The number of heretics
And also, finally, the hypochondria, the ills, the diseases of Agraphia—cryptodermia, kleptolalia, cryptophasia, Elena’s migraines and tachycardia, Inés’s asthma, Belisario Tregua’s gout, dyspnea, and partial deafness, Luini’s stammer, Urlihrt’s crustaceous deafness, Zi’s prescription telescopes [28]
Family doctors. An addition?
After many years, and countless investigations, the mystery remains. What was it that was so modern about Agraphia / Alusiva? Despite its longstanding resistance to signing and dating works (“practices to which it has become inured as one would a chronic hernia,” to quote the first manifesto), the year can often be deduced by examining the many scathing, self-indulgent references (“Early” is the best example): “if what I told you comes to pass, if the Manchurian candidate wins, I’ll either go into exile or kill myself”; “It was better back in the day,” the dernier cri of belated followers of Guyotat and Derrida; the trophies of a previous decade recovered on the beach of a future one like jetsam after a wreck: late eighties, early nineties, difficult times for the journal (facts, deeds) … The “actualization” of “The Imitation of an Ounce” had little to do with the story that was published under another title—“Specular Soup”—in issue number (?) [Eiralis: “I don’t remember the story having such a title”]. I think Nora Fo’s original submission was in the late sixties. But there were many changes, including the addition of a tribute to the co-author [dates: the days leading up to Inés’ death is reflected in the children’s timetable in “The Imitation of an Ounce”], so the final submission had to be in the mid-seventies.
Birthday mission
Elena Siesta:
“Sweet Fatherland, fountainhead of chía,
I have carried you away with me for Lent …”
RLV
What do we learn about the author from reading his novel Las Patrias?
1) That he was born December 15, 1858.
2) That his death was neither by murder nor accident.
3) That he’s of Irish, Spanish, Portuguese, and Jewish descent.
4) That he fell in love with a married woman (whose name isn’t mentioned), and fearing for his life, [was forced] felt he had to go back — exile himself — to Montevideo in 1878.
5) That he never had [didn’t have] to work for a living.
6) That he began writing Las Patrias in 1914 [1904?]
7) That his father was a friend of Juan Crisóstomo Lafinur.
8) That, on various occasions and in many different cities, he met Paul Groussac, Emilio Becher, W. H. Hudson, Hilario Ascasubi, Euclides Da Cunha, Ireneo Funes, Alma-Tadema, The Prince of Faucigny Lucinge, Doctor Parkinson [Sinclair?], Foucauld.
9) That he also wrote a play in Alexandrines, La Calumnia, and shorter play in three acts that he wrote in French (Une Petite Gare Desafectée) [but not in that order, says Eiralis].
As one sees, they [these biographical notes] don’t even reach ten, which are distributed among twelve chapters. Perfect economy. Rightly or wrongly, one can complain (in other words, give thanks) “that the sparse information deprived me even of those two guides that remain after I empty myself of everything else to begin the writing process: ignorance and unpreparedness” (Chap. I). And then: “that the questionable dates and chronology in general will relieve me [exempt me] of those two circumstances that are fatal to writing: Continuing to live [Being alive], being awake” (Chap.VI).
The Excluded
The Reference The Referent
He lived at quite a distance from her body (1), which suited him because his body had become (or he transformed it into) a kind of [surd] transmitter of resonances, the majority [of them] going unanswered. For a while it was believed these resonances or vibrations were meant for someone in particular, until the belief became a solid conviction (2). That someone, the recipient of these transmissions, might have been the daughter of a certain accountant [Elvioapeles Momigliano] (3), a girl he admired unreservedly (4, see after “La mia figlia”), who worked as an administrator in one of the schools, whom he pursued determinedly, or instead of a girl, it could have been a diffident youth, one with a furtive gaze (5, Proust), a student of a subject he cannot recall (6). The first case is intriguing: we can only guess that she must have extracted from these messages some small or mysterious residue of what was communicated in the originals; of the latter case, through his prudence and obstinacy [tenacity], some flattering suggestion was perhaps received, something propitiatory though inhibitory (7, Lampedusa). But let’s forget about them for the time being. There will always be another occasion.
Of the various principles and scruples of conscience that governed the life of Enzo Nicosi (1913–1979/80), or at least the scruples he mentioned when he was alive, there is one in particular that casts light on his [predominant] tendency of speaking about one thing with reference to something else (in order to affirm that this other thing [always] evokes the former, whether because of the aptness or remoteness of the comparison), which is illustrated by quoting the following: “Latin literature is the most important solely because it was preceded by the Greek” and “I cannot speak or write without disorientation” (8).
That the first (9, Galileo, Dialogue …) (10, Hume …)
In 1958, when most of us first got to know him (11, Funes, second hand, Flaubert, Bovary — description of school briefcase), he was [already] “the man who would help guide us in life,” which was expressed with a kind of negative clairvoyance [like the capability] (12, Keats, Shelley, Coleridge) by our parents in those circumstances in which most of us, being part-time pupils at the Balmoral of Adrogué, were demanding explanations for our extraordinary regimen of study. Even then he was incredibly antiquated, pompous, withered, and lacked any peculiarities to set him apart from others. His moustache was trimmed according to the fashion of the times; it resembled that of many others of a certain age (including Miss Aserson) who kept those kinds of moustaches, which our parents admired for being like those of Errol Flynn, Clark Gable, Laurence Olivier, Ángel Magaña (deleted in final version, 13) … Many years later, once we saw through his mask, that symbol of his claudication, we summoned the image of Von Aschenbach, as interpreted by Dirk Bogarde in the Visconti film (14, reference to Gathorne-Hardy, anecdote in the book about English public schools).
We first learned that Balmoral should be stressed in the second syllable, correcting the local habit of stressing the first syllable of every foreign word that looked Anglo-saxon in origin (or the last syllable of every word that looked French). Then, being a wise instructor in the ideals of Benjamin Constant’s, he left us alone with a bunch of riddles to solve.
The origin of this strange calling, this way of instructing pupils, this way of addressing people in general — never directly — of dropping clues without ever hitting the nail on the head [the mark], seems to be in the way he himself was educated — or technically, in something he learned before receiving any formal instruction, something that happened not too far away in Lobos.