Somewhat near the end of my favorite short story, La busca de Averroes, one character goes into a monologue where he says that Zuhair says that, over 80 years of pain and glory, he has many times seen fate run over men, as a blind camel. He says that some try to praise a poet who wrote that during sunrise “stars fall slowly, as leaves from a tree” by saying that only he could come up with such an image. If true, that would mean the image is meaningless. If only one man can come up with such a thing then it can touch nobody. There are infinite things, any can be compared to any. However, nobody has not felt that fate is harsh and clumsy, innocent, and also inhumane. For that feeling it was Zuhair's verse written.
I also think of the title of a book I recently came across: “El hombre que está solo y espera”, id est, the man that is alone and waits. Isn't that a powerful title? It seems one and the other aggravate each other: the man is alone. Not only this, the man is waiting. I don't know what the book is about, really, but isn’t that a powerful title? It reminds me of this poem that reads “el hombre está mateando y esperando”, i.e., the man is drinking mate and waiting. Isn’t waiting cruel? Isn’t it a torture? It arouses the thought of Whitman, “I contain multitudes”, but not in the Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde's sense, or the the sense of Borges' Proteo, or that of Calamaro's Media Verónica, which are all the same, but in the sense of a man containing all men, in the sense of respecting men who are waiting, in the sense that one man contains all men.
I guess the point is that waiting sucks, but there's more to it, because does not poetry make things beautiful? “la felicidad no necesita ser transmutada en belleza, pero la desventura sí”, happiness needs not be turned into beauty, but misfortune does.
In the same story from above, before this monologue, there is a group of wise men taking a walk with someone who has recently travelled, and he's asked to relate some marvelous thing he saw during his trip. Not because he does not have stories is that he becomes shy and feels weak, but because “marvel is perhaps impossible to communicate”. It elaborates by saying that the moon of Bengal lets itself be described by the same words than the moon of Yemen; however it’s not the same one. His point is that it is utterly useless to try to communicate such deep personal emotion. However, we have all felt that fate has run over us like a blind camel! And both of these are true.
This brings me to “Sábados”, a poem in Fervor de Buenos Aires. This is the collection first published in 1923, when Borges is 24, and then again in 1969... where in the prologue to the later edition he says “At that time, I looked for sunsets, the suburbs, and misery. Now, I look for mornings, the center, and serenity”. The poem says “la tarde calla o canta”, the afternoon is quiet or noisy. It is about a boy missing his girlfriend and it is full of beautiful images; the one that touched me the most is that one. The afternoon is quiet or noisy. It illustrates how the boy is immersed in his thought and so outside may be quiet or noisy, but he is incapable of realizing... These many words cannot explain the image any better, because marvel is perhaps impossible to communicate, but you may know what I mean if the image has touched you. Isn't that beautiful? I was just rereading the poem, and it says right before, that below the sunset is a “deep blind city full of men that have not seen you”, how powerful! The only characteristic other than the sorrow for the city is that it is full of people who have not seen you, who don’t know what I'm going through.
The man is alone.
Another image like this is in the song “Té para tres” by Gustavo Cerati. Cerati’s dad dies. His mom, his sister, and him go for tea. The lyrics say “las tazas sobre el mantel, la lluvia derramada...”, that is, “the cups on top of the mantel, the rain spilled”. It is not “how bad it was even raining” it was that the rain had spilled, that is, it is the rain doing the action, and the rain is not falling or any other verb, but spilling.
I don't know what particularly is so beatiful about things taking the reigns of the actions in poems or songs, but it also reminds me of the unbelievably beautiful "Nuptial Sleep", by Rossetti. After making love, described beautifully in the previous stanzas, it says
Sleep sank them lower than the tide of dreams,
And their dreams watched them sink, and slid away.
Slowly their souls swam up again, through gleams
Of watered light and dull drowned waifs of day;
Till from some wonder of new woods and streams
He woke, and wondered more: for there she lay.
This being likely my favorite English poem deserves its own essay and will get it, but for now consider how it is that sleep is the one doing the action in the first line, and the dreams are the ones watching them sinking. Not only this, sleep is sinking (!!!) them lower (!!!) than the tide of dreams, and the dreams are watching them sink. So the lovers have so deeply fallen asleep that their minds go lower than where dreams happen. Slowly, their souls (!) — not them, but their souls — swam. Have you noticed? sleep, sink, slid, swim... not only the alliteration, which is masterful, but it is a visual rhyme too: the verbs even look similar. Rossetti is amazing.
Anyways, the souls start swimming up again, and they see all these beautiful things in their journey: watered light and dull drowned waifs of day, until he sees something so amazing that he wakes up, and then he wondered more: for there she lay. He is having all these beautiful thoughts in his mind, wakes up, and is ever more amazed at her.
Another example is in “Ausencia”, which reads
¿En qué hondonada esconderé mi alma
para que no vea tu ausencia
que como un sol terrible, sin ocaso,
brilla definitiva y despiadada?
Tu ausencia me rodea
como la cuerda a la garganta,
el mar al que se hunde.
[In which hollow will I hide my soul
so that it doesn't see your absence
that, like a terrible sun, without twilight,
shines definitive and merciless?
Your absence surrounds me
like the rope surrounds the throat,
the sea surrounds the drowning.]
There is nothing to add.
***
Coming back to the blind camel, “Mi noche triste” is a tango where the boy is again in pain at missing his girl for the whole song. At the end he says
Y la lámpara del cuarto
También tu ausencia ha sentido
Porque su luz no ha querido
Mi noche triste alumbrar.
[And the bedroom lamp
has also your absence felt
For its light wanted not
My sorrowful night light.]
The boy has a horrible day, lamenting every second, and when he finally goes to bed, tries to turn on the light, but it doesn’t work! It is the blind camel being innocent and inhumane. Notice again it is light who didn't want to do an action.
I also wanted to mention the “parting is such sweet sorrow” that Juliet says to Romeo before parting. Isn’t it beautiful, the oxymoron? sweet sorrow, the mixing of an adjective and a noun that “shouldn’t” go together. And the alliteration such sweet, sorrow, that I homage in my title today. Another oxymoron that is very touching to me is in “Media Verónica”:
Media Verónica despierta
la molestó la luna, por la ventana abierta.
[Half a Verónica wakes up
she was bothered by the moon, because the window was open.]
I can say a lot about half Verónica, or half a Verónica, but focus on the oxymoron where she is bothered by the moon. We don't usually think of the moon as something that can bother you; the fact Verónica is bothered by it at the very beginning of the song is masterly setting up the mood for the rest of it (which is not less excellent).
Another less sorrowful images are the ones with “Martín Fierro”,
Viene uno como dormido
Cuando viene del desierto
[One comes as if asleep
when one comes from the desert.]
I was watching an interview of Borges yesterday and he mentions these verses and says that it is beautiful how easily we get to accept the desert. We need not description of vastness, or of sand or of emptiness (isn’t emptiness close to waiting?), we read that and accept the dessert. Isn’t that magical?
***
I am reading Juntacadaveres by Onetti. The entire Chapter 5 or 6 (who cares?) is about doctor Díaz-Grey, who goes, asked by Barthé, to ask Junta if he is open to a business opportunity: opening a whorehouse. Junta moved to Santa María (the name of the town... opening a whorehouse in the town of Saint Mary. Smart, right?) for that, but Barthe is always promising the authorization is coming but it never is. It is this time, says Díaz-Grey.
Then Onetti spends the whole chapter (something like 12 pages) on Junta ranting about how he's about to leave town for good, how he essentially wasted three years of his life waiting in this town for nothing. How he one day woke up and realized he hadn’t been interested in the whorehouse anymore for months already — same as the writer of Into the Wild writes that one day he woke up and realized he had forgiven his parents years ago — isn’t that interesting? How you think you feel one way for years and one day wake up and understand yourself?
Back to the book, Junta complains that now he decides to leave for good, this happens (blind camel!). He exhausts Díaz-Grey, who wasn’t very interested to begin with, and so, when Díaz-Grey is finally leaving and after Junta repeatedly demanding that Díaz-Grey tell Barthé that there is no way that he is interested now, he tells him that perhaps he will pay Barthé a visit after all, and the chapter ends.
What do you think of this?
This is, to me, good writing. It shows us the depth of the character. Because it shows us depth of character or maturity? No. Actually, quite the opposite.
It makes junta complicated Because Junta is extremely pissed at how he's been treated, how he moved here and got a job he does not care about just to get the opportunity to start his own business, how things didn't turn out the way he wanted; how, when he finally decided to take the loss, a new opportunity arises. So the very last line of the chapter shows us that Junta is human, because, feeling all that he feels, he still wants to realize his job (his dream?). He's likely an idiot... for all he knows, he's being cheated once more, same as how many times... That is what makes him deep: he goes once more into feeling auspicious, he is a victim of the sunk cost fallacy. He's invested too much not to believe. He wants to deny it to himself and to Díaz-Grey — who, in that room, is the whole world — and so he rants for twelve pages. The very rant is, however, revealing of how he feels. If he were not excited then there would be no need to care. The point is that ranting is the way he says yes.
Lacan famously said anxiety is the only affect which is beyond all doubt, which is not deceptive.
What do we say when we say something? What do we feel when we feel angry?