A review by miniaturephilosopher
Headache [Cuento] by Julio Cortázar

4.0

I have headaches. I had a headache when I was reading this. The descriptions of headaches were brilliant.

"So much for sleeping, no one sleeps with open eyes; we’re dying of fatigue but a little nod-off is enough to make us feel vertigo crawling, swinging in the skull, as if the head were full of living things spinning around and around inside."

"Yes, the headaches come on with a violence that can hardly be described. Sensation of ripping, of burning in the brain, in the scalp, with fear, with fever, with anguish. Fullness and heaviness in the forehead, as if there were a weight inside that is pushing outward: as if everything were being torn out through the forehead. Aconitum is abrupt; savage; worse in cold winds; with anxiety, anguish, fear."

"We throw our heads back, or press them against the pillow (somehow we’ve managed to get into bed)"

"The cranium squeezes the brain like a steel helmet—well said. Something living roams in circles within the head."

This was an absolutely beautiful piece of prose. Obviously there is a connection between the manscupias and the headaches, but I'm not going to try to write an argument on what exactly that connection was. Thinking about it is giving me a headache.