— You’re so self-indulgent, smugly ignorant. You think you’re charming the world with your ignorance. You’re impeding knowledge.
— Look, I’m not trying to be perfect.
— I am.
— I want to be human, all too human.
— You want your art to be perfect. Why can’t you see that in other areas you should be just as demanding? Otherwise, when you talk, you really sound like, like a fascist, knowing nothing about anything — and feeling empowered by your ignorance. It invigorates you to fear the unknown — and so you paint your fears with silly superstitions — mascara and lipstick — feeling the blindness of your being. What do I get hearing you babble? How can you say that there’s nothing wrong with cheating?
— I come from a different culture.
— No culture accepts…
— I, I myself accept all kinds of flaws.
— I believe in conscientiousness.
— You also believe in fame.
— To achieve fame one has to be respected by one’s peers. Success cannot be argued.
— I don’t want my cake if I can’t eat it too.
— You’ll have your cake at night with violins and chandeliers.
— This is the divorce of true minds. I cannot accept that because someone is famous he must be great.
— But you assume that it is noble and pure to be an outcast.
— Like Artaud, like Van Gogh, like Rimbaud.
— Take it from Mama Mona, they yearned for recognition. Do you think Emily Dickinson was happy bound in a nutshell of near oblivion — in the shadowed corners of yellowing pages — waiting to be drawn away and forever by four-eyed inky scholars who haven’t got a clue to this very day because they themselves have never experienced the whammo-bammo of drums and the jazzy last bip of the bipping rap of the world. Surely Emily Dickinson craved it obsessively. If you should ever have your day in the sun — knock on wood — God forbid a chorus of green faces will accuse you of selling out. See how Cenci told you that you got Yale because you pulled strings.
— What strings do I have? I’ve got more we-regret-to-inform-yous than John Kennedy Toole and his mother. And now that Jonathan Brent happens to pick my work out of a pile of dusty manuscripts, Cenci, my dear friend and mentor, who has always supported my work, tells me that it’s only because I have contacts.
— All your friends are crooks.
— Who?
— The sadomasochist whore.
— She’s no whore. She books appointments.
— Innocence should be suffocated if it fools itself. You wish you were Buñuel, but you’re Viridiana, a fool like Viridiana. You dream of palaces for beggars, but you wouldn’t toss them a dime in the streets, yet you offer to help crooks like that dominatrix who works at the Dungeon, feeding off human frailty! What happens in the bedroom affects the whole world. Sexuality and life are one in the same. If you keep believing in your fantasy world, someday you’ll wake up and it will be too late.
— When authorities back you, I doubt. No authority backed Pessoa. Women — I always say — when I read Simone de Beauvoir — I think — she’s a good writer, but she woulda been a much better — much better mother. That’s what I think of you, a good writer, but you woulda been a much better — much better mother. You coulda given birth to a great man. You chose the wrong career. You shoulda been a mother.
— And you, you shoulda been a woman.
— I won’t deny it. I woulda loved to be a mother.
— You’re green with envy.
— Envy is a splendid sensation, but I would never envy you. Envy involves someone greater than oneself. I woulda never published with lowlifes.
— That was a reprint. It can be reprinted a thousand times.
— I am an elitist. But I tell you, don’t brag that your book was published by Yale because Foucault recommended it. Nobody believes it anyway.
— Don’t tell me what I should say.
— I don’t care about authorities, institutions.
— I don’t care about institutions.
— Yes, you care. Institutions don’t care about you. But, yes, you care. They throw you a bone, they publish your book, or they publish my journal. But those are stark naked bones that wouldn’t draw a maggot.
— You wish you were a woman like me.
— I would love to be a woman, but not like you. I woulda been a mother. Remember, the fact that the institutions recognize you, doubt of yourself, start running. The translation prize got you the publication.
— It was the merit of the work.
— Merit is never recognized until it is too late.
— A romantic notion for unknowns to cling to. Many writers, the majority, have been recognized. Joyce, Ibsen, I don’t have to name them.
— I guarantee you a poem published in my journal will give you more recognition than all your books published in Spain.
— I don’t need your favors. Who are you? Am I like you? Would you see me like I am?
— You woulda been a better, a much better mother. I coulda been a Dostoevsky, a Schopenhauer, instead I’m an Uncle Vanya.
— Poetry is the art of losers. The people who win are losers. The more you lose, the more you can win.
— That’s not original. Original was the original sin. After that we have all been losing terrain. Rapidly.
— I’m nobody, and you are nobody too.
— But I’m not just anybody, not just anybody is nobody, anybody wishes he were somebody like nobody. Nobody takes somebody’s place and throws anybody off nobody’s throne. Understand me. Something is rotten in the state of the arts. The masses are in decadence and nobody is going to convince me otherwise. When the masses revolt, the masses are at their peak. I yearn for Danton, Napoleon, Joan of Arc — for some black man to rise and revolutionize me from horns to skirts. Make me better than I am. That’s what I want to be — a Don Quixote de la Mancha — a gentle, noble soul who rises up in madness. That’s what keeps the people healthy. Damn it. It’s important to understand the meaning of taste.
— Taste makes for the quality of life.
— Taste makes for bad taste too.
— It’s a principle of organization: who in the world belongs together and how do we recognize each other. Give the people the best, develop their taste, teach them to think. Many great thoughts come from the thought of a people. And many great men come from the thought of a single man.
— From his yearnings.
— If you yearn like I do, believe me, you’ll go much farther than me.
— How far have you gotten?
— To the greatest yearning. Yearning for hunger like a rat’s mouth and satisfying myself with a piece of cheese that gives me bad breath. In other words, I eat it all up.
— Well, tell me, now whattaya gonna do?
— Wait for my liberty to come. It’ll fall out of the sky like a gift from the gods. I’ll make your life so, so impossible. Guerrilla warfare here and there. Until you grant me my independence.
— Who is the stronger? The bamboo that bends in the gale or the elm that won’t.
— The one that won’t — no matter what — has dignity.
— What is dignity?
— The measure of liberty.
— I mean, which is stronger: the island that sells itself and eats well, or the one that stands tall and dies of hunger and solitude.
— Which is freer?
— Neither one is free. Everything belongs to something. Solitude goes wherever you go, traveler. But like Don Antonio Machado used to say, if there’s wine, drink wine, and if there’s no wine, what’s your problem, brother, drink the water.
— Is this all you brought me?