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    Paul Bowles - The Circular Valley

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    Marvin Itolondo
    This document is a summary of a short story called "The Circular Valley" by Paul Bowles. It describes a man and woman who travel to a remote circular valley on burros to see the ruins of a monastery and a waterfall. When they arrive at noon, they kiss passionately before exploring the valley. An entity called the Atlajala watches them and becomes obsessed with the woman's beauty. It enters the man's body but finds the experience painful and suffocating before slipping into the woman's body instead. There, it feels a sense of immense limitless being and understands the man's desire for the woman.

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    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd

    Paul Bowles - The Circular Valley

    Uploaded by

    Marvin Itolondo
    451 views1 page
    This document is a summary of a short story called "The Circular Valley" by Paul Bowles. It describes a man and woman who travel to a remote circular valley on burros to see the ruins of a monastery and a waterfall. When they arrive at noon, they kiss passionately before exploring the valley. An entity called the Atlajala watches them and becomes obsessed with the woman's beauty. It enters the man's body but finds the experience painful and suffocating before slipping into the woman's body instead. There, it feels a sense of immense limitless being and understands the man's desire for the woman.

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    D3B72D33-DA30-4E34-9452-AB6197110F93

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    This document is a summary of a short story called "The Circular Valley" by Paul Bowles. It describes a man and woman who travel to a remote circular valley on burros to see the ruins of a monastery and a waterfall. When they arrive at noon, they kiss passionately before exploring the valley. An entity called the Atlajala watches them and becomes obsessed with the woman's beauty. It enters the man's body but finds the experience painful and suffocating before slipping into the woman's body instead. There, it feels a sense of immense limitless being and understands the man's desire for the woman.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    451 views1 page

    Paul Bowles - The Circular Valley

    Uploaded by

    Marvin Itolondo
    This document is a summary of a short story called "The Circular Valley" by Paul Bowles. It describes a man and woman who travel to a remote circular valley on burros to see the ruins of a monastery and a waterfall. When they arrive at noon, they kiss passionately before exploring the valley. An entity called the Atlajala watches them and becomes obsessed with the woman's beauty. It enters the man's body but finds the experience painful and suffocating before slipping into the woman's body instead. There, it feels a sense of immense limitless being and understands the man's desire for the woman.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    of 1

    Paul Bowles - The Circular Valley.

    docx •
    - - - - ---- -- - - - - -- - - - - --- - - - - - - - -
    that people should come once again to the circular valley. A
    man and a woman drove their automobile as far as a village
    down in a lower valley; hearing about the ruined monastery and
    the waterfall that dropped over the cliffs into the great
    amphitheatre; they determined to see these things. They came
    on burros as far as the village outside the gap, but there the
    Indians they had hired to accompany them refused to go any
    farther, and so they continued alone, upward through the
    canyon and into the precinct of the Atlajala. It was noon when
    they rode into the valley; the black ribs of the cliffs glistened
    like glass in the sun's blistering downward rays. They stopped
    the burros by a cluster of boulders at the edge of the sloping
    meadows. The man got down first, and reached up to help the
    woman off. She leaned forward, putting her hands on his face,
    and for a long moment they kissed. Then he lifted her to the
    ground and they climbed hand in hand up over the rocl(s. The
    Atlajala hovered near them, watching the woman closely: she
    was the first ever to have come into the valley. The two sat
    beneath a small tree on the grass, looking at one another,
    smiling. Out of habit, the Atlajala entered into the man.
    Immediately, instead of existing in the midst of the sunlit air,
    the bird calls and the plant odors, it was conscious only of the
    woman's beauty and her terrible imminence. The waterfall, the
    earth, and the sky itself receded, rushed into nothingness, and
    there were only the woman's smile and her arms and her odor.
    It was a world more suffocating and painful than the Atlajala
    had thought possible. Still, while the man spoke and the woman
    answered, it remained within. ''Leave him. He doesn't love
    you.'' ''He would kill me.'' ''But I love you. I need you with
    me." ''I can't. I'm afraid of him." The man reached out to pull
    her to him; she drew back slightly, but her eyes grew large. ''We
    have today,'' she murmured, turning her face toward the yellow
    walls of the monastery. The man embraced her fiercely,
    crushing her against him as though the act would save his life.
    ''No, no, no. It can't go on like this," he said. ''No." The pain of
    his suffering was too intense; gently the Atlaj ala left the man
    and slipped into the woman. And now it would have believed
    itself to be housed in nothing, to be in its own spaceless self, so
    completely was it aware of the wandering wind, the small
    flutterings of the leaves, and the bright air that surrounded it.
    Yet there was a difference: each element was magnified in
    intensity, the whole sphere of being was immense, limitless.
    Now it understood what the man sought in the woman, and it
    knew that he suffet attain that sense
    .. . . ... ... ....-- , . 1 .. .... , . ...... . • . ... . 1

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