If in our time it is rare that
Undertake literary adventures so daring
Like those of Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Rilke or Borges
It's not just because of the encore writers

It is, too, because the culture in which we live
Immersed does not encourage, rather discourages, those
Hard efforts that culminate in works that
They demand of the reader an intellectual concentration almost as
Intense like the one that made them possible

If in our time it is rare that
Undertake literary adventures so daring
Like those of Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Rilke or Borges
It's not just because of the encore writers

Today's readers want easy books
Entertain them, and that demand exerts
A pressure that becomes a powerful incentive
For the creators

If in our time it is rare that
Undertake literary adventures so daring
Like those of Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Rilke or Borges
It's not just because of the encore writers