Lexicon of Affinities

A prowl through words reveals the unstable character of the cosmos.

With entries as varied as ‘elbow’, ‘Ophelia’, ‘progress’, the painter Giorgio Morandi, ‘chess’, ‘Eulalia’ (a friend of the author’s aunt), and ‘unicorn’, Ida Vitale constructs a dictionary of her long and passionately engaged artistic life. Taking the reader by the arm, she invites us to become her confidant, sharing her remarkable 20th century as a member of a storied generation of Latin American writers, of whom she is the last remaining alive. It’s a compendium of friendship, travel, reading, and the endless opportunities she found for ''the joyful possibility of creation.'' Like every dictionary, Lexicon of Affinities seeks to impose order on chaos, even if in its exuberant, whimsical profusion it lays bare the unstable character of the cosmos.