously. Without noticing it, without even suspecting it, we are consuming our own bodies. . . . Thus, nothing seems more natural than death, given that we kill ourselves regularly. Yet, nevertheless . . .

••

Man, it has been said, is the favorite of Providence. It would be equally right to declare that he is the darling of microbes. Beginning at birth, his trajectory proves to be a mad dash across a battlefield, where missiles rain down from the sky. . . .

••

[read more]

Filed Under: Nonfiction Tagged With: Café Chats, Santiago Ramón y Cajal

Cover art by Ralph Lazar

Volume 41, Number 4

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Writer’s Notebook

Writer’s Notebook—No Ruined Stone

Shara McCallum

Writer’s Notebook—No Ruined Stone

Answering such queries typically falls to novelists. But, being a poet, I felt compelled to ask poetry to respond.

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