The Month of the Flies by Mirtha Dermisache

In The Month of the Flies, Dermisache’s book functions as the “original” from which Chejfec’s poetic text takes shape as a possible “translation.” Chejfec’s lines are dynamic, occupying the same space as each of Dermisache’s lines, as if using language to approach her visual frequencies. The project explores the unfathomable depths of Dermisache graphisms by exposing the cracks in the legibility of such a “translation,” a translation which, coming from “illegible writing,” could in fact be nearly anything else. As Chejfec puts it in his afterword, “[Dermisache’s] diction is one that may be saying everything and nothing at the same time, representing an inspired refutation of the pact on which writing is based.” This text, he writes, is something of an “arbitrary sequel” to a text which “both demands to be read, yet remains silent.”