Me refiero a las lecturas, a las fuentes: todo eso nos hace más libres, de verdad, a la hora de pensar y de escribir. Y cuantas más veces lo hagamos más modernos y posmodernos seremos, es decir, más clásicos, que, tal y como van las cosas, quiere decir más heterodoxos.
Fíjate en este poema terrible y desolado Jorge Luis Borges que atribuye a su heterónimo Abulcásim el Hadrami, en su supuesto Diván del siglo XII. El poeta argentino confiesa, en la cúspide de su poder, su fracaso personal, tema querido en él:
El círculo del cielo mide mi gloria,las bibliotecas de Oriente se disputan mis versos,los emires me buscan para llenarme de oro la boca,los ángeles saben de memoria mi último zéjel.Mis instrumentos de trabajo son la humillación y la angustia;ojalá yo hubiera nacido muerto.
Ahora le damos la voz a Thomas Stearns Eliot.
Indeed, the one thing that time is ever sure to bring about is the loss: gain or compensation is almost always conceivable but never certain.
Y volviendo a mis queridos griegos, en este paseo, que sólo con ellos casi bastaría para acariciar esa libertad, me conformo con estas recomendaciones de Solón de Atenas:
Pon a tus palabras el sello del silencio, y al silencio el de la oportunidadoCultiva el trato con los amigos. No te hagas de prisa con amigos; mas no te deshagas de prisa de los que tengas.
After nearly a month of reading and re reading you with of course those interruptions some people call life, I realized that you are speaking about two different subjects: the first one is that reading is what makes us free. Perhaps there is a selection of what we read is the problem. We have gone through our own processes of selection of stories, books, references etc. Yet somehow some of us, in our case, separated by kilometers of geographical distance and empirical adventures, have found ourselves at our tables, not desks, tables have made the same selection, the same encounters. Is it because we are of a similar age? Background? I was unaware of the process of selection as such until I started studying the process itself due to the unbending nature of the writing exercise I embarked on. You describe the joy of finding the narration itself, your old friends. Personally I’m having problems with these old friends of mine. Upon re-reading I only recognized the pleasure by the stars my much younger hand had marked on the books. Those friends are uncomfortable with me; they don’t know what to say to me anymore, they shuffle on one foot then on another with alternating silences. I feel affection to what they once meant to me, but they can’t rekindle the feeling.
ResponderEliminarRecently I’ve been wondering also about the size of the print of the books that fail to grasp my concentration or whether I’m suffering from the Internet reading dysfunction. Are you?
Let me show you what *ragments are left in my library. There is one that asserts my right to know, to ask, to question, to analyze and ask again always exasperating the other speaker. This has nothing to do with gossip but a lot with living around you: “ y así todo lo pruebo
buscándote
en todo,
ando, nado, navego,
hasta encontrarte,
y entonces te pregunto
cómo te llamas,
calle y número,
para que tú recibas
mis cartas,
para que yo te diga
quién soy y cuánto gano,
dónde vivo,
y cómo era mi padre.”” y así soy yo,
mi obligación es ésa:
ser transparente,
cada día
me educo,
cada día me peino
pensando como piensas,
y ando
como tú andas,
como, como tú comes,
tengo en mis brazos
a mi amor
como a tu novia tú,
y entonces
cuando esto
está probado,
cuando somos iguales,
escribo,
escribo con tu vida”
“Oda al hombre sencillo” Odas elementales de Pablo Neruda.
This poem still conveys my passion for life. Yet Walt Whitman who created the style has never touched me as much as Pablo Neruda....
Another *ragment is engrained , not necessarily relished, but carved in my mind, my soul?, like an old scar, ol’ Oscar: “I never saw a man who looked / With such a wistful eye/Upon that little tent of blue/Which prisoners call the sky,/And at every drifting cloud that went/ With sails of silver by.”
The strength of the beginning of Pedro Paramo or One hundred Years of Solitude or the anger of the young Mario Vargas LLosa in Conversaciones en La Catedral. Only drunk do I recite those words. They come up unawares but loud enough to sober up a Mexican colleague with surprise or to answer a fellow drunkard who asked me in an outdated bar:”Have I met you or only dreamt you? “Only dreamt. my friend ,only dreamt!”
My sources have become ragments that survived what I once read and loved. I, contrary to you, who has sources,I have *ragments... of all I once felt