In Roberto Bolaño’s 2666, a young German soldier’s life is saved by art. He discovers the work of an Italian painter and in it, he feels himself restored. The soldier’s name is Ansky. The painter’s name is Arcimboldo. They are separated by over 300 years, but the novel allows them to commune. Whenever Ansky is “sad or low in spirits…[he closes his] eyes and think[s] of Arcimboldo’s paintings and the sadness and gloom evaporates.”

Reader, what do you see when you close your eyes? In the darkness of your mind, where the world can be imagined anew, what is it that you turn to? Ansky withdrew from a war-torn world to place himself in a romantic one. Archimboldo turned the natural world into a living, breathing, thing. His paintings injected vitality into the earth. They kept Ansky going.

Brink’s fourteenth issue arrives in the dark. It comes at a point with no obvious way forward. Last semester, we witnessed the university impose its carceral logic on peaceful student protest. We watched as tents were torn down, students were arrested, and Beinecke plaza was jet-sprayed clean as if no one had ever been there

Where do we go when we are told that where we have been no longer exists? How do we proceed?

Our fourteenth issue answers: however we must. Elijah Bacal turns to history. Jess Liu turns to grief. Hannah Szabó asks how restraint might take us forward. Maia Siegel answers with some hard truths. Daniel Zhang interrogates the space in between, and it’s there that Ashley Wang finds salvation.

Here are six people writing towards a new world, but the world they have written into is the same. When you shut your eyes, remember what you are shutting out. As you read these pieces, remember the world they have stakes in. Let these words show you what life might be like, then open your eyes and live it. If you can build a new world alone in the dark, then we can build it again in the light.

BRUNELLA TIPISMANA
ELI OSEI

NEW HAVEN, CT
NOVEMBER 2024

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Photo by Patricia Voulgairs