But speaking seriously.
This made me laugh and Garcia joined me, but I am not sure that we were laughing at the same thing. Nobody else paid any attention.
But speaking seriously, since what we call the length of an object is its three-dimensional section, it is clear that the length of this section varies according to the inclination of the cut, although inversely as they conclude. The real object, the four-dimensional object, remains the same. Nothing is moving, nothing at all. They are utterly confused.
By considering the limiting case — infinite velocity — one can see that an object would be all along the line of motion at the same time (its time extension stretched full length in our space); that is, elongated to the utmost, instead of shortened to nothing as they claim. They have got everything upside down.
All these elongations — or contractions if we accept them for the sake of not arguing — hold no mystery. We are all familiar with distortions in space of three dimensions. The most rigid body can be made to shrink, expand or become deformed simply by receding from it, approaching it or changing one’s position, and no one questions which is the real or apparent size and shape and the phenomenon causes no one, except perhaps a high mathematical physicist, the slightest perplexity. This is because we understand perspective, because we can interpret the third dimension.
In the same way, the fourth dimension involves distortions which appear as motion, elongations or whatever you please. It is puzzling because we have not conditioned ourselves to interpret the fourth dimension and understand its perspective, but there is no reason for calling upon special branches of mathematics or trick devices to explain something that an extension of Euclid can explain more concisely, naturally and convincingly.
I assumed that Dr. de los Rios knew all about these things already, but I was not sure of what he thought of them and I don’t think the Señor Olózaga was interested, but I felt and I am sure Garcia also felt that this concept of a motionless universe extending in undreamt-of directions was depressing. Possibly the idea was not difficult to grant, if not to conceive, as applying to all external happenings, perhaps even our dreams, all of which appeared to be independent of us, but when applied to our thoughts, to our decisions, our labors, our smallest motions, it seemed very difficult to accept. It conjured infinite, terrifying vistas of changeless destiny — our past and future spread out and coexisting, all foreordained, all inevitable and we pinned, held like flies in this endless spiderweb, or perhaps constituting some of its enormously long filaments. Regardless of any degrees of freedom through all these dimensions, it was a horrible prison, a prison from which there could be not only no hope, but no conception of escape, because it took in everything and one could not even have the consolation of dreaming of an outside or a future.
On the other hand, it appeared as tremendously dramatic that this extension, which might be but one single instant, should create that impression of enduring time, of all history, of all eternity. Only one moment, one flash, all at once, and yet our intuition of it so gradual, so slow, so protracted, creating the illusion that we contribute to creation.
It was at this moment that Garcia rescued me from these useless thoughts by asking the Moor how he became interested in these subjects. In a series of reminiscences shared with Dr. de los Rios and the Señor Olózaga, who had come momentarily awake, he told us.
There were memories of his stormy youth and a brilliant scene one night when, having returned from Ireland, he had conducted at El Real in Madrid one of the most magnificent performances of Gounod’s Faust ever presented at that venerable and critical opera house, when he inspired the musicians and singers to heights worthy of that romantic and significant opera. Then a concert with the Madrid orchestra where he made history with a capital rendition of Beethoven’s Third Symphony, by giving it full rein, letting it play itself, with warmth and turbulence, with serenity and piety, in those days when conductors could still do novel things with time-honored classics. He extemporized on the symphony.
The first movement: a complete thesis — strident and sentimental — sheer glory in all its aspects — a résumé of the whole program. The second movement with all the rotten grandeur of death, of green marble sepulchral dwellings and tearful lamentations. The third movement, a resurrection in memories of battles with horn calls suggestive of the hunt. Many conductors have been tempted to transpose these two movements because of misunderstood reverence for chronology. Beethoven’s musical instinct guided him unerringly to the proper arrangement. Not only to sacrifice an unessential chronology to musical structure and unity, but philosophically as well; to kill his hero at the outset and understand that death is the foregone conclusion in the life of a hero which implies it by definition. This was a stroke of genius which sees clearly the timeless pattern of destiny. The last movement: victorious soldiers marching and also rhythms and accents indicative of limping, wounded, tired, straggling soldiers stepping off, coming to roost at the roadside inns, to quench their many thirsts, especially that for life, after their long association with death. A symphony which is the greatest tribute ever paid to masculinity, a monument to men and their glory and the penalty of their calling. A tableau of brilliant uniforms and decorations stained with blood. A battlefield with bucolic reminiscences of love.
“It was not me, it was Beethoven. Where he is, there is no room for anything else. The master, always in full command, the greatest of all showmen and first of the true romantics.” He was talking much more calmly now, but still with something of that kidding way of his: “And also insincere, I suspect; playing with his audience like a storyteller plays with the emotions of young listeners — ha — and frightening them. Those short, veiled, ominous passages, letting go and holding back, threatening, preparing, dressing up his victims for the telling blow. Immense! Inexhaustible capacity for presenting any idea in the best possible way. Probably the most successful artist ever, the only one who has been able to express fully everything he wanted as he wanted to express it. And then his unparalleled capacity to top perfection — not gild the lily, but to go beyond one’s wildest hopes of completeness and fulfillment. That is the true mark of genius: to transcend the strict limits of perfection and emerge into the boundless reaches of greatness. There is nothing much a musician can do with him except let him take over.” He paused a moment: “Yes, it was not me. It was him.”
The critics had acclaimed his conducting as their greatest discovery. His reputation spread like wildfire. Everything pointed to a brilliant career in serious music and then, the accident.
There are several conflicting stories and rumors concerning the accident, most of them, no doubt, started by the Moor in order to confuse the issue and surround it with an aura of mystery ranging from the sadly romantic through the droll and heroic sacrifice, to the downright fantastic, but from more sober and reliable sources I have learned that he was the undisputed champion brat of the nineteenth century and his game leg the consequence of an early prank. Be this as it may, the Moor had thrown a smoke screen of whimsicality around his lameness, capitalized on it and parlayed a common bum leg into a lifetime career.