Elegy for Joseph Cornell

"If there are traces of my long and secret conversations with Cornell’s boxes in my previous books, Dark Museum and Small, Illustrated World (and also in my translation of Dime Store Alchemy, a book Charles Simic wrote in honor of the artist), then the text that you, the reader, now have in your hands may serve as a record of my encounters with his films. Specifically, my new exploration begins with this film image: The little girl who passes by us, naked, atop a white steed, her hair covering her body as if she were a miniature, unsettling, version of Lady Godiva (this image appears in his film Children’s Trilogy)."—María Negroni, from the Prologue